Despite efforts of authorities to ban K2, it’s still making its way to teens via legitimate stores and markets. According to Bridge to Awareness Counseling Center manager Ray Moore, K2 is being sold legally as incense.
In a feature from Chieftain.com, users of K2 experience the same high as they do when using pot, but they often manifest irritability, aggressiveness and agitation when high or when effects of the drug starts to clear in their system. Yet teens still use this synthetic marijuana due to its difficulty of being detected in drug testing procedures.
Chris Leeman, a counselor, says he has first-hand experience with K2 users. He says 50 to 60% of kids are using K2 to either get away from drug confirmatory tests or just when nothing else is around to give them the high that pot brings. He has observed dangerous behaviors due to K2 use, though, such as “becoming aggressive, irritable, anxious and sometimes suicidal.”
Parents need to know that K2 or spice is readily sold to kids in retail and often perceived as less dangerous than marijuana and other illicit drugs. The Drug Enforcement Administration has banned K2 products last fall, but imitators were fast to replace it with other compounds that give the same effects. Although most of them are supposed to be sold to individuals 18 years old and above, some local outlets and convenience stores are not following laws for financial gains.
Tags: k2 abuse, spice abuse, synthetic marijuana, synthetic marijuana abuse
