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Huffman , a professor of organic chemistry at Clemson University , received an e-mail that illustrates how pure scientific research can be exploited in unintended ways. The e-mail, from a blogger in Germany, alerted Huffman to the fact that the synthetic cannabinoid JWH had been detected as an ingredient in some herbal blends marketed over the Internet as a legal substitute for marijuana. Huffman knows JWH well. Huffman created these compounds to study their interactions with the cannabinoid receptors in the brain.
Since , more than a half-dozen countries have banned herbal blends containing JWH and other synthetic cannabinoids. Drug Enforcement Administration has designated the compound a drug or chemical of concern. He suspects that the perpetrators used his published data as a basis for synthesizing JWH Other compounds Huffman and his colleagues created, such as JWH, have also been discovered in herbal blends.
He notes that JWH, which has a butyl group on its nitrogen rather than a pentyl group, is less potent than JWH But law enforcement agents have chemists like Huffman on their side. And, as he points out, a tandem gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer goes a long way. Huffman says that some of the commercially available JWH products that local law enforcement agents have sent him to analyze were far purer than the original version that his research group made.
The most difficult part of this situation, Huffman notes, is hearing the stories from parents and relatives of people who have gotten sick or died from using herbal mixtures containing JWH Still, he feels no remorse about creating the compound. He is concerned, however, about the unknown health effects of JWH As news of JWH spreads, Huffman is becoming increasingly inundated with media requests and queries for analytical help from law enforcement officials.
Contact the reporter. Submit a Letter to the Editor for publication. In , methamphetamine topped the charts with , drug reports from labs testing compounds in cases of overdoses or drug raids and seizures. These rogue chemists were taking the recipes of these synthetic cannabinoids right out of the journals. Although the numbers suggest usage is lower for synthetic cannabinoids than for meth or cannabis, the DEA started to become concerned about synthetic cannabinoids as soon as they appeared in the US, mainly because people were getting sick from them.
The trouble is that quality control for making synthetic cannabinoids is essentially non-existent, Carreno says. The drug is sprayed onto plant material in large warehouses or sometimes mixed in animal feed troughs, and so the amount of chemical that lands on each piece of plant material is variable, making some batches of Spice of K2 really strong and others not potent at all.
Synthetic cannabinoids have been connected with strings of deaths and devastating overdoses since In alone, 56 people overdosed and two died in Chicago; nearly 50 users overdosed in Brooklyn; and more than people got sick in New Haven. In that case, some individuals did test positive for fentanyl, an opioid, in combination with synthetic cannabinoids, which can be a factor in overdosing. But according to a blog published by The Lancet , the main culprit was Fubinaca—a Pfizer-created synthetic cannabinoid—based painkiller that was made illegal in The DEA moved to make five synthetic cannabinoids illegal for consumption in , and the federal law passed in But new ones sprung up to take their places.
And since then, rogue chemists keep on tweaking the chemical structure of the compounds to evade restrictions. Makriyannis says he feels some remorse that his compounds escaped the lab and made it to the street. Huffman came of age in the 's, before marijuana was the thing to do. By the 's, he was a young father and professor at Clemson University. His work would later make him a hero of recreational drug users craving a legal high.
But Huffman's own recreational pursuits are decidedly less rebellious. He builds model trains. But in one of his few acts of rebellion, he chose chemistry. In the early '90s, Huffman turned his attention to the active compound in marijuana - called THC. When people smoke marijuana, the THC turns on something called a "cannabinoid receptor" in the body.
If Huffman could create a compound that flipped that switch even better than THC, other researchers could use it as a tool to unlock the secrets of the cannabinoid receptor. Scientists think it affects things like pain and appetite and may be useful in treating or curing diseases. That's where Huffman got the funding that led JWH It's "actually quite easy to make for an experienced chemist," says Huffman.
It's also five times more potent than THC. Huffman first made it in , but it would be 10 years before he published the formula in the journal of Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry. He did that so other researchers could use it in their own studies.
But underground chemists caught on fast and around , Huffman started seeing JWH pop up in newspaper articles as the latest drug fad. But he doesn't think it's funny anymore. As for any feelings of responsibility that he made the drug, Huffman says "you can't be responsible for what idiots are going to do. The messages are usually poorly written and ask Huffman for help in making it. However, he's sometimes tempted to tell them to just smoke the real thing.
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