Police in New York City are becoming increasingly alarmed at the side effects of “synthetic marijuana” seen in its users.
Overdoses of the drug often turns users violent, insensible, and dangerous. On Tuesday the department released several videos to show how psychotic users can get on the drug.
One of the videos shows a naked man crouching in the middle of a street, screaming, and slamming his arms onto the concrete.
“This is the middle of the day,” Chief of Patrol Carlos Gomez said during the department’s press conference. “Irrational behavior, the person is naked.”
One of the major problems that police have in heading off this drug, which really isn’t marijuana at all, is that it isn’t just “a” drug. It is a substance made from an ever-changing list of ingredients, most of which are seriously dangerous and toxic.
Worse, many of the chemicals used are household items that the police cannot simply ban from stores.
With the constantly evolving ingredients, officials are having a hard time interceding on the manufacturing end of the drug pipeline.
During the presser, NYPD Commissioner William Bratton described one incident where police tried to use a circular saw to cut through a user’s door, and in his crazed state, he actually grabbed the spinning saw blade with both hands. Because of situations like this, Bratton called the drug “weaponized marijuana.”
The drug, officials say, prevents users from feeling pain and sometimes gives them nearly superhuman strength, making their apprehension dangerous for everyone involved.
Every month, now, New York City is reporting up to 100 cases of overdoses from synthetic marijuana, sometimes called spice or K2, and that rise in reports isn’t just a problem in New York alone. K2 is appearing all across the nation, authorities say.
By July of this year, poison control centers across the U.S. tallied some 4,377 reports of people suffering overdoses from the so-called “synthetic marijuana.” That is up by nearly a thousand over the same time last year.
To try and keep ahead of the boom in K2 manufacture, the Drug Enforcement Administration has designated the five active chemicals most frequently found in K2/Spice as Schedule I controlled substances, making it illegal to sell, buy, or possess them. But progress on halting the use of the fake marijuana is hard to realize.
But authorities say the fight continues.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
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