Emerging addictive drugs

June 22 business news in Columbia, Missouri, not far from a car factory, adjacent to a very humble garage This is a factory called Pandora potpourri The workshop looks like an abandoned building It's very simple The only thing that has a sign of life is a security camera The workshop belongs to a 24-year-old man named Upchurch The only full-time employee he hired, 21-year-old Hanis The factory produces the controversial perfume mixture products, whose important component is synthetic cannabinoid Its function is the same as that of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main component of cannabis plant Mr Upchurch insisted that the Bombay breeze brand in the factory was a mix of spices for incense, not a product for smoking He also believes that there are some villains in this industry who make outsiders feel that the whole industry is ugly Although the workshop is simple, the product packaging is in place In order to prevent infringement, anti-counterfeiting label is set on the outer package of the product, and the exemption prompt with non edible words is marked to prevent users from abusing According to the reporter's observation of the on-site production situation, I feel that the brand's incense products are quite popular in the market However, both Upchurch's claim and the disclaimer have gone to the opposite side His product has been smoked in a hookah bag, and several websites, including youtube, have also shown its ability to refresh and rejuvenate Like other practitioners, Upchurch provides repackaged experimental pharmaceutical chemicals to major retail stores, with clever puns on product packaging Upchurch told reporters that the average monthly sales volume of the workshop is 41000 bags of synthetic spices weighing 3 grams The buyers are 50 major retail stores in the United States, and the rest of the products are sold to five other large wholesalers, some of which use these mixed spices to create their own brands He said that the workshop mainly deals with large quantities and discounts Depending on the extent to which federal and state laws can recognize it, he expects the factory to sell $2.5 million and make a net profit of $500000 this year Today, a wide range of incense compounds, such as those produced by Upchurch, bath salts, and even toilet cleaners, are on the shelves at gas stations, convenience stores, coffee shops that don't sell much coffee, and adult novelty stores He supplies directly to a cafe called coffee wonk in Kansas City, this state, owned by 28 year old Riggs He doesn't care about customers talking about how they're using incense compounds, but he's as well served as Upchurch He said his business was legal, but he would quietly ask customers if they had tried such products for the first time, or remind them that there are various kinds of fragrant products with pharmaceutical power in the store There are various reasons for consumers to try the synthetic products provided by Riggs, some of which claim that they need to do drug testing, while the composition of synthetic drugs cannot be reflected in the standard test Mr Riggs claims his main clients are the military, middle-class women, teachers and many firefighters He said that when he sold the goods, he never informed the customers of the use of the products or made full promises, but the delivery speed was extremely fast All kinds of synthetic cannabinoids are the most common drugs that imitate the illicit natural cultivation of drugs, but they are made of man-made, usually legal compounds A global complex supply chain with the Internet as the channel has started to produce, package and ship narcotic drugs with multiple ingredients several years ago Jeffrey Miron, a researcher at Harvard and the Cato Institute, estimates that such drugs account for an increasing proportion of the $121 billion entertainment drugs market in North America According to Scott collier, entertainment business manager of U.S Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), there are at least 1000 manufacturers of synthetic drugs in the United States, and only a few have identifiable trademarks He said that many people are using the Internet for supply and marketing, and the increasing number has become a fact The production of many of these drugs is not complicated, and there are even detailed production processes on YouTube video websites with a playback time of about 10 minutes Drug manufacturers like Upchurch in the United States, even if they sell less than billions of dollars a year, have at least millions of dollars There is no corresponding punishment system in each state For the first time, consumers always say that they are trying such "perfumes" or "bath salts" without fear of being punished by law, and even there is no age limit for the use of such drugs This kind of consumer market hasn't been paid much attention to a few years ago, but according to Rick broider, President of the North American herb license trade Assn., nahita, which represents 650 producers, wholesalers and retailers, the market for this kind of incense compounds supplied by Upchurch is now an average of 5 billion US dollars per year Daniel Francis, executive director of the retail compliance Assn., RAC, another industry group, said similar results were obtained from surveys and analyses conducted by independent analysts he hired Eager to rein in the proliferation of new synthetic drugs, states alike are playing an endless chase When lawmakers banned certain synthetic drugs, manufacturers and packers were able to create new varieties They look for new raw materials from medical journals that are poorly understood by the outside world and are usually developed by legal researchers, or they often import