I don’t usually just repost other news, because it’s boring and lazy, but today is different because we’re actually in the news. This weekend, the cover story of The Observer Magazine was “The Rise and Rise of Legal Highs“, and features not only a few quotes from us, but you can also see my nipples. Intrigued? Read on…

The article itself contains points from some pretty important people, which is actually a massive compliment. It feels pretty good to get quoted in an article alongside Martin Barnes, DrugScope’s chief executive, and John Huffman, the guy that discovered the JWH series of compounds (such as JWH-018). Since it’s such a long article, I won’t post the lot here – just a few select bits. I really would suggest reading the entire article though on the Observer website.

One more thing I have to mention before you go any further. That Mac that the misses is holding is not her Mac. In an ideal world, she would have been holding her far superior laptop, but it would have made for a worse photo. Here we go:

How can you get high without breaking the law? A survey of friends and colleagues. “Smoke nutmeg,” said an actor. “Find a dodgy Starbucks barista who’ll sell you the nitrous oxide cans they use to whip cream,” said a banker. “Ask around for something called Methedrome, or Mephedrone, or Mephedrome,” advised an account manager. “Lick a newt,” texted a doctor, “and don’t ask me things like this again.” One PR directed me towards news stories about Spice, an over-the-counter smoking mixture that was reported to have effects similar to cannabis; a web developer directed me to a recent issue of Mixmag, announcing the new popularity of “analogue drugs” such as Mephedrone (aha!) in British clubs. Something known as “that purple drank” was a favourite of American rappers in the 1990s, an A&R man told me: “I think it was a mixture of cough syrup and Sprite and it made everything move very slowly.” A teacher remembered that a fistful of ProPlus worked when he was younger. A civil servant had tried snorting Dreft detergent, to no effect.

The industry presented a friendlier, more modern face in the home of John Clarke and Jo Hall, recent graduates from Birmingham University, who run an online retailer of legal highs called Coffeesh0p.com. The couple had propped a giant teddy bear next to a waist-high stack of Tupperware boxes containing colourful lotus leaves, powdered toadstool and Hawaiian woodrose seeds; above a chest of drawers stuffed with cardboard envelopes of guarano pills and pre-rolled kratom joints was a poster of Sean Bean in Sharpe.

“It pays the bills,” said Clarke, 22, who started the business three years ago when he was studying for a degree in pharmacology. Today, his customers range from students attracted by the ease of shopping online, to professionals looking for substances that wouldn’t show up on drug tests at work. There was a professor from the local university who made regular purchases; also a photographer, a shop assistant, and a yacht salesman. “We sold to a couple in their 30s last month. It was their anniversary, a weekend without the kids, and they wanted an interesting time. I think you’d be surprised that our customers are not just 18-year-olds wanting to get high. There’s an entire culture of sensible people out there.”

“The not-for-human-consumption thing is probably the worst thing, morally, that we do as an industry,” said Hall. They likened their jobs to running a “naughty Holland & Barrett”, but like my salesman in Edinburgh, the couple have to play a game of avoid-the-tide with legislators: legal highs need to be effective enough to attract a market, but not effective enough to attract the eye of the Advisory Council, which becomes aware of substances when they show up in amnesty bins at clubs, or when users report to treatment centres with problems, or when the tabloids start making a stink.

In the days leading up to my visit, news had broken that two more legal substances – BZP, a stimulant similar to ecstasy, and GBL, a derivative of GHB that had caused the death of a student in April – were to be brought under the Misuse of Drugs Act alongside Spice. “It was a blow when magic mushrooms were banned in 2005, but the industry survived,” said Hall. “We’re keeping our fingers crossed.”

“Sitting at home, smoking a joint of Spice and watching Sharpe. Doesn’t sound like much of a crime, does it?” said Clarke.

DrugScope’s recent survey highlighted the falling quality of street drugs as a reason why legal highs are growing in popularity. The Mephedrone Tim took was far cleaner than anything he was likely to have bought from a dealer. It had not been cut with chalk, or mashed-up aspirin, or Dreft detergent; it had been mass-produced in a factory, probably in China, imported by a wholesaler, and sold to him by a head shop – pure. He posted a description of his experience on an online drug forum, to warn others about making the same misjudgment.

