The Bathtub Gin of Cannabis
When a fairly safe drug becomes illegal, other things often step in to fill the gap. Sometimes, they’re a lot less safe. We all know that alcohol prohibition led to bathtub gin, a substitute that could leave people blind, crazy, or dead.
The same thing is now happening in the market for cannabis. It appears that unscrupulous vendors are treating non-psychoactive herbs with new, synthetic chemicals designed to mimic the effects of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.
The result? “Spice” products. They’re the bathtub gin of cannabis. Unlike the natural stuff, these products don’t have any significant safety record. Dosage levels and side effects are basically unknown. The labels don’t even say which of the new, largely unstudied research chemicals the products contain. As Erowid reported last year:
Because Spice products are used as cannabis replacements, their safety must be compared with that of smoked cannabis… Spice-type products are up against a mountain of historical and scientific evidence that establishes the safety of cannabis.
Large epidemiological studies and experimental data have shown cannabis smoking does not involve many acute risks other than those of general inebriation. Even extended, heavy cannabis use does not appear to cause brain damage, nor substantial increases in risks of lung cancer or heart disease in healthy users; and it causes only moderate increases in respiratory illnesses. Further, THC has been shown to have anti-cancer properties in a number of experiments and has even been shown to be neuroprotective…
What are the health risks of smoking Spice-type products, with their somewhat random assortment of herbal ingredients and largely untested synthetic additives? Even if one formulation is safe, another might not be. At least one of the cannabinoid receptor agonists has reportedly caused a frightening period (8 hours) of unconsciousness followed by a long period (48 hours) of strong intoxication at a dose far under 1 mg. Another caused over two days of on-and-off twilight consciousness at around 1 mg. While cannabinoid receptor agonists are not known to be associated with fatal suppression of either breathing or the cardiovascular system, and a number of the synthetic research cannabinoids have been evaluated by pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, widespread use may turn up other risks.
To you or me, smoking this stuff might seem like an act of colossally bad judgment. Perhaps it is. Where I differ from the prohibitionists is that I would not cheer people on as they make it. (“If they get sick/addicted/hurt, well, they deserved it!”)
Instead, I’d try to come up with safer alternatives. Unlike many acts of bad judgment, this one’s easily preventable. No one would ever think to try these rather frightening substitutes if plain old marijuana were legal. Think about it — Would you drink industrial solvents if you knew that the corner store was selling beer, wine, and vodka? Of course not. And the same is true here.
So sure, some people have different risk profiles, especially, it seems, at the far end of the distribution. The obvious answer to you or me — don’t use cannabis or Spice products — might not be so obvious to them. But I’m not willing to let these folks hurt or maybe kill themselves just to prove some point about my own probity or moral fortitude. Instead, let’s them get what they want while minimizing the risk. With that option on the menu, they might not turn out to be all that different from the rest of us.
Erowid continues, with some excellent analysis of the regulatory environment:
Prohibition of widely used recreational drugs creates profitable markets for novel psychoactives. The unwillingness of governments around the world to authorize new recreational drugs means that such products will necessarily be unregulated. The UNODC estimates that there are over 150 million current cannabis users in the world, virtually all of whom use it illegally, suggesting that the market for effective cannabis replacements is hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
Drug prohibition creates a pressure to develop new substances that are active at low doses, because they are easier to transport and more difficult to detect. Prohibition also drives illicit drug manufacturers to lie about the ingredients of newly designed products.
Incentives to disguise and misrepresent the contents of products arise not only from the threat of criminal penalty, but also from the realities of an unregulated marketplace. Producers who invest time and money in the development of new grey-market products must hide the details of their product from competitors (and thus from the public), in order to maximize their profit. Without the protections afforded by patents and governmental approvals, cheap knock offs hit the market as soon as the nature of Spice came to light.
Read the whole thing, which gives documentation for every one of these claims. And I didn’t even review the chemistry sections.
I’m always a bit skeptical when pro-legalization people try to argue that pot is safer than alcohol. Both of them are intoxicants and, if used incorrectly, can be hazardous. The difference is that we all admit that lots of people drink once they’re old enough to, and that some of them will overdo it and have to “learn to hold their liquor”, while others will turn out to be problem drinkers and need more serious help. For most people, the behavior is channeled into responsible social drinking and it’s not a problem later in life.
