May 2, 2018 – Spice and K2

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Anchor lead: Synthetic marijuana-like products may be dangerous, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Even as legal marijuana spreads across the country, the synthetic weed known as K2 or spice has been implicated in cases of severe bleeding in Illinois. Eric Strain, a drug abuse expert at Johns Hopkins, explains the situation.

Strain: There have been these recent reports of people who have been using these cannabinoid-like products like spice or k2, and these products containing adulterants, which are essentially like rat poisons. The rat poisons are things that cause your blood not to clot properly. And some people can die from these. At the end of the day I would strongly recommend that they not try these products like k2 or spice or something else, that you really don’t know what it is.   :30

Strain says these products, often sold over the internet or in head shops, can be manufactured from almost anything and should be avoided, since there is no oversight of any kind regarding their contents. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.