Synthetic Drug Use Skyrocketing, Targeting Young Users
A recent report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) shows that the manufacture and use of synthetic drugs is skyrocketing – in 2008, about 80 synthetic psychoactive substances had been reported; by 2013 that number had grown to 348. And it’s kids who are widely using these drugs. For example, the National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that in 2012, 11% of high school seniors reported using synthetic marijuana within the past year.
Regulations Lag Behind Reality in Drug Use
The UNODC report shows that since 1961, the number of controlled narcotic drugs has stayed nearly even (think heroin). And since 1990, the same is true of psychotropic substances (think LSD). But largely starting in 2009, hundreds of new psychoactive substances have flooded world markets, and many of these substances are yet to be controlled, especially at the international level. This means that even if new synthetic drugs are made illegal in the United States, they may remain uncontrolled in their countries of origin, leading to easy manufacture and distribution via the internet.
Unpredictable Effects of Drug Use
Because the chemicals in drug mixtures are new and unknown, synthetic drugs, like Spice, can also have wildly unpredictable effects. The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) reports that in 2010, there were an estimated 11,406 emergency room visits due to the use of synthetic cannabinoids. Thirty-three percent of these patients were between the ages of 12-17 (compared with only 12 percent of ER visits related to traditional marijuana in the 12-17 age group). In marijuana-related ER visits, the drug was combined with another drug 69 percent of the time; in synthetic marijuana-related ER visits, it was the synthetic alone that most often sent the patient to the ER, and was combined with other drugs only 31 percent of the time.
Synthetic marijuana is only the tip of a very large iceberg. Hundreds of new, designer, synthetic, club drugs fall into categories like aminoindanes, phencyclidine-type substances, phenethylamines, piperazines, synthetic cathinones, and tryptamines.
The Overreaching Danger of Drugs
The overreaching danger of these drugs comes from the collision of three important factors:
- These drugs are unpredictable
- These drugs are dangerous and addictive
- These drugs are marketed to young users in a way that makes them seem safe.
These factors make young people underestimate the risk, too often with dramatic medical consequences.
Policy and law enforcement are struggling to catch up with what doctors and scientists already know: synthetic drugs are as dangerous (or more so) as traditional drugs like heroin and cocaine. Giving a drug a cute name like Spice or Molly makes it no less damaging to the brains and bodies of the growing population of young people experimenting with or addicted to these drugs.
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