Posted by Tina
Disabled World disagrees with our friend Nate…thanks for commenting by the way:
“Some of the initial appeal of K2 is that it isn’t often tested for and therefore rarely detected in urinary drug tests.”
Synopsis: Published 2012-06-20 (Rev. 2013-11-26) — Synthetic marijuana known as K2 or Spice can cause seizures hallucinations rapid heart rate vomiting and death from overdose. Gateway Foundation Warns K2 is Bad News: K2 Poses Serious Health Risks. …
…Gateway Foundation Alcohol & Drug Treatment, the largest provider of substance abuse treatment in Illinois, has a simple message for adults and teens: stay away from synthetic marijuana also known as K2 and Spice to avoid its harmful effects, such as seizures, hallucinations, rapid heart rate, vomiting or even death from overdose. Although synthetic marijuana was banned for sale in Illinois stores earlier this year, adults and teens are still accessing K2 and it concerns the treatment team at Gateway Foundation.
K2 and Spice are two popular brands of synthetic marijuana, however the high these products induce is completely unpredictable, which is actually part of the appeal for risk takers. Some brands of synthetic marijuana may result in a slightly mellow feeling while others may create significant psychological distress. Even within the same brand, the effects may vary from packet to packet.
“Some of the initial appeal of K2 is that it isn’t often tested for and therefore rarely detected in urinary drug tests. However, the clinical team at Gateway Foundation has observed the life-altering effects of this unpredictable drug and K2 is not worth any of the health risks that are associated with its use,” explains Gateway Foundation Springfield Program Director and Licensed Clinical Psychologist Dr. Brittany Ottino.
Gateway Foundation has noticed a trend in increased admissions for K2 abuse since fall 2011. Individuals in substance abuse treatment at Gateway Foundation Alcohol & Drug Treatment confirm the effects of K2 use, such as:
Hallucinations, paranoia, anxiety and over-activation of the central nervous system (e.g., elevated temperature, rapid heartbeat) are common. One individual reported he felt as though his heart was pounding so intensely it would explode.
Some users report a sensation that can only be best described as a temporary paralysis of motor movement. For example, one individual reported he was so high that he could not tell if he was breathing anymore, but was clearly conscious.
Some K2 users report significant agitation and aggression when coming off of K2 or when they are eager for their next fix; others may not have this experience at all.
K2 users who were otherwise completely free of suicidal thoughts said they became suicidal after using K2.
Users of K2 who overdosed reported blacking out, having seizures and vomiting.
“People who have tried K2 seem to either get very scared by the effects of the drug, to the extent they won’t use it again, or they are so excited about its effects they will go to extreme measures if need be to use it again,” explains Dr. Ottino.
Time Magazine, “Nearly 120 People Overdose on Synthetic Marijuana in 5-Day Period”
People have been hospitalized in overdose cases across the country, usually in blocks, 33 here – 20 there.
YOU SHOULD KNOW that this drug is manufactured in China and likely FUNDS TERRORISM. The hard reality is this: If you’re using you probably helped to blow people away all over the world; at the very least you r use funds the murders of innocent men, women and children in the Middle East.
I have to ask, “Is it that important in your life?”
I see where it says people can die from K2 overdoses, but where does it say that people have died? Not just a possibility, but something that has happened? Anyway, my point was that no one died in the specific incident shown in the previous article’s pictures, so I was confused what Harold meant by “loss of life.”
I was also confused by the comment “Nobody protested, no marches are planned.” Who are people supposed to be protesting against? Drug dealers? Because they have rule books, institutional practices, and accountability the way that police officers do? That doesn’t make any sense. A protest against drug dealers would be a waste of time and change nothing, while protests calling for government officials such as police officers to change policies is much more likely to have an effect on the world.
Nate why not protest drug dealers and dope? We protest everything thats perceived as wrong, why not dope and those who sell it? Why not go public with the outrage over the thousands of overdose deaths every year? Why not Nate?
Nate I am sorry for a confusing post that implied those pictures were of deaths, after viewing the pictures I looked for more info on this, I posted referring to info about a rise in deaths from the article but forgot to clarify, Sorry to have caused confusion.
here’s the article I am referring to:
By/ Amy Kraft/ CBS News/ June 11, 2015, 6:46 PM
Big increase in deaths, poisonings from synthetic marijuana
Synthetic marijuana is back in the news, with some frightening revelations.
New figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show synthetic marijuana killed 15 people in the first half of 2015 — three times as many as the same period in 2014.
Poison control centers across the country have also seen a 229 percent increase in phone calls related to use of the drugs since January.