This is another advantage of legal highs, according to Clarke. When people have better evidence as to what they’ve taken – because a substance bears a brand name, or because it is produced in a factory to roughly the same strength from dose to dose – effects can be compared with some kind of accuracy. Sites such as Drugs-Forum.com and Erowid.org throb with testimonials and advice. “With generic ecstasy there are so many different pills out there with different things in them that their effect is not going to be consistent,” says Clarke. “It makes similar discussion almost impossible.”

We also got a quality link back to our site from their website and a shitload more orders than usual. Check out our traffic:

We’re well chuffed! I just hope Sean Bean isn’t some anti-drugs nazi…

Hash, or hashish, is prepared from the most potent part of the cannabis plant – the trichomes. Trichomes are little hairy appendages found on plants that perform a wide variety of functions, depending on the particular plant. In the case of cannabis, the trichomes are packed full of THC and give your buds a white, frosty appearance. Hash is consumed in much the same way as cannabis buds by smoking in a pipe, bong or joint, hot-knifed or cooked, with similar effects. Unfortunately, decent hash is a rarity in the UK. All we have is “soapbar” – an incredibly hard, dark, poor quality material that is likely packed full of shit you don’t want to be smoking. Luckily for us, making hash is easy, fun and rewarding work, and you can put as much effort in as you like!

Why make hash?

• Save Space – An ounce of hash takes up a lot less room than an ounce of weed, making it easier to stash. It also smells less.
• Shelf Life - Hash will last a very long time if you keep it wrapped up tight, in the cold and dark. Bud, on the other hand, has a habit of going mouldy if you leave it too long.
• Health – You need to smoke less hash (provided it’s decent, home-made hash and not soapbar) to get high. Also, since hash is primarily trichomes, you don’t smoke any of the other compounds in the buds that don’t get you high.
• Notoriety – You will become “that guy with the amazing hash”. Simple as that. Since good hash is hard to find here, women will want you and other men will want to be you. Unless, of course, you’re a woman. Or gay. If you’re a gay woman, that will probably still happen.
• Prevent Wastage – If you grow your own cannabis, you can use all your leaves, stems and male plants that would otherwise be thrown away.
• Why the hell not? – You don’t need fields of cannabis plants to make good hash. If you’re a casual smoker, you can still get a pretty decent yield for next to no effort on your part, and you still get to smoke your weed as usual.

The Principle

1. Collect Trichomes
2. Press Trichomes
3. ???
4. Profit

Collecting Your Trichomes

This step will vary depending on your level of commitment, budget and laziness. Traditionally, the first hash was created by people who would sit around and just rub buds and live plants all day. Gradually, their hands would accumulate a sticky resin that could be scraped off and pressed. Unfortunately, for this method to be any use today, you’d need a massive crop of cannabis plants at your disposal and a lot of elbow grease. Thankfully, we, as a species, have come up with some much more efficient methods since then. Let’s take a look:

Method #1 – Using a Pollenator or pollen catcher

For: The lazy pot smoker
Starting Material: Your usual weed supply
Effort: 1/10
Time Taken: Months

As I mentioned before in Top 4 Cannabis Tips, storing your weed in a container with a mesh screen in the bottom will net you a reasonable amount of trichomes from your bud. It will certainly take a while, but all you need to worry about is smoking your pot as usual. The idea is that constant storage and slight agitation will break off a small percentage of the trichomes on your bud, which fall through the screen into the chamber at the bottom. The mesh will be fine enough to only let the tasty trichomes fall through, keeping any other plant matter on top. The resulting unpressed trichomes are commonly referred to as kief.

Pro tip: each time you put more weed into your container, grind it up first, only fill it half way then feel free to give it a good shake from time to time. That ensures that more of the weed will come into contact with the screen, and that it has plenty of room to move around in your container.

