What drugs are in K2, Spice Gold, and other herbal incense products?
Initial tests of Spice Gold and similar products found no illegal substances and were not able to detect active ingredients that could explain the “high” they produced in users. The tests also were unable to detect most of the herbs the products were supposed to contain. Finally, in late 2008, Volker Auwarter, ScD, and colleagues in the forensic toxicology lab at the University Hospital Freiburg, Germany, found that the products contained at least two different designer drugs known as synthetic cannabinoids. The drugs detected by Auwarter had the same chemical signal as drugs detected — but not identified — in samples of Spice brand product tested privately by the user-oriented Erowid drug information web site in 2007. Like THC, the active ingredient in marijuana and other forms of cannabis, these synthetic cannabinoids turn on the cannabinoid receptors found on many cells in the body. The brain is particularly rich in the CB1 cannabinoid receptor. But most synthetic cannabinoids are
Initial tests of Spice Gold and similar products found no illegal substances and were not able to detect active ingredients that could explain the “high” they produced in users. The tests also were unable to detect most of the herbs the products were supposed to contain. Finally, in late 2008, Volker Auwarter, ScD, and colleagues in the forensic toxicology lab at the University Hospital Freiburg, Germany, found that the products contained at least two different designer drugs known as synthetic cannabinoids. The drugs detected by Auwarter had the same chemical signal as drugs detected — but not identified — in samples of Spice brand product tested privately by the user-oriented Erowid drug information web site in 2007. Like THC, the active ingredient in marijuana and other forms of cannabis, these synthetic cannabinoids turn on the cannabinoid receptors found on many cells in the body. The brain is particularly rich in the CB1 cannabinoid receptor. But most synthetic cannabinoids are