With pot, anyone who uses it is already a criminal, so there’s less social pressure to learn how to “hold their pipe”. We want them to just not smoke pot, instead of learning to do so responsibly. Responsible adults quit smoking and problem users keep using in privacy. I think this is part of why people who smoke when they’re young and overdo it often turn into hardcore prohibitionists, instead of just deciding that, if you smoke marijuana, you’d better be smart about it. “Responsible” is defined as quitting for pot, where it’s defined as moderation for booze.Report
@Rufus F.,
I’m always a bit skeptical when pro-legalization people try to argue that pot is safer than alcohol. Both of them are intoxicants and, if used incorrectly, can be hazardous.
A lot depends on what you mean by “safer.”
On the one hand, it’s true that safety is almost all in how you use a thing. Even cyanide is safe, and useful, if handled properly. And we will need to develop a culture of responsible drug use after we legalize.
On the other hand, I’ll eat a pot brownie for every shot of whiskey you take, and we can see who puts whom in the morgue.Report
@Rufus F., As a matter of simple fact, Rufus my friend, there has not yet been a death in America that can been attributed directly to the toxic effect of THC (the woo ingredient of pot). Alcohol, on the other hand, is very much a toxic substance (which is where drunken vomiting comes from; our bodies are evolved to try and expel toxins) and people lethally poison themselves to death with it very frequently. So as a matter of relative toxicity pot objectively is considerably “safer” than alcohol.Report
@Rufus F., In terms of social costs of consumption, drunken driving and drunken fighting are huge problems. All high people want to do is sit on the couch, order pizza, and watch Seth Rogen movies.Report
@Christopher Carr, Okay, look everyone, I’ll concede the point about toxicity and maybe the point about fighting, although that sort of depends on the person- I’m one of those really friendly drunks who makes jokes and grins foolishly (not the huggy kind).
All I’m saying is that it will be better when parents can sit down with their kids and tell them how to smoke pot responsibly. Full disclosure: My inspiration here is that I still have the faint outline of a black eye I got about a month ago when I stupidly smoked three joints on an empty stomach, having also had 1-2 botttles of beer; when I stood up from my chair, I blacked out and hit the floor. Wham! All I’m saying is that young people get more guidance on how to drink properly, while using marijuana at all is considered “improper”.
Incidentally, this does bring to mind a comparison I wish the pro-pot people would make: drunken sex is often quite lousy, while stoned sex is generally pretty fantastic. I’m guessing that will not be mentioned in any of the campaign ads.Report
Another issue with bathtub gin is the issue of “wouldn’t you rather have a bottle of wine? A sixer of beer?”
Because, lemme tell ya, I do not particularly enjoy hard likker at all. A bottle of Plungerhead is far more pleasant from where I sit. How many folks in the Prohibition Era were stuck drinking gin when, really, they just wanted a damn beer?
How many people have done (some other drug) because, hell, marijuana is way too expensive/difficult to find this week and the guy on the corner has this, that, and the other but no weed (or the weed he has is twice the price of whatever happens to be on special)?
I’d bet that a lot of non-weed drug use would disappear if weed were legalized… in the same way that the removal of prohibition re-normalized drinking beer and wine at the expense of, among other things, gin.Report
@Jaybird, Those goddamn leftists in Portugal did away with drug prohibitions alltogether and now are suffering some of the lowest drug uses in Europe (let alone Europe and North America).Report
@Jaybird, I would agree that use of drugs other then weed would decrease when/if it it is legalized. But no way would all other use stop. Many addicts end up using certain drugs because they are looking for specific feelings. Coke, oxy’s and pot produce different highs. In fact one of the most irritating, although minor, things about dealing with addicts is a fairly common tendency to snobbishly look down on users of other drugs. As in, an alcoholics saying they are a better kind of addict then those damn pot smoking hippiesReport
@greginak, I originally included a paragraph discussing LSD but I cut it out.
I probably ought to have left it in.Report
Old war story here.
The bass player from my old band was a roadie for Mountain for the longest.
Cat Stevens was playing in Kansas City. There was a lot of stuff called ‘THC’ that was going around at the time, and a lot of it wasn’t what they were calling it. This guy was standing behind the people that were scoring for Stevens, waiting to get his dope. Turned out to be PCP.
So, Stevens gets his dope, but the lights started messing with his head, and he went off on a bad trip. He left the stage and got into a limo to head out to the airport.
This is the song that Cat Stevens wrote about the experience:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIWRiBsj9LoReport