Method #2 – Using a Sieve

For: The small time grower or the amateur hash producer
Starting Material: At least 2 ounces (56 g) of bud, or 200 g of old leaves, stems and entire male plants
Effort: 7/10
Time Taken: Several hours

This is simply Method #1 scaled up for some serious hash production. 56 g of quality bud should get you about 6 – 11 g of kief. You’ll need a mesh or silk screen with 65-125 micron holes, or 120-230 lines per inch. If the holes are smaller than about 65 microns, the trichomes that make it through will be small and immature, but if the holes are bigger than 125 microns, more unwanted plant material makes it through. Framed screens are best, for the extra stability. Printing shops tend to sell frames with a screen already in, or you can easily make your own with four bits of wood, nails, glue and your screen of choice. You’ll also need a clean, flat surface such as a mirror which you’ll sieve over. A light coloured surface makes it easy to see your results.

If you’re using bud, begin by grinding it up and placing it on your screen. Then, tilt the screen back and forth just enough enough so that your ground up bud moves over it. You’ll begin to see your kief collecting on your mirror or other surface. As less and less trichomes come through the screen, you’re nearly done. Now start to wobble and tap the screen to get the last remaining trichomes. Unlike Method #1, the weed is now not suitable for smoking, so you may as well use a shitload of it to make some cannabis butter. It won’t be very potent, but that’s better than throwing it out. You could also mix it in with your tobacco if you’re a joint smoker, to keep the delicious weed smell and stretch out your tobacco supply.

Pro tip: If you’re sieving massive quantities of weed, use multiple screens with different sized holes. The smaller holed screens will produce a small quantity of top quality kief, while screens with larger holes will produce larger quantities of less potent material. You can then save your highly potent stash should the Queen come for tea or any other special occasion.

If you’re using your unwanted plant material, make sure it’s fairly well dry first. Not too dry, otherwise it’ll crumble and end up going through the sieve. Place the screen down over your clean surface and stick your dried plant material on top. Then, gently push your plant material around on top of the screen. The slower you push, the higher quality hash you’ll produce.

Pro tip: Sieve your plant material once using a screen with slightly bigger holes than usual. This will let through all the trichomes plus small chunks of plant material. At this point, you can throw away your plant material and sieve the results again using the usual screen. This will ensure a potent hash even when using the worst starting material.

Method #3 – Using a Drum

For: The small time grower or the lazy amateur hash producer
Starting Material: A small amount of bud, or lots of old leaves, stems and entire male plants
Effort: 3/10
Time Taken: Several hours

A drum is an electrically powered cylinder lined with a screen like that in Method #2, and the yield is about the same. This is the same principal of sieving, but this time you’re harnessing the power of electricity to do all the actual work. As the drum revolves, your bud or plant material is tumbled against the mesh, freeing the trichomes which will collect under the screen. Unfortunately, this method involves much less quality control than sieving manually.

Pro tip: Tumble once for a short amount of time to get the top quality kief. Subsequent tumblings can then be performed to collect more low quality material.

Method #4 – Using a Blender

For: The small time grower or the semi-pro hash producer
Starting Material: At least an ounce (28 g) of bud, or 200 g of old leaves, stems and entire male plants
Effort: 4/10
Time Taken: < 1 hour

This method relies on the fact that trichomes are heavier than water, and the colder they are, the more likely they are to snap off. 28g of weed should earn you 5 – 7 g of kief. For this, you’ll need a blender, two glass jars, a metal coffee filter or silk screen, paper coffee filters, some ice and some water. Begin by placing your bud or waste plant material in the blender until it’s half full. Then cover with cold water, add a lot of ice cubes and blend for less than a minute. We’re basically making a cannabis slushie at this stage. The agitation of the blender will snap off most of the now-brittle trichomes into the green frothy mixture, so the next step is filtration. Pour the mixture into your glass jar through the coffee filter or silk screen to get rid of the plant material, and you’ll be left with a greenish liquid and trichomes. Allow your jar to stand in the fridge for 30 minutes until all the suspended trichomes have fallen to the bottom of the container. Then, remove two thirds of the liquid being careful not to disturb the layer of goodness that’s settled at the bottom. If you’ve got more plant material to process, now’s the time. Make sure you keep filtering it into the same jar, so you only have to collect the trichomes once at the end. Put your jar in the freezer for 10 minutes before pouring the contents through a paper coffee filter into your second jar. The trichomes will collect on the paper. Dry the filter for at least 12 hours to several days and you’re done!

This method may seem completely counterintuitive (Add water? To MY cannabis?!), but don’t worry – science is on your side!

Pro Tip: After the first filtration through the metal filter or silk screen, you might want to put the contents of the jar back in the blender for one last whiz. This should further purify your end product. You might also try blending your discarded plant mush one last time to collect any remaining trichomes. Don’t add this to your first filtration product, as it will be much worse quality, but still better than the shitty soapbar available.

Method #5 – Using Hash Bags

For: The small time to semi-pro grower or the semi-pro hash producer
Starting Material: At least an ounce (28 g) of bud, or 200 g of old leaves, stems and entire male plants
Effort: 5/10
Time Taken: 1 – 2 hours

This method certainly has the most overheads, but will produce the most potent hash and is essential if you want to process large quantities of herb. The yield is also pretty high, recovering 5 – 7 g of goodness per 28 g of weed, separated by quality. If you’re using unwanted plant material, 200 g could net around 5 to 20 g, largely depending on the quality of the plant matter. Hash bags combine the best features of the blender method and sieving, using the cold to make the trichomes brittle and snapping them off with agitation from the sieve. For this, you’ll need a fucktonne of ice, two impeccably clean 20 l buckets, an electric hand whisk and a Hash Bag kit. These are comprised of many bags made out of different sized mesh screens that fit inside each other, and tend to be pretty pricey, but if you’re serious about hash, this is the way to go. Hash produced in this way is often referred to as “bubble hash” because it’s so awesome that it bubbles when it’s burned.

To start, freeze as much water as possible. Fill up ice cube trays, empty drinks bottles or whatever else is suitable and bang them in the freezer. Once you have enough ice for an igloo with a garage, empty the ice into one of your buckets, add your herb and top up with cold water. Now whisk the shit out it. You can whisk for as little as 15 minutes to over an hour, but remember, the more you whisk, the more you sacrifice quality for quantity. 45 minutes should be plenty. Also, take breaks every so often and allow the contents of your bucket to settle. Once the mixing is done, add your “work bag” (the bag with the biggest holes, usually between 200 – 250 microns) to your second bucket, and pour the contents of the first bucket into it. Remove the bag from the second bucket, squeeze as much water out as possible and set it aside for a second wash later. Now your first bucket is empty, arrange your other bags inside it so that the one with the smallest holes goes in first and the one with the biggest holes goes in last, then pour the green water from bucket #2 through the bags. As the holes in the final bag are so small, it will take some time to drain so be patient. The idea is that the multiple screens will automatically grade your trichomes by size, so that the more potent material will be found in the last bag and the least potent, more leafy material will end up in the top. Lift out all the bags in one go and set them aside. Stick your work bag back in bucket #2 (the empty one) and pour the green liquid from bucket #1 through it. Squeeze the bag once more to get as much water out as possible and set it aside for the last time. Place your hash bags back in bucket #1 and pour the liquid now in bucket #2 through them as before. Now you can remove the bags from the bucket, separate them out and scrape up the gunk from the screens. Place your wet kief on some paper, dab off excess moisture with some tissue and allow to dry for at least 12 hours to several days.

Pro tip: There are no pro tips, other than “use this method because it’s already awesome”.

Funking It Up

Why not add a bit of funk to your hash? Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as just adding a pinch of this or a pinch of that. We need pure chemicals whose dosage is know beforehand. Before you add anything, you need to weigh your kief so you know exactly how much hash you’ll end up with and you need to work out how much an average dose of hash weighs (you do weigh your weed, right?) You can then work out how many doses that hash will give you by dividing the total weight by your dose. When you know how many doses you’ve got, you can then multiply that number by the suggested dose of your additive, so you know exactly how much to add. Then you can blend it all together and get on with the pressing.

