Counter-terrorism chemical labs test for synthetic pot

[TomClash]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by struggle4progress (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

TSA screenings aren't just for airports anymore

By Brian Bennett, Washington Bureau
January 28, 2012, 6:23 p.m.
Reporting from Little Rock, Ark.— When Jeffery H. Moran goes to work each day, he swipes his security badge, passes into an airtight chamber, opens a bombproof door and enters a lab full of deadly toxins.

As chief of the counter-terrorism laboratory at the Arkansas Department of Health — one of 62 such federally funded labs in the country — he heads two dozen chemists who are on constant alert for the release of pestilence or poisons in the United States.

Armed with $2 million worth of new equipment, Moran concocts gruesome tests to keep his team sharp. He has laced samples of baby formula with lethal ricin. Poured rat poison into water bottles. Tainted blood with cyanide gas.

None of those are based on real plots, thankfully. So he's added a new task — helping police in half a dozen states identify "Spice," a chemical substance that produces a marijuana-like high and has sent hundreds of users to emergency rooms.

"It's an unknown chemical," Moran said. "That's exactly what we would have to deal with in a terrorist attack."

Using a counter-terrorism lab to test for synthetic marijuana is the latest sign of how a multibillion-dollar national infrastructure built to detect or respond to chemical or biological attacks over the last decade has adapted to the lack of any actual attacks.


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-terror-weed-20120129,0,531299.story

[carla]

1. the latest sign of how a multibillion-dollar national infrastructure built to detect or respond to

chemical or biological attacks over the last decade has adapted to the lack of any actual attacks...and /or actual threats.

[eppur_se_muova]

2. This is **IMITATION** pot, not "synthetic" pot.

A pox on the fools who got the "synthetic" label established. This is not a synthetic version of a natural product, or a modified natural product. It is (one or more) totally synthetic "analogues" which bind to the same receptors (more or less) as THC but in significantly different fashion. The perceived effects are somewhat similar to MJ but the differences are more significant than the similarities.

The active ingredients are *NOT* those found in natural MJ, and some of them are much more pharmacologically active. These compounds have found a market in an effort to circumvent anti-MJ laws, but they appear to be immensely more dangerous than MJ itself. It would be much safer to legalize MJ than to try to block the market in cannabis imitators. Cannabis imitators have sent a number of people to emergency rooms and one is clearly implicated in at least one death. Given the short period of time these drugs have been available, and the smaller number of users compared to MJ, they are clearly the sort of public danger that opponents of MJ always wanted MJ to be.

[Hestia]

4. Well said +1 n/t

[limpyhobbler]

3. Security measures devised to fight terrorism always evolve to be used in domestic policing.

[struggle4progress]

5. LBN is intended for important news stories breaking within the last 12 hours.

This is an important topic but is not related to a definite news event from the last 12 hours.

Consider reposting in another forum or in an appropriate group.