How much spice do you smoke

Using dried herbs is an alternative to tobacco. Avoid holding smoke in your lungs or breathing in too deeply - take short puffs and be very cautious about smoking in pipes, vapourisers or bongs. Water pipes cause you to inhale more deeply which increase lung damage.

Avoid sharing joints, vapes, pipes and bongs with others. For more information visit Crew or read a briefing on Spice. Synthetic cannabinoids Spice. Synthetic cannabinoids are man-made drugs. Spice is a nickname for a substance containing one or more synthetic cannabinoids. Risks of taking Spice Synthetic cannabinoids are often much stronger and many people describe quite different effects to natural cannabis.

Due to their potency, many people experience unpleasant and unpredictable side effects such as: inability to move breathing difficulties heart palpitations seizures extreme anxiety Using with other alcohol and other drugs, including prescribed medicines, increases the risks of unwanted and harmful effects. Withdrawal symptoms can include:.

Previous MTF Data. Explore teen substance use trends over time, by grade and substance with an interactive chart featuring Monitoring the Future data from to present. If a friend is using drugs, you might have to step away from the friendship for a while.

It is important to protect your own mental health and not put yourself in situations where drugs are being used. This lesson, provides scientific information about teen brain development and the effect of drugs and alcohol use on the brain.

These community activities are designed to help students in grades 6 through 12 learn about the effects of drug use Content on this site is available for your use and may be reproduced in its entirety without permission from NIDA. Department of Health and Human Services. National Institutes of Health. What is Spice? Because of this similarity, synthetic cannabinoids are sometimes misleadingly called synthetic marijuana or fake weed , and they are often marketed as safe, legal alternatives to that drug.

In fact, they are not safe and may affect the brain much more powerfully than marijuana; their actual effects can be unpredictable and, in some cases, more dangerous or even life-threatening. Synthetic cannabinoids are part of a group of drugs called new psychoactive substances NPS. NPS are unregulated mind-altering substances that have become newly available on the market and are intended to produce the same effects as illegal drugs.

Some of these substances may have been around for years but have reentered the market in altered chemical forms, or due to renewed popularity. Synthetic cannabinoid products are often labeled "not for human consumption. However, the only parts of these products that are natural are the dried plant materials.

Chemical tests show that the active, mind-altering ingredients are cannabinoid compounds made in laboratories. Manufacturers sell these products in colorful foil packages and plastic bottles to attract consumers. They market these products under a wide variety of specific brand names. For several years, synthetic cannabinoid mixtures have been easy to buy in drug paraphernalia shops, novelty stores, gas stations, and over the internet.

Because the chemicals used in them have no medical benefit and a high potential for abuse, authorities have made it illegal to sell, buy, or possess some of these chemicals. Now young people go to street dealers and this brings additional risks of what the products might be mixed with on the street, the risks around mugging, drug debts, sexual exploitation. How significantly the risks have altered post-ban is debatable.

Sutcliffe is one of the few chemists who tests spice seized by police. Using gas chromatography—mass spectrometry he examines batches of the drug to determine the best harm-reduction strategies for the health and emergency services. More recently he has discovered crystalline forms of the drug.

Last week, Wrexham drug services were warned that a batch of LSD that had been dipped in spice was in circulation in the town. The pharmacology of how these things work in the body is not understood when they are being used in their single forms — but when you throw multiple compounds into the mix, the risks go significantly up.

It becomes even more unpredictable. Users report blacking out, memory lapses and chronic stomach pains, as well as heart palpitations, shivers and sweats. This means that they have very different effects. Spice and other synthetic cannabinoids are considerably more potent than cannabis. And their effects are so wide-ranging and potentially damaging because the CB1 receptors that these synthetic drugs have been designed to target are common in many different regions across the brain.

The memory effects are likely to come from the density of CB1 receptors in the hippocampus — the temporal lobe may be why these drugs can cause seizures, and their dangerous cardiac, respiratory and gastrointensinal effects are likely to be due to the number of CB1 receptors in the brain stem. Measham knows drug workers who believe that spice is worse than heroin in terms of physical addiction.

They thought it was a synthetic cannabinoid, which makes it sound benign. All sorts of people were trying it, putting the same amount in a spliff as they would if it was cannabis, but it could be times more potent. Bradley has no doubts that spice is addictive. So how is the problem of spice tackled in other countries? Do bans work? Prior to the UK ban, the only two countries in the world to have passed similar legislation were Ireland and Poland, which both subsequently saw increases in the use of new psychoactive drugs.

Nutt said that the history of drug control over the last century proves that prohibition does not work. Martin Powell, campaigns manager at Transform, a thinktank that pushes for drugs liberalisation, suggested that what was happening in Wrexham would, in time, spread to other regions. Arfon Jones, the North Wales police and crime commissioner, whose patch includes Wrexham, believes the spice problem has been exacerbated by the ban. The positive sentiment on social media is also very high.

I think the Home Office are behind the times in understanding this change in attitude.