So what might be a useful addition? Here are a couple:

Synthetic cannabinoids such as JWH-018

This would give your hash more kick so you can use less of it. You’d only need 0.5 – 1 mg per dose. Read up on it here .

95% Mesembrine from Sceletium tortuosum

Sceletium tortuosum, or Kanna has a known synergy with cannabis, which is particularly useful for those with a large tolerance. You’d only need 15 – 20 mg per dose. Read up on it here.

Pro tip: If you’re adding large quantities of a certain additive, it will make your hash more crumbly. Add a little alcohol to your mixture before you press it to help it stick together.

Pressing Your Trichomes

Method #1 – Use lots of force

If you’ve only got a small amount of kief to press, you might want to buy a hash press for cheap. You basically pour your material in the empty press, assemble all the parts and screw it together as tightly as you can. Then just leave it for a week or two and open. The cheaper presses tend to break after a few uses, so you might want to get one for a bit more money if you plan on regularly pressing small amounts of kief (the lazy pot smoker, I’m talking to you).

Pro tip: Try tightening it some more every day.

Method #2 – Use heat

If you’re pressing a hefty quantity of material, pressing might not be an option, especially if you’ve only got a small press. For this method, you’ll need to cut a template out of cardboard that will be the shape of your hash bar. Next, wrap some heavy duty plastic wrap around the cardboard to make a kind of loose bag, and remove the cardboard. Then fill your bag with kief and seal. Next, wrap the bag in several layers of wet newspaper and place in a frying pan. Turn the heat on low making sure the paper stays wet all the time and turn every couple of minutes. Eventually the trichomes will melt together. When they do, remove the package from the pan, transfer to a flat worktop and roll with a rolling pin for at least half an hour. Stick your flattened parcel into the freezer for a bit to cool down and unwrap.

Miscellaneous Tips

• Always wear gloves when handling your kief. If you don’t it sticks all over your hands and you’ll never recover all of it
• Freezing your kief before you press it will force all of the water out of it into a frosty coating. This can then be dabbed off with tissue as it melts. Water in your hash could lead to mould if you plan on storing it, so if you’ve used one of the “wet” methods to collect your trichomes, this might be a good idea. Remember to air dry once again after freezing to ensure there’s no moisture in there at all.
• If you plan on smoking your hash in a joint, be sure to crumble it up into grains as small as possible. Anything over 1 mm might fall out of the doob and burn holes in your clothes and you.

The other day, everyone’s favourite advisory council, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), decided that “harms of the synthetic cannabinoids” in Spice and similar (fucking powerful) smoking mixtures “are broadly commensurate with those of cannabis and that they should be classified accordingly.” Apparently, “they have no recognised medical use“, which of course means we must ban them straight away! You can read the full report here [PDF; 128 kb] (except the bits that are withheld from the public… perhaps we can’t handle the truth?!).

Let us pause for a moment to consider the numerous medical applications of tobacco & alcohol… Oh, wait! What’s that, ACMD? There are none?! Didn’t think so. Apart from the blatant double standards, let’s talk about why they’re wrong.

Cannabinoids bind to cannabinoid receptors in your brain and immune system. These includes the synthetics, such as JWH-018, THC in cannabis and of course our body’s own cannabinoid compounds (called endocannabinoids, which include Anandamide and many others). The fact that our body not only has these receptors, but also produces compounds to act on them means they’re important, otherwise they wouldn’t have evolved. Unfortunately, research into the cannabinoid system is difficult, because cannabis is illegal, so synthetic cannabinoids which aren’t flat-out illegal are a useful tool in the lab, both to help us learn more about the cannabinoid system and related processes such as feeding & anxiety, and in the quest to develop new drugs. Also, if very little research has been conducted using these compounds about to be banned, it’s no wonder that no specific medical uses have been discovered! These things take time.

