As predicted, SPICE is beginning to effect the Orange County Drug and Alcohol Treatment in facilities in California.  In a recent USA Today article they say that K2, or SPICE, is responsible for 352 ER visits in 35 States since the initial report.  At one store in Kansas that sells the drug sales soared from $1000 a day to $10000 a day.  States are racing to ban the drug that is rapidly spreading across the Country and becoming a big problem for drug rehabs across the United States, not just California.  The drug mimics the effects of marijuana, but is more powerful and creates more severe hallucinations and paranoia.  The drug was originally created by graduate students at Clemson University under the chemist John Huffman.  Huffman himself is quoted as saying that the drug “should not be out there.”  Currently there are no tests for SPICE or K2, which means that no one can test for the drug in urinalysis screens or blood tests.  This has been a problem in the past with other drugs that are illegal or available only by prescription, but we haven’t seen a drug that is legal, easily accessible, powerful, and untestable in a long, long time.  It significantly threatens the treatment efforts of drug rehabs across the United States.  Many drug rehabs have never heard of the drug and if they found it on a patient they would most likely not know what it was.  Any person can buy the drug at any head shop, new age store, or over the internet.  It is marketed as incense, but it is understood that you can smoke it.  In the same way nitrous as something that is “not for human consumption,” but everyone knows that people inhale it for a high, SPICE is known in the same way.

As I was writing this, a counselor came in with a bag of SPICE that one of our outpatient clients handed over to us.  He said that the client is having a horrible time getting off of SPICE.  He wants to quit SPICE but can’t.  The client said that SPICE is worse than marijuana and produces a greater high.  I have noticed over the last year that many people who begin smoking SPICE have an extremely difficult time stopping it.

The bag of SPICE that was brought to me is one of many. It was not labeled as “K2″ or SPICE, but as some herbal incense called “Ashwaganda Essence.”  It says right on the package that it is “NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION,”  but that’s a joke. It is odorless, which should be a dead giveaway that it’s not incense, and it looks exactly like marijuana.