Dangerous and mysterious.

That’s how Taylor, a Syracuse University sophomore, would describe Spice after trying it for the first — and last — time a few weeks ago.

‘There’s no concrete evidence of what’s in this product, and that makes it kind of frightening because you don’t know what you’re getting,’ said Taylor, who chose not to disclose his last name. ‘It scared the crap out of me.’

Spice — also known as K2, Demon, Genie or Spike, among other aliases — is a legal form of synthetic cannabinoids, chemicals that mimic the effects of marijuana’s high-inducing ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). The chemical can be sprayed on any type of leaf, usually an herb, and smoked.

In recent months, Spice has spiked in popularity across the United States — including at SU, which has seen two students hospitalized from it — prompting law makers, university officials and users, alike, to note its dangerous effects and call for its prohibition.

Taylor, a California native with a medical marijuana card for insomnia, said among his group of friends who tried it the same night, only he had a mild reaction, but still felt uncomfortable.

Taylor said the effects felt were much stronger than anything he ever felt from marijuana and lingered about four times longer than marijuana. When he first inhaled, he felt a small buzz. Fifteen minutes later, the effects revved up, causing an intense feeling of heaviness for the next hour.

‘Everything gets a little bit heavy, and everything gets a little bit overbearing,’ he said. ‘And then for a good hour after that, you just feel the effects continuously, continuously, continuously, continuously, just beating down on you harder and harder. … You just feel like you want to sit on a floor in a corner and just chill because it’s so overpowering.’

While Taylor felt weighed down by Spice, the high induced panic among some of his friends.

‘A couple of people cried, freaked out, said that they did not like it at all,’ he said.

During opening weekend, the Department of Public Safety at SU responded to two student overdoses on Spice who needed to be taken to the hospital, said DPS Chief Tony Callisto. Though DPS has not been called for any overdoses since, the two have prompted concern among university officials.

Prior to students returning to campus this semester, SU had not seen any cases of students using or overdosing on Spice, said Chris Cederquist, associate director of SU’s Counseling Center’s drug treatment program, Options.

‘We’re brand newly aware of it and haven’t really run into anything in our world at this point,’ Cederquist said in mid-August.

But in response to the two overdoses, Options organized an information session last week to educate the Division of Student Affairs about the drug, though Cederquist said his knowledge on Spice is primarily from online research.

Student access to Spice is relatively easy, as it is sold on Marshall Street at both Down Under Leather and Exscape. It runs at about $22 per gram. Both stores declined to comment for this article.

Typically, the drug is technically marketed as incense and has a warning label telling consumers it is not to be smoked. Yet many websites and head shops stock it next to tobacco and smoking paraphernalia, boasting of its potent effect upon smoking.

Because Spice is legal, the university cannot do anything to prevent it from being sold nearby, Callisto said.

The only thing campus safety can do is issue citations for students smoking Spice in their rooms, as smoking indoors is against the Student Code of Conduct, Callisto said.

In other situations, DPS is treating Spice similarly to alcohol. Intoxicated students on campus will receive citations, similarly to how someone over 21 who is intoxicated from alcohol would.

‘Certainly the goal here is not to punish people, but more importantly, to educate them,’ Callisto said. ‘That’s ultimately what we want. We want people to get treatment because this is a dangerous trend.’

The Office of Residence Life is treating Spice similarly to candles or incense, which students are not allowed to have in dorms, said Terra Peckskamp, director of residence life. Should it be found in a dorm room during a routine inspection or should a student be seen with it in the building, it will be confiscated and the student will be written up.

ORL has yet to confiscate any Spice from residents, Peckskamp said.

Taylor, the sophomore who tried Spice, said he believes the university is taking the most reasonable approach in treating Spice like alcohol, in light of Spice’s legality. But if it were plausible, he would like to see the university ban it.

Spice first landed on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s radar in March 2009 after Customs and Border Protection mistook it as a shipment of marijuana, said Michael Sanders, a DEA spokesman. It is currently listed as a ‘drug of concern’ by the DEA.

Spice does not show up on drug tests and smells like incense, traits that made the drug’s popularity rise. Because the popularity of Spice ‘took off like wildfire,’ Sanders said the DEA is somewhat playing catch-up in studying and prohibiting it.

The active ingredients in most forms of Spice were first formulated in labs in the late 1980s for research purposes, Sanders said. There are currently five known variations of the synthetic drug, with only one, officially called HU-210, illegal under the Controlled Substances Act, as it contains actual THC.

Lawmakers are finding it difficult to make the drug illegal nationally because of the multiple, and somewhat unknown, chemicals used to make it, Sanders said. Should the DEA outlaw one form of Spice under the Controlled Substances Act, manufacturers could tweak one small compound to make the drug legal again. The DEA needs to figure out a way to word a law to cover all potential sets of compounds.

‘This could be a revolving door of legislation,’ Sanders said.

Some experts say Spice is more dangerous than marijuana. Dessa Bergen-Cico, a health and wellness professor in the College of Human Ecology who organized an August drug policy forum at SU, said the fact that Spice is synthetic increases its potential for harm.

‘Don’t tamper with Mother Nature, so to speak,’ she said. ‘Synthetic drugs are, in general, more dangerous because there aren’t the same control mechanisms for the production of it. In nature, there can be limited levels of potency, even though we may change the concentration higher, for example in marijuana plants.’

While Spice is still legal federally, many states have exercised their rights to ban it within their borders. Missouri, Kansas, Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia all outlawed Spice, according to an article published in The Washington Post on July 10. Mississippi also outlawed Spice on Aug. 27, according to The Reflector, Mississippi State University’s student newspaper.

As the New York Legislature continues considering a bill to legalize medical marijuana, a bill to ban the sale of Spice in New York is also currently under consideration by the state Senate, according to the Senate’s website. The bill would prohibit the sale of anything containing synthetic cannabinoids, define what compounds constitute cannabinoids and impose a $500 civil penalty for violating the law.

‘While producing a marijuana-like high, dangerous side effects reported include hallucinations, vomiting, agitation, increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure and other adverse conditions,’ according to the justification section of the bill.

Multiple calls to the office of Sen. John Flanagan (R-Long Island), who sponsored the bill, were not returned for comment for this article.

Based on his experience, Taylor, who grew up being told a joint with dinner was as viable an option as a glass of wine, said he thinks Spice should be outlawed, as he does not see any potential therapeutic benefits from its use. It could be more harmful than harder drugs like cocaine, as it requires fewer quantities to overdose, he added.

‘I think the one thing about Spice that maybe doesn’t make it as dangerous as those is the sense that you don’t need a lot to get hurt, but I think that also makes it more dangerous,’ he said. ‘You could take one hit of this, and it could really ‘f’ you up. Most people that experience overdoses on cocaine, it’s after they’ve done enough to write their name in it six times.’

But he said the harsh effects some of his friends experienced could be due to a bad reaction with prescriptions they were on, such as antidepressants or anti-anxiety medication.

Some of the friends he smoked with told him they would replace smoking marijuana with the new drug because it is cheaper, legal and easier to access.

Regardless, Taylor advised fellow classmates not to turn to Spice in search of a legal high.

‘Is it really worth the possibility of sweating and getting yourself to the point of anxiety that you actually go to a hospital for it?’ he said. ‘No, not at all. Nothing is worth that.’

rhkheel@syr.edu

Published on September 8, 2010 at 12:00 pm