Synthetic Pot Arrests Popping Up in Marion, as Well as Hospitalizations

Artificial marijuana, also known as synthetic cannabinoids, have been showing up with some frequency on the Marion Patch police blotter.

That begs two questions: What are these drugs and how dangerous are they?

Synthetic pot comes in many forms. Some are sold with a wink and a nudge as incense, bath salts or herbal supplements.

Those products were banned last year, after an Indianola teen committed suicide shortly after smoking K2, a substance billed as incense.

Scott Elam, Lieutenant in Charge of Investigations at the Marion Police Department, said the most dangerous aspect of these intoxicants is that the effects are unknown.

"I think they most dangerous thing with the synthetics is that (manufacturers) go and change the chemical makeup," he said. "There are no studies as far as what that will do to someone long term."

He said the substances are available under the counter at many smoke shops and are readily available on the Internet.

And even though the ban has made the products harder to find, Elam said it might not stop those from obtaining synthetic marijuana.

Elam said he hasn’t seen users prefer any specific variety of synthetic marijuana, which he said proves his point that these materials are varied and untested.

Elam said once they confiscate the material they send it to the Iowa Department of Public Safety, Division of Criminal Investigation Criminalistics Laboratory.

According to an article in The Gazette, doctors in emergency rooms have been seeing more teens hospitalized for their use of these drugs.

"It’s not something that has been over the last month, it has been the last six to eight months — since the summer, we have been seeing kids coming," Donald Linder, an emergency room physician at St. Luke’s Hospital, told the Gazette.