One more interesting point… Cannabis itself has medical uses, so how can these similar compounds have none? In fact, just today, the BBC reported that Cannabis may prevent Osteoporosis. I’m not going to list all the medical reasons for legalising cannabis, because I’d be writing all day. If it had no uses what so ever, why do medical dispensaries exist in the US? Banning these compounds is a massive step backwards for medical science.

Needless to say, this has been picked up by a shitload of big news outlets, including The Guardian, The Metro, Sky News, BBC Radio 1 and The Times (who listed Coffeesh0p as a source! It’s a poor article, but christ, that cheered me up!)  A lot of those sites allow users to comment under the article, so let’s take a look at a few:

Simple solution to stop people using Spice –
Legalise cannabis.
Sorted.

This is absolutely ridiculous. Banning a drug because of its “potential harm” with little research is laughable, especially seeing as it is reported to have similiar effectto cannabis of all things.

Is anyone able to explain whats implicitly wrong with psychoactive drugs in the first place?

I fail to see why spice should be banned without any evidence that it is dangerous. It seems to me our government just doesn’t like people getting high, probably incase they start thinking.

The powers that be like to control us, in other words – if it makes you feel good, or gives you some happiness, then ban it.

The stresses of paying tax are bad for me. Are they going to ban that too?

Everything we eat or do kill us slowly. Air kills us, although slowly. Time kills us. How much are they going to ban? Let people do what they want with their bodies, that is the meaning of life. If I want to smoke cannaboloids [sic] with chemicals on it, slap a warning on there and let me decide.

If they are going to ban this stuff for health reasons then they HAVE to ban alcohol and tobacco too, as they are just as, if not more, dangerous – except, of course, they provide the Govt with Tax..

Well we can’t have people getting high on anything but alcohol now can we?
After all it’s America’s recreational drug of choice and the UK’s too.

Now, these aren’t from threads found on pro-drugs forums, or comments under a pro-drugs blog, these are comments under actual articles on massive news sites. Not just one site, but all of those sites I mentioned that allow comments. I’m not saying that the internet-savvy people that’re likely to leave comments are representative of the population as a whole, but surely it says something about what the people want? I don’t think I’ll bother voting next time.  Seriously.

In short, it looks like our Smoking Mixtures section won’t be around for too much longer. Get them while you can!

Since my last post about the spice behind Spice (and other smoking mixtures such as Smoke, Serenity Now, K2, Sence, etc), it has been brought to my attention that some initial toxicology testing has been done on the synthetic cannabinoid JWH-018. Before we get down to the details however, here’s some pretty weird background information – the sponsor and provider of these studies wishes to remain anonymous! Unfortunately, this makes the whole thing a lot less credible, but since this is the only information we have right now, let’s hope someone else can verify these things at a later date. So far, one professor (who also wishes to remain anonymous) thinks these are real, but as of yet, no one is willing to put their name down on any kind of formal statement. If you, or anyone you know, has the relevant expertise to look over these studies, please drop me a line!

(Quick Update – A lot of people have been discussing and linking to this post, but there remains some suspicion that I have something to gain by saying the JWH-018 isn’t that harmful. Firstly, JWH-018 is now illegal in the UK. Secondly, as I mentioned just above this, if I have got anything wrong, please pick me up on it! If it turns out my analysis of the data is incorrect, I will correct it!)

Feel free to invent your own conspiracy theories, but for now, let’s take a look at the data. You can download the PDF documents in this Zip file [2.04 MB]

CYP450 Inhibition Assay

This first assay looks at the effect of a drug on specific enzymes in your liver. These Cytochrome P450 enzymes are responsible for metabolising the vast majority of drugs you might put in your body, so if you’ve got too much of one drug in your system (ie paracetamol/acetaminophen), then other drugs that are also metabolised by these enzymes (ie alcohol) may compete for these enzymes and so hang around in your system for longer. As you can imagine, it’s important to understand how one drug may affect the metabolism of another, in case of any disasterous drug-drug interactions.

