From Radar Online.com:

Demi Moore’s frantic 9-1-1 phone call has shed more light on the night she had a seizure and was rushed to the hospital, and it may have also revealed the substance that she was smoking.

As RadarOnline.com previously reported, a friend of Moore’s can be heard on the call explaining to the operator: “She smoked something, it’s not marijuana, it’s similar to incense. She seems to be having convulsions.”

A likely possibility is that Demi was smoking K2 Spice, a “currently legal herbal incense product spiked with powerful designer drugs” that don't show up in tests, according to WebMD.

RadarOnline.com spoke with addictions specialist Dr. Phil Dembo, who said judging by the description on the 911 call, he believes Moore was smoking K2 Spice, which is currently legal in the U.S. but under investigation by the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Dr. Dembo said Demi’s convulsions could have been a result of smoking the substance.

From WTAE.com (Pittsburgh):

A 13-year-old boy who ended up in the hospital after smoking a synthetic form of marijuana has died, a month after receiving a double-lung transplant.

Brandon Rice injured his lungs in August after smoking a substance known as K2.

Shortly after smoking the drug, the teen developed nausea, a full body rash, headaches and high fever. His father said the substance caused a chemical burn in his son’s lungs.

The teen received a double-lung transplant on Sept. 28. His aunt said his prognosis was so good that the family had begun sending out emails to help raise funds for transplants.

But less than 15 minutes after they sent the e-mails, Brandon Rice passed away.

Rice’s family said an infection from the transplant likely took his life.

Rice's parents said they want other teens to know just how dangerous synthetic drugs can be.

From IndependentMail.com:

Anderson University basketball player Lamar Jack died after ingesting a chemical that is a key ingredient in synthetic marijuana, the county corner said Saturday.

Lab testing and analysis revealed that Jack had the chemical JWH-018 in his body when he collapsed during a preseason warm-up with his team on Sept. 30. Just days later, on Oct. 4, Jack died. He was 19.

On the basis of an autopsy and the toxicology test results, Shore is ruling Jack’s death accidental — caused by “acute drug toxicity with excited delirium that led to multiple organ failure.”

The chemical found in Jack’s body is used to make fake pot, a classification of substances that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration calls synthetic cannabanoids.

From The Epoch Times:

The Navy on Thursday said it caught 64 sailors illegally distributing or using the designer drug known as “spice,” according to The Navy Times.

Spice, which is also known as fake marijuana due to its effects, is made with synthetic cannabinoid compounds and prohibited in the Navy.

The Navy said it is discharging the sailors. Two more sailors from the submarine are being investigated.

From The Juvenile Justice Information Exchange:

Three Louisiana State University football players have been placed on suspension after testing positive for synthetic marijuana, a source told the New Orleans Times Picayune.

Synthetic marijuana use has been on the rise among athletes in recent years, according to a report by Sportsology.com, due to the absence of THC and the player’s ability to pass a drug test after use. But both law enforcement authorities and drug test technologies have been adjusting to the trend.

As JJIE reported, in November 2010 the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) added five variations of synthetic marijuana to the official list of illicit drugs, placing a ban on the drug nationally. While the DEA effectively banned what officials considered the five most dangerous compounds, there are alternatives. Similar compounds that are still legal produce comparable effects, and manufacturers wasted no time in making the switch.

Many states, including Louisiana, have taken up more extensive bans on the substance.

When it comes to college football, however, synthetic marijuana -– also known as Spice, K2 and Black Mamba -– is already on the National College Athletic Association’s banned substance list. Regardless of state or national law, players can still face suspension under the ban.

From TuscaloosaNews.com:

In the past few months, at least 15 young adults have sought emergency medical treatment at DCH Regional Medical Center with the same symptoms: a racing heart and paranoia.

It sounds like a bad reaction to an illegal drug, but it's not. It's a bad reaction to a legal substance that can be purchased in gas stations and tobacco stores across Alabama.

Marketed as "incense," synthetic marijuana, sometimes called "fake pot," is a herbal product that has been treated with chemicals that mimic the effects of marijuana when smoked. Similar chemicals were made illegal in Alabama last year, but chemists can alter the compounds to remain within the constraints, but perhaps not the spirit, of the law.

Users report that the effects are similar, if not more intense, than the real thing. Some gas station and tobacco store owners in Tuscaloosa who declined to be interviewed on the record about synthetic marijuana said last week that the product is a top seller.

DCH spokesman Brad Fisher said that most of the people who have sought treatment are in their early 20s and are usually discharged within two or three hours, according to emergency room doctors.

Often called "Spice" or "K2," synthetic marijuana is cheaper, easier to obtain and doesn't show up on drug tests. There's no age limit to purchase the product, which is often labeled "not for human consumption."

Police say that it's difficult to enforce the ban on the chemicals that were outlawed last year because they have no way to (field) test the product.

The Regional Poison Control Center at Children's Hospital of Alabama reports receiving 67 calls from people who have smoked synthetic pot since October 2010, according to the Alabama Department of Public Health. Three were children between 6 and 12, 15 were teenagers and 22 were in their 20s. Of those, 76 percent were male. At least 56 were treated for toxic exposure in hospital emergency rooms. According to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, more than 6,700 calls were made to poison control centers nationally in 2010 and in the first seven months of 2011 about synthetic marijuana. 

From the Star Tribune:

Every morning, dozens of customers line up outside the doors of Last Place on Earth so they can buy fake pot and other synthetic drugs as soon as the store opens at 10 a.m.

They are drawn to this old brick building because they know the head shop is one of the last places in Minnesota that openly sells the sometimes deadly substances despite a July 1 ban on synthetic drugs.

Some come from the Twin Cities, according to owner Jim Carlson. Others travel even farther. On Friday, a trucker from Grand Rapids, Minn., said he started making the 80-mile drive to Carlson's store every three weeks because his neighborhood smoke shop stopped selling "herbal incense."

Duluth resident Heidi Middleton, who was first in line, said she comes almost every day. "If I don't have weed in my system, I go into convulsions and throw up," said Middleton, 38. "It mellows me out."

Any day now, Carlson predicts, police will raid the shop he's owned for 29 years and arrest him. But every day that doesn't happen puts another $16,000 or so in his till, Carlson estimates. That means the small, crowded shop is hauling in almost $6 million a year from synthetic marijuana and stimulants.

"Our sales are just insane," Carlson recently told the Star Tribune. "If anything it's gotten stronger with a lot of my competition getting out of it, nervous, not knowing what's going on."

Local officials, who have tried in vain for years to force Carlson to stop selling drug-related merchandise, think the retailer has gone way too far this time.

"He flaunts and he taunts, and I think it's absolutely disgusting how you can sell a product to people that damages users and innocent bystanders," Duluth City Council Member Todd Fedora said.

Last year, Fedora spearheaded an effort to make Duluth the first city in the state to ban synthetic pot. But the city stopped trying to enforce the ordinance after Carlson threatened to hold the city responsible for his economic losses in a federal lawsuit that claimed the rule was unconstitutionally broad.

Duluth Police Chief Gordon Ramsay said Carlson is on his radar. "We're aware of the problem and are working on it," Ramsay told the Star Tribune Thursday.

Carlson, whose business has tripled since he started selling synthetic drugs two years ago, said he's willing to risk arrest for several reasons: The money is so good, and he believes banning drugs doesn't work and infringes on people's rights.

He also claims to have taken steps to make sure his products don't violate the state's new ban, though the results of a test conducted for the Star Tribune showed that some of his synthetic pot contained a chemical specifically outlawