You can still go into numerous smoke shops throughout SF and purchase ‘scent bags’ with the same potpourri in the sachets. As I understand, still the same stuff with a different description.
So what did the state legislature, or any legislature in the country accomplish by making it illegal? Not much. As I understand, from people who work in crime labs, they can just change a few ingredients and the (fake) purpose of the product and you usurp the law.
When is the justice system, law enforcement and legislators going to figure it out? Make naturally grown marijuana legal and you don’t have to worry about synthetic drugs. Heck, you don’t have to worry about billions of dollars a year going to Mexico, and you could tax the product at an almost 50% rate and turn our economy around.
OR, we can keep fighting these stupid little battles over synthetic drugs.
Didn’t we go into Afghanistan to get easy access to better smoke than that Mexican weed?
The entire move to ban this stuff has been a witchhunt. I’m not saying this stuff isn’t harmful, but you can’t have a law created primarily on anecdotal tales and lying legislators. Yes, I know most politician’s lie, but Jenna didn’t just slightly exaggerate or pick and choose facts to fit her beliefs. She told a story that had zero truth in it! Once that was discovered, her testimony should have been stricken and the bill should have been tabled.
Scott is absolutely right about this. It is very dangerous. It does kill people. There are many examples of death directly due to use of a synthetic marijuana. Frequently, ingredients include various poisons.
It is also true that the law cannot keep up with these cocktails because they keep changing. But these things need to be stopped. I don’t know how an effective law can be written to do that. MN has tried and failed.
I too believe that legalizing marijuana would save lives by cutting down on demand for the synthetic. BTW, there is nothing “marijuana-ish” about it. Perhaps it ought to be called synthetic heroin or synthetic LSD.
Anyway, it’s just damn stupid to continue to criminalize marijuana. Unless you make money from prison construction or some related field. Then pot crime is a massive piggy bank for you!!!
JR was telling me about this today, found it interesting;
http://psychcentral.com/news/2006/10/09/can-lsd-cure-alcoholism/316.html
DE, yeah, not a fan of drugs made in a lab, ironically the most dangerous ones are sold in a drugstore. But pot laws are silly, and I believe the criminalization of pot has lead many people to more harmful drugs that are easier to get. Believe it or not, a good bag of naturally grown pot is hard to come by these days. That’s what the guys in the dish pit at work tell me anyways 🙂
I see John Hult at the AL took a stab at the story today, glad to see someone in the local media pulled their head out.