Synthetic marijuana is a class of designer drugs made up of psychoactive chemicals or a combination of chemicals that are sprayed onto plant material and then smoked or eaten to produce a high. They mimic the effects of THC, the compound naturally found in marijuana, and can be far more potent. Consumers don’t know what chemical compounds are in them, so toxicity and health effects vary widely.
Dramatic spike in synthetic marijuana overdoses
Synthetic marijuana can be purchased online or at small retail outlets, where it’s often promoted as a natural or herbal product. It comes with catchy names like Crazy Clown, Spice, Black Mamba, and K2.
Despite the evident dangers, synthetic marijuana is becoming more and more popular among teens and young adults.
“A lot of these products are marketed as natural and safe and that could be the appeal,” Royal Law, an epidemiologist with CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health, told CBS News.”A lot of these products avoid illegality by changing chemical compounds and packaging the drug as ‘not for human consumption.'”
Most calls to poison control centers concerned use among males with a median age of 26 years. Commonly-reported side effects included agitation, tachycardia (a heartbeat that is too fast), lethargy, vomiting and confusion.
Among 2,961 calls to poison centers, more than 11 percent of callers showed life-threatening signs or symptoms. The report found that another 1,407 callers had moderate effects that were not life-threatening but required treatment.
Law told CBS News that the report highlights the need to increase awareness that synthetic drug use is a serious issue.
“We need to let the public know that if anyone has these products, they need to throw them away,” he said. “People using these products have no idea what is in them.”
No prob, Harold!
Nate I’m don’t want to speak for Harold but as a person whose generation is responsible for mainstreaming drug use in America I can tell you that after fifty years there’s been a lot of death from drug use and abuse. There has also been a lot of heartbreak and broken families and relationships. The cost to all of us is immeasurable both in terms of lost dreams and productivity and in terms of rehab and emergency room treatments and indigent (homeless) care.
Jack and Harold are being cynical when they talk about protests. Black Lives Matter proponents and supporters say they care about blacks losing their lives and they blame police despite the fact that more black people, including babies and children, lose their lives to black on black murders and that doesn’t seem to bother these same people. They are asking where the outrage is over what is happening is cities like Chicago. High rates of black on black murder has been going on for years and no one mentions it, no one protests at City Hall…why not?
Moreover, why do the people in these communities organize to solve their problem. The cops would help them if they asked.
While it’s true a few bad cops should be weeded out or go to jail if truly guilty, it’s also true that the majority of police officers are well trained, including training that helps them to understand personal and ethnic problems. We don;t give them enough credit and targeting them the way BLM has is unfair and undeserved.
The way I see it Nate is the people that are pushing and financially feeding this movement are doing this for political power. I don’t think they care whether the bad cops get weeded out or the problems in poor communities are solved.
One last thing. Most of the officers involved in the high profile cases that have been used as an excuse to protest have been exonerated…they were not guilty and simply doing their very difficult jobs. It is difficult to imagine being in the circumstances they were in It’s even more difficult to imagine a reform that would make a difference in the outcome. When a criminal, and most have been criminals, refuse to cooperate, struggle with the police, and do foolish things like fighting for the officers a gun (Michael Brown), or pounding someones head into the ground while struggling for a gun (Trayvon Martin), the odds are that something terrible is going to happen. The officer, if he lives through it, faces immediate suspension and investigation with the possibility of facing trial and jail if found guilty. In today’s atmosphere he loses his job even if he is innocent. The idea that there is no justice is absurd.
You might notice that police officers go where there is crime.
Sorry for the confusion. I think you might agree that these problems start long before the police officer gets a call to go to where the trouble is…or stops a car because a person inside matches the description of a someone who committed a crime.
Well I’ve got two people asking me a question I thought I had already answered, so let me see what I can do to make myself more clear.
Post Scripts says “We protest everything thats [sic] perceived as wrong.” I’m not sure who “we” is; what have you protested? If I’m getting a good read on the political views of this blog I’m betting if you have participated in a protest it had something to do with the Tea Party, which protests big government, Obamacare, high taxes, and debt. So if you were involved in that you were protesting the government. But wait, while you were protesting those things there was gang violence going on in Chicago, female genital mutilation in the Middle East, and child soldiers in Uganda. Is high taxes really a more important issue than those? No, and I’m not saying Tea Party people (is that what you’re called? There was a word that was so much more fun and snappy but I won’t use it since it became an insult) believed they were more important; but they focused their energy on those issues because they felt they could do something about them.
I’m not a big fan of Black Lives Matter (they blocked a freeway in my community recently), but they are doing the same thing Tea Party protesters did; they are protesting the government. That’s what people mostly protest in this country: government and corporations. That’s because these institutions are much easier to change than underground subcultures like gangs and drug dealers. Do you expect any nonviolent protest to stop someone from sellin drugs? I don’t. But protests have changed police and government policy.