Results: JWH-018 will probably interact with the metabolism of other drugs, so more in vivo work is necessary.

hERG Binding Assay

hERG stands for human Ether-à-go-go Related Gene. This gene codes for a particular type of potassium channel found on heart tissue. This channel pumps potassium ions out of the heart muscle cells and are critical in coordinating the heart’s electrical activity. Unfortunately, these channels are a prime target for drugs to bind to, disrupting their function. This can lead to “Long QT Syndrome”, associated with fainting and can lead to sudden death, so you can see why these kinds of tests are important. Here’s a typical ECG recording showing what’s called the “QT interval” shown in blue, which lasts for longer than it should do if these channels are disrupted.

Results: JWH-018 does not interfere with these channels. That’s a good thing.

Cytotoxicity Assay

This simple test essentially looks at how many cells die when you perfuse them with a drug. The more cells that die, the more toxic the drug.

Results: JWH-018 is not cytotoxic at low concentrations.

GreenScreen HC Genotoxicity Assay

This assay looks at how much a drug will interfere with our DNA. Typically, anything that damages DNA is bad news, being potentially carcinogenic, making the rationale behind this test glaringly obvious. This test was also performed in the presence of a fraction taken from liver cells, which will break down the drug. This not only checks if the drug will damage DNA, but also its breakdown products.

Results: JWH-018 does not damage DNA, so shouldn’t give you cancer.

Rat Repeat Toxicity Assay

Guess what happens in this experiment. A number of renagade lab rats looking for a bad time are rounded up and promised free drugs (kind of like Pleasure Island from Pinocchio; that shit was scary!). The rats are then dosed up and observed. Initially, they appear lethargic (read: totally baked) but a few of them died at higher doses. This appears to be down to problems breathing rather than organ toxicity, but only affected the male rats, who appeared more sensitive to the compound. The drug didn’t appear to accumulate in their systems either, but they did lose some weight, probably because they couldn’t be arsed to eat. JWH-018 showed a huge potency and was found to be tachyphylactic (my new favourite word – it means that more of a drug is required to reach the same state following an initial dosage).

Results: According to FDA guidelines, the human equivalent dose is 0.016 mg/kg but it should be tested in other species before this can be seen as reliable!

Rat Pharmacokinetics

Data is collected on a number of different “pharmacokinetic” aspects of the drug, such as how it is absorbed, distributed throughout the body, metabolised and excreted, which can help with the design of future clinical trials.

Results: JWH-018 is distributed well throughout the rat’s tissues. Metabolism and excretion are normal, with a plasma half-life of approximately 2 hours

Summary

Well, from the looks of these tests, JWH-018 seems to be pretty safe, but unless you want to piss off Ben Goldacre, it would be wise not to rely on this “test tube data” entirely. Also, like I said before, we don’t know where this data has come from, clouding the issue even further.

Feel free to ask any questions in the comments.

Big thanks to Alfa @ Drugs-Forum.com for letting me know about these studies. You can read all about JWH-018 on their Drugs Wiki.

The Spice smoking mixture range has been one of the most popular “herbal” smokes ever, and now it’s no suprise why.

To get an idea of just how popular these mixtures are, just take a look at this data from Google’s keyword tool:

That’s over 37,000 searches a month for these three search terms alone – Spice is definitely a customer favourite. I also get no less than 500 emails a day from Russia asking if I can ship it there by the kilo. So what’s behind it all?

This paper [PDF; 246 kB] has some interesting things to say. It turns out that the Spice blends all contain JWH-018 as well as two compounds based on CP 47497 – all of them synthetic cannabinoids. These are man made chemicals designed to tickle the same receptors as THC, the active compound in cannabis, so it’s no wonder these smoking mixtures are so powerful. The difference in potency between the Spice blends appears to be accounted for by increasing levels of these CP 47497 homologues.

Since this discovery, Spice has been banned in several countries, including Austria and Germany. The BBC also reported on it and had the following to say:

The UK drugs regulator, the Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), is understood to have identified JWH018 in products available in the UK. It is currently in order to determine whether or not it should be classified as a medicinal product – which would mean it should only be available from a doctor.

The UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which advises the government on whether a drug should be made illegal, is also aware of the substance, and is investigating it.

The Spice manufacturers make no mention of these synthetics on their packaging, so a lot of herb-enthusiasts feel somewhat betrayed. Rightly so, I suppose – not being told just what you’re smoking exactly. People have the choice to put things in their body and some Spice smokers might make a different decision if they had all the facts in hand.

But, why?

The typical reaction to this news seems to be the disgust about putting any of these “unsafe” man-made compounds into their body, as though mother nature was some kind of safety net. “These plants have thousands of years of safe use”, they say! But let’s take a closer look…

Take Kratom, for instance. Kratom contains a powerful compound called mitragynine, which acts upon the opioid receptors; the same targets for opium and its derivatives. One alkaloid in kratom, although present in much smaller quantities, is 7-hydroxymitragynine, which is apparently 17x more potent than morphine! While I wouldn’t call this plant harmful, compared to other drugs like cocaine and heroin, it wouldn’t say it was harmless either. The opioid receptors are a dangerous set of receptors to be messing with – the mu subtype responsible for the classic euphoria that accompanies opiate use also stops you breathing if you tickle them too much. Opiates are also addictive, just like kratom can be if you take too much. While this plant may have seen thousands of years of responsible, moderate use, this is no reassurance at all towards its safety.

Now days, people generally don’t toil in the field every day that Newton sends – we have more free time and money to spend than ever before. We can now afford to use large quantities of kratom every day, as well as other entheogens from around the world, but we don’t have any information about this level of exposure to kratom itself or in combination with other stuff. For all we know, taking a mixture of kratom and Salvia divinorum daily could make your eyeballs explode after day 300, or chronic kratom use might give you some kind of evil superpower. Looking at paracetamol as a rather boring example, if you take the odd one every now and then, you’ll be fine, but if you take 8 pills a day every day for a year, you’ll likely end up with some serious condition. There’s also the fact that modern chemistry can create powerful extracts of these entheogens. Who’s to say they’re safe, just because they come from a plant? And what about any other drugs we might be on? Being on a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor like Prozac for depression isn’t uncommon in today’s society – combine them with the “perfectly safe” Banisteriopsis caapi vine, itself a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, and you have a potentially fatal combination of drugs in your system. I bet there are many more contraindications we haven’t even considered.

What about plants like cannabis and tobacco? They’ve also been used responsibly for thousands of years, but it’s only when so many people start to take these things that we realised “Actually, smoking is bad for us”. Besides, our current medical knowledge means we’ve only recently been able to diagnose these kind of things. I’m not sure I want to trust any data from a period when epilepsy might have been down to a demonic possession. How many adverse health effects could we identify in these ancient entheogen users based on what we know today?

So, while we can be uncertain of the long term effects on health of JWH-018 and friends, it seems we can’t actually be certain about the safety of most of the things we happily consume. Yes, they may turn out to be super toxic (although probably not, if they’re given to lab rats), but at least they only act on your cannabinoid receptors. Kratom tends to be prepared as a tea – once you’ve drunk it, you’ve drunk it. If you’ve taken too much, you’ll realise when its already in your blood. It would be much harder to overdose on these synthetics due to the speed at which they get in your system – if you’re too stoned, you won’t want to smoke any more, never mind being physically able to. The cannabinoid receptors they target are also much safter than the opioid targets of kratom. Cannabinoid receptors seem play a modulatory role, rather than being majorly important, so messing with them doesn’t have as drastic an effect. Smoking too much might make you feel a bit sick and dizzy for a while, but you certainly won’t stop breathing.

In all, I think Spice is in the wrong for not making this clear in the first place, but then I’m not suprised they didn’t want to list these compounds in the current political climate. Maybe when the government realises that it is our right to put things into our own bodies, listing these ingredients wouldn’t be an issue.

Even with this new information however, I’ll still be using the stuff. It’s great!