According to the latest numbers from the Monitoring the Future Study, use of synthetic marijuana and synthetic cathinones (a.k.a. “bath salts”) is declining among teenagers. The share of high school seniors reporting past-year use of the ersatz pot sold under names such as Spice and K2 fell from 11.4 percent in 2011 to 5.8 percent this year. Less than 1 percent of 12th-graders reported using “bath salts” this year, down from 1.3 percent in 2012.
The menace that the new synthetics pose to the youth of America nevertheless remains a popular journalistic theme, as reflected in stories about Cloud 9, a name that has been applied to stimulants as well as marijuana substitutes, and 25I-NBOMe, a psychedelic that popped up on the Internet a few years ago. The press coverage tends to exaggerate the dangers of such products. A Michigan police chief told a Detroit TV station, for instance, that Cloud 9 is “absolutely deadly,” although another sourceconceded that “no deaths related to the use of Cloud 9” have been documented. And while 25I-NBOMe overdoses have been implicated in at least 11 deaths since 2012, that represents a very small percentage of the people who have tried the drug.
Still, the reporters and law enforcement officials warning parents about these drugs are right that untested, unfamiliar compounds may pose unknown hazards. The uncertainty that consumers face was highlighted by the fact that everyone quoted in the stories about Cloud 9 seemed to agree it was dangerous, but almost no one seemed to know what it was. Some sources claimed it was a marijuana substitute, while others identified it as a stimulant. According to at least one lab test, it was AB-PINACA, a synthetic cannabinoid first described in 2012. But it’s not clear that’s what everyone who bought Cloud 9 was getting.
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