Pubdate: Sat, 29 Jan 2011
Source: Edmonton Journal (CN AB)
Copyright: 2011 The Edmonton Journal
Contact: http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/letters.html
Website: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/134
Bookmark: http://mapinc.org/topic/synthetic+marijuana

SYNTHETIC POT 'LIKE PLAYING RUSSIAN ROULETTE': INVENTOR

The high from synthetic marijuana products comes from a laboratory -- 
not a plant.

And the chemist who created some of the compounds commonly used to 
make synthetic marijuana is warning people against using it 
recreationally. "It's like playing Russian roulette. You don't know 
what it's going to do to you," John W. Huffman told the website LiveScience.

In what's considered the first case of its kind in Calgary, police 
this week seized synthetic marijuana on sale at several stores and 
stored in a warehouse.

Many of the chemicals in the synthetic drug are banned under the 
Controlled Drug and Substances Act. Unlike marijuana, which derives 
its potency from a naturally occurring substance in cannabis plants, 
the synthetic drug is a chemical-herbal mix of otherwise legal plant 
materials, infused with manufactured chemical compounds that mimic 
marijuana's active ingredient.

Huffman, a researcher at Clemson University in South Carolina, 
synthesized the compounds to explore potential for use in new 
pharmaceutical drugs, and to study how the brain responds to 
marijuana's main active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
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