The patients rushed to L.A. County-USC Medical Center’s emergency department on Aug. 19 and again three days later all shared a common story: They took one or two hits off of a cheap joint they bought on Skid Row.
Then they fell to the ground.
While Dr. Fiona Garlich and the team of physicians at the county hospital are very familiar with the symptoms of smoking synthetic marijuana, this event was different. Instead of coming in agitated, with fast heart rates, many of the patients were so sedated that some needed to be hooked up to ventilators.
“It’s very different than what we have seen earlier,” Garlich, an emergency physician and medical toxicologist at the hospital, said Friday. She said she saw 11 patients on Aug. 19.
“This wave we’re seeing is new,” she added. “It’s significant for the numerous people transported from a single place.”
WAVES OF SPICE
The use of synthetic marijuana, known on the street as Spice, comes in waves across Los Angeles, Garlich noted. But a new trend seems to have appeared locally and nationwide recently: A bad batch is being sold and smoked by many in one area, resulting in mass illness.
It’s caused emergency personnel to respond to the dozens of people who come in at the same time and from the same place as a mass casualty incident, a term that’s more typical with a bombing, Garlich said.
Such illnesses have occurred coast to coast. In Brooklyn, New York, 33 people from one neighborhood fell ill in July.
“It’s dangerous,” Austin police Lt. Kurt Thomas told reporters at a news conference last week. “It will hurt you as we’ve seen today — people are having all kinds of distress and having to go to the hospital.”
THE DANGER OF DESIGNER DRUGS
Spice is described as fake cannabis, a designer drug in which herbs, incense or other leafy materials are sprayed with lab-made liquid chemicals to mimic the effect of tetrahydrocannabinol or THC. It can come in shiny, colorful packaging with nicknames including K2, Paradise, Black Magic and Scooby Snax. The side effects include a fast, racing heartbeat, nausea and vomiting, seizures and anxiety among others. The drug is considered dangerous and addictive, health officials have said. But on Skid Row, the fake weed sells for about $1 a joint, sometimes less.
It was deemed a public threat since it was first sold in the United States in 2008.
Poison centers received 2,668 calls about exposures to these drugs in 2013. That rose to 7,794 exposures in 2015. As of July 31, there have been 1,682 calls this year.
The drug also sickened about 40 people last year when it was found in a Three Kings holiday cake sold at a Santa Ana bakery.
“These substances are being pumped onto the streets so quickly that law enforcement has a difficult time keeping up,” according to a statement from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
“For every substance that is brought under federal control, there are at least four or five that have not been. Prosecutors who present cases against those who distribute these unregulated and dangerous drugs face complex and time-consuming challenges,” according to the agency.
NEW RECIPES, DIFFERENT OUTCOMES
But the latest batches appear to be something else, Garlich and others noted.
“Even though it’s being called Spice, it could be mixed with a lot of things,” Garlich said. “There’s something about this that is a little bit more unique.”
She said the hospital has sent some urine samples to be tested, hoping to understand what’s inside the batch.
The synthetic marijuana is among more than 400 new designer drugs identified in the United States, “most of which are manufactured in rogue labs in China and sold on the internet or in retail outlets such as smoke shops, gas station convenience stores and bodegas,” the DEA has said in a statement.
San Bernardino County sheriff’s Sgt. Gary Wheeler, who works in the department’s narcotics division, said the synthetic cannabinoids are made up of various chemical compounds often manufactured or created in makeshift laboratories. “This can easily be made at home in one’s kitchen or garage,” Wheeler said.
Trying to untangle what’s in it is “very time consuming and may often take months to complete,” Wheeler said. “This is probably the most challenging task law enforcement has when trying to detect and confirm Spice or K2.”
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles City Council announced Friday that it plans to seek a new law to crack down on sales of fake marijuana.
Los Angeles City Councilman Mitch Englander introduced the motion asking City Attorney Mike Feuer to draft a new law prohibiting the sale, distribution, manufacturing and possession of “novel synthetic drugs and novel psychoactive drugs” in Los Angeles.
Spice is “too simple to get a hold of and people are taking advantage of others,” Englander said.