On Wednesday and Thursday (August 15 and August 16), more than 85 people in New Haven, Connecticut, overdosed on synthetic cannabinoids. In Washington, DC, last month, more than 300 people overdosed on the drugs, commonly called K2 or Spice, with similar cases reported in Baltimore, Brooklyn, and Los Angeles. In 2016, California Governor Jerry Brown banned possession of the synthetic drugs in his state, and in 2015, Mayor Bill de Blasio made it illegal to sell them in the boroughs of New York City. Still, such legislation hasn’t mitigated the overdoses in New York and other areas.
Michael Baumann, a pharmacologist at the National Institute on Drug Abuse who has been studying the effects of synthetic cannabinoids in animal models, tells The Scientist that part of the problem is that K2, Spice, and similar drugs are often referred to as fake marijuana, which can entice people to try it. After ...