If you think people should protest black on black violence then why don’t you do that? No one is stopping you from protesting. I think you’ll realize an hour into chanting “Black Lives Killed by Other Black People Matter” that you’re not really doing anything effective, since it’s much harder to change a subculture than an institution with rules and policies, but why not give it a try instead of expecting others to protest issues for you?
Re Nate : “If you think people should protest black on black violence then why don’t you do that? No one is stopping you from protesting.”
That is precisely what Post Scripts is doing in their blog. What do you want?
Pie Guevara asked, “What do you want?”
The author of the post said he wanted matches in the streets and a proportionate response to the BLM protests over police violence. That’s not what I want, that’s what the author “Post Scripts” said he wanted.
Huh? So? What is your point? I wouldn’t mind seeing protests and vigils about black on black violence, even ones proportionate to this BLM nonsense, but I would neither organize what nor participate in such.
Post Scripts protests black on black violence in their blog without taking it to the streets. Evidently you have a problem with that.
Again, what is it YOU want? I mean other than tossing snide remarks at Post Scripts.
Nate we aren’t saying BLM have no right to protest. We are not asking others to protest for us. We are not suggesting that anyone protest drug dealers. However, as Jack points out, drug use is doing a lot of damage and speaking out and educating people, especially young people, is important.
We are saying that the beliefs that incite BLM anger at government (the police) are based on falsehoods. “Hands up don’t shoot” was based on a falsehood, for instance. We are also saying that the violence and disruptions that have accompanied Trump protests are unconstitutional. The group didn’t just protest they tried to prevent Trumps supporters from assembling peacefully to hear their candidate speak. Some of them them were using violence to intimidate citizens. Stopping people from moving freely on the interstate is dangerous and illegal.
This is not what the Tea Party has done. The first Tea Party protest was a grass roots assembly in Washington DC that happened spontaneously and was spread by word of mouth. Over a million people gathered in the mall and spilled out into the park area. The people were well behaved and left the area clean, which surprised the park service since other events left the grass destroyed with tons of trash that needed to be picked up.
The next Tea Party event that got media attention was a town hall that was protested by a group of SEIU people. There was an altercation when an SEIU person got into a fight with a black man who was there selling flags. The black man was taken to the hospital.
Tea party people chose to start small local organizations within their communities. A few went national. Quite a few were targeted by the IRS and harassed, preventing them from participating in an election. One woman was harassed by four government agencies at her place of business.
You could say that the Tea party was targeted by radicals on the left like the cops are being targeted now. The political left started calling the Tea Party racist, which is ridiculous. But that is how the left operates. What they feared in the beginning was the number of people (About a million) that had gathered in DC. Later they saw it as a threat to the hold they had on black votes.
See more here, here, and here.
“If you think people should protest black on black violence then why don’t you do that?”
This blog is a protest of sorts. But the thing that strikes me as most important for the black community is they don’t need white people telling them what to do in their communities. This is not a white problem, or a cop problem, in my opinion. It is a social problem within the community that is fed by many broken policies and ideals. Only black people and black families can address these problems.
It’s no accident that the communities where there are the most problems have been run by Democrats who believe government and money will solve any problem. The big government War on Poverty program began in 1965. The poor communities that it was supposed to transform are still experiencing poverty and increased problems of moral, civic, employment, familial, and criminal problems. Obviously money and government are not the answer.
Nate I believe that ignorance fuels a lot of protest. I also believe that radical ideology is behind most of it, including funding. The goals of these groups and their powerful wealthy supporters is to destroy our constitution and the freedoms and rights we enjoy. One of the wealthiest men in the world, George Soros, is determined to establish a one world body and open borders. I don’t know how you feel about that but I am four square against it. Constitutions that rely on special rights for special groups do not support equal rights. Socialist nations rely not on the power of the people but the elite few in government. We have something special in America, the last best hope for equality and freedom in the world. If we lose that we’ve lost any ability to uplift others. None of the things you mention that are “more important” than taxes have a chance of getting better.
One quick thought about big government and high taxation. We have seen the economy grow, good jobs created and more people moving into the middle and upper classed, upward mobility, under polices the Tea Party suggest. We have seen it happen under presidents of both parties. The entire world does better when America thrives. We have more at our disposal both in the private sector and in government to address the many problems at home and in the world. Sensible taxation is actually both a smart and a good thing for everyone. Generally speaking conservatives would rather work through the process we were given to effect change. As you have likely guessed Post Scripts is a conservative blog.
Nate I really appreciate your questions and the forthright way you express yourself. I hope you will join us often. We all bring personal experience and views to discussions. We celebrate and support free speech. Our blog is made better by a variety of voices.