raw materials from foreign laboratories According to the National Conference of state legislatures, at least 32 states have legislated against all types of synthetic cannabinoids, and 18 are in the process of enacting similar laws or increasing penalties for the production and abuse of such drugs DEA banned five compounds for commercial production in March, including jwh-018, jwh-073, jwh-200, cp-47.497 and cannabicyclohexanol, a receptor stimulant containing synthetic cannabinoid developed by Pfizer in 1979 Jwh is the first organic chemist to synthesize cannabinoid, John W Huffman, and CP is the founder of Pfizer, Charles Pfizer Synthetic cannabinoids have been popular in EU countries since 2006 At least 21 member states have announced the emergence of such drugs in China since 2009 When the United States and other countries began to legislate against such products, at least New Zealand went in another direction In March this year, the New Zealand government announced a legal plan to sell two compounds, jwh-018 and jwh-073, to consumers over the age of 18 Synthetic drugs are not limited to mimicking the effects of marijuana use Compounds called bath salts, or toilet cleaners, are actually the second wave of new synthetic drugs: they are based on organic or inorganic compounds such as methamphetamine, cocaine, ecstasy, lysergic acid diethylamine (LSD), phencyclidine (PCP), and even chemicals that mix everything together to produce stronger patterns A substitute for imitation At least 38 states in the United States have banned, or are waiting for legislation to ban, synthetic cathinone that mimics the effect of using methamphetamine The whole society may have just begun to understand the meaning of developing drugs that can have the effect of organic products, rather than the trouble of planting These synthetic drugs only need to be packed in very small packages, do not need to be transported in bundles, and anti drug dogs can not, or do not know how to smell them They don't leave any trace in the drug test after ingestion There are various signs that synthetic copies of these cultivated drugs have inevitably appeared in front of people, whether legal or illegal According to collier, DEA's entertainment business manager in St Louis, the race to control and counter control new synthetic drugs has begun Rusty Payne, a DEA spokesman, agrees that they are illegal, but that doesn't mean they will disappear Banning them from selling could put the deal underground He believes that the reason for the existence of such compounds is that bad people are looking at them as good commodities If they used to make money by directly participating in drug smuggling, then in the future it will be another form of smuggling Paul Cary, director of toxic chemicals and drug testing laboratories at the University of Missouri Columbia, is a professional adviser to the National Association of drug professionals After developing a urine test for jwh compounds at the end of last year, he said the cost of the test was too high and that only a few laboratories in the United States had such expertise Most designer drugs, he said, are cheap to make, widely marketed and appear to be half legal When laboratories and related laws keep up, these producers will then develop new varieties The ability of testing laboratories to test and plan drugs always lags behind the ability of illegal producers to produce drugs Payne, a spokesman for DEA, added that new compounds would not be withdrawn from the market, and DEA law enforcement agencies could only deal with drug abuse for a long time in the face of the continuous emergence of new chemicals Indeed, epchurch's workshops are quite active In response to the legislation, he has been changing the composition of the compound as needed He didn't want to tell reporters the names of all kinds of raw materials in the compound, but during a visit to his workshop in April this year, reporters witnessed the mysterious ingredients of a silver, one kilogram bag containing another jwh variant of synthetic cannabinoids Jeremyorris is a senior forensic scientist at the Jason County Police Department in Kansas Thanks to his efforts and four other chemists on his team, Kansas became the first state in the United States to ban synthetic cannabinoids During a visit to Morris's Jason County lab, he showed reporters the difference between traditional marijuana and new compounds He doesn't agree with the so-called incense products, but believes that groups selling new compounds can find a legal way to become drug dealers In the incense samples presented by Morris, the plants are difficult to identify and there are scents that make people recognize their essence He said the plant smells like incense Because it contains many kinds of ingredients, it is difficult to identify the dog In the second half of 2009, Jason County police began to get reports from high school authorities that students had bought and smoked incense But instead of confiscating and closing incense shops immediately, the police let undercover detectives go deeper and buy such compounds Morris, on the other hand, set out to analyze the chemical composition of popular brand compounds After efforts, Morris's analysis found that most of the compounds contain three prohibited components, namely jwh-018, jwh-073 and HU-210 Therefore, Morris proposed to the state authorities to prohibit the trading of such compounds In March last year, the state issued a ban on these three components as illegal, and some states subsequently adopted the same legislation Louisiana has even banned the trade in Damiana, a central American aphrodisiac shrub that smells like chamomile and looks like a jar Five synthetic cannabinoids are included in the current DEA ban,