Citation

Nolan ML, Allen B, Kunins HV, Paone D. Int. J. Drug Policy 2016; 34: 101-103.

Affiliation

New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Bureau of Alcohol and Drug Use Prevention, Care, and Treatment, 42-09 28th Street, 19th Floor, Queens, NY 11101, United States.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.drugpo.2016.05.014

PMID

27453146

Abstract

Despite continued prohibition of most drugs for recreational use, drug use is common in the United States. In 2013, nearly half of adults aged 12 years and older reported lifetime use of illicit drugs (47%), with 44% reporting lifetime cannabis use (SAMHSA, 2014a). However, US federal law prohibits the manufacture, possession, sale, or consumption of cannabis. In addition, products containing a variety of synthetic cannabinoids (SCs), many of which are not controlled, have emerged in recent years. SCs include chemical compounds that bind to cannabinoid receptors in the brain (Brents & Prather, 2014; Gurney, Scott, Kacinko, Presley, & Logan, 2014).

The use of these new substances has become more common throughout the United States (Johnson, O’Malley, Bachman, Schulenberg, & Miech, 2015), and users may view SCs as a legal option to achieve psychoactive effects similar to cannabis (Bonar, Ashrafioun, & Ilgen, 2014). As the prevalence of use increases, an emerging body of research has documented numerous adverse physical and mental health effects associated with SCsD]FFI[3_TD$ (SAMHSA, 2014b), including seizure, psychosis, and kidney damage (Schep, Slaughter, Hudson, Place, & Watts, 2015; Seely, Lapoint, Moran, & Fattore, 2012; Spaderna, Addy, & D’Souza, 2013). Law enforcement efforts to restrict the sale of these drugs have proven challenging, as drug enforcement legislation typically targets a single chemical compound; the malleability of SCs’ chemical compositions make these drugs difficult to legislate (Cohen, 2014). While some research has called for increased testing for SCs in response to these increasing harms (Ninnemann & MacPherson, 2015), these efforts may be shortsighted due to the evolving nature of the synthetic compounds, which, to date, have outpaced criminaliza- tion (Cohen, 2014) ...

Language: en