I’m not going to get involved in the debate over Black Lives Matter. I think they have some valid points but some points are exaggerated, for instance the “hands up don’t shoot” narrative you correctly identified as false. There was a New York Times article recently about a study that found racial differences in police use of force but no racial differences in police killings, which I thought was interesting and shows the truth is somewhere in the middle.
I think there are good arguments against BLM, but saying “why are you protesting police brutality when you should be protesting these other issues” isn’t a good one. People protest the things they think they can change.
Tina wrote, “We are not suggesting that anyone protest drug dealers.”
That seemed to be exactly what Post Scripts suggested when they wrote “why not protest drug dealers and dope,” but maybe I’m just misunderstanding that rhetorical question.
You also write this:
“But the thing that strikes me as most important for the black community is they don’t need white people telling them what to do in their communities”
Scrolling through this blog, I’ve seen at least a dozen articles about what black peopke should do for their communities posted in just the past week. Everything from what to protest to how to protest to what they should and should not be angry about. I could be mistaken, but it didn’t seem to me that any of these articles were written by black writers. Please correct me if I’m wrong. But if those articles here were written by white writers, can you explain how you haven’t been doing exactly what you say black people don’t need? It seems at first impression that the primary purpose of this blog (at least just by the last week of stories) is for white people to tell black people what to do and how to behave.
Re Nate : “It seems at first impression that the primary purpose of this blog (at least just by the last week of stories) is for white people to tell black people what to do and how to behave.”
This is just plain nonsense. Post Scripts expresses thoughts on the many problems faced in the black community including violence, drugs, the continued dissolution of the family, and poverty just to name a few. You have a problem with that?
The notion that primary purpose of this blog is “is for white people to tell black people what to do and how to behave” is not only specious, it is a vile attack on people who are deeply concerned with social and political issues.
Tina is correct, most important for the black community is they don’t need white people telling them what to do in their communities. Blacks need to lead the way for there to have any real effect. You have a problem with that?
That said, should Post Scripts shut it’s mouth about such issues to conform to your rather twisted (and false and bigoted) view of what Post Scripts is?
Pie Guevara says, “Tina is correct, most important for the black community is they don’t need white people telling them what to do in their communities. Blacks need to lead the way for there to have any real effect. You have a problem with that?”
No, my problem is that this seems to be a hypocritical message from people who have spent the past week doing little but telling black people what to do in their communities. (Again, assuming the bloggers are white, which seems a safe assumption.)
“That said, should Post Scripts shut it’s mouth about such issues to conform to your rather twisted (and false and bigoted) view of what Post Scripts is?”
Are you one of them liberals who throws the word “bigoted” around for no reason? You have the name “Guevara” in your username but seem to be expressing right-wing views…I don’t get it.
And no, I’m not saying this blog should “shut it’s [sic] mouth” about black issues, I’m saying the aggressive flood of posts about such issues (over a dozen in one week) seems excessive coming from white authors, and that it’s hypocritical to post so many articles telling the black community what to do about those issues and then say white people shouldn’t do that.
Re Nate “No, my problem is that this seems to be a hypocritical message from people who have spent the past week doing little but telling black people what to do in their communities. (Again, assuming the bloggers are white, which seems a safe assumption.)”
OK, got your number, Chris. Go ahead with the attacks and snotty and specious assertions of hypocrisy and veiled (if not blatant racism and race-baiting). Nice try at a weasel wording with the use of “seems to be a hypocritical message. No hypocrisy here at all. Post Scripts does not presume to tell black people what to do or how to behave, they express opinions they hold.
“… aggressive flood of posts about such issues”
Really? These are important issues that concern us all. The points made are valid ones, concerned ones, reasoned and intelligent ones. Aggressive? AGGRESSIVE??? What a crock.
You have nothing to contribute but brickbats. Your aim is clear but not true. You seek to discredit Post Scripts.
The point made was obvious to me, you want to take it in a very narrow sense, typical of Chris tactics.
Shall I bother to repeat myself? Tina’s message was clear, no need for me to repeat, she expounded for YOUR BENEFIT Chris, and you choose to ignore that.
“But the thing that strikes me as most important for the black community is they don’t need white people telling them what to do in their communities. This is not a white problem, or a cop problem, in my opinion. It is a social problem within the community that is fed by many broken policies and ideals. Only black people and black families can address these problems.”
Chris (aka Nate) is back. folks.
The only people with power to affect the changes needed are the people themselves. Protesting (hating and blaming cops) will not solve the problems that lead to interventions by the police. This suggestions is just my opinion. I’ve not written any letters or created a bumper sticker or made any demands.
You do understand that opinions are not commands?