Have you noticed the drug addicts in NYC look a little extra buzzed nowadays? Well, if you haven’t, look around and you will see what I am talking about. They walk around like zombies. After doing a little research, I discovered a little spice in today’s drug market. "Spice" is a new kind of synthetic marijuana, commonly referred to as K2, fake weed, Skunk, Moon Rocks, or Yucatan Fire.
A report by the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that in 2012 nearly twice as many 12th graders used synthetic marijuana. Now you may ask, what is “synthetic” marijuana? This basically means it is not natural. The label of K2 itself says, “Not for human consumption.” Yet it can be easily found in the streets or bodegas in Harlem where this drug's popularity has skyrocketed. Spice includes shredded dry plant material and chemical ingredients that can cause mind-altering affects.
Another interesting fact about Spice is that it does not show up on drug tests, which means we have no idea who is using the drug. It could be someone we are hiring, a student, or even homeless people. Evidently, homeless people are some of the biggest users of this drug.
How can we fix this? The only way a drug problem will go away is by making the drug go away. What we have at stake here is not zombies, but citizens of our community, and everyone should reach out to the person in need.
Fortunately, some of the men responsible for shipping Spice have been convicted for six years in Federal Prison. They shipped Spice worth $1.2 million from Lebanon to sell their product. Why is it that a person is convicted for a longer time just for the possession of marijuana, and people who have pleaded guilty to shipping synthetic marijuana (which has affected not only public health, but poverty and the crime rate) are only convicted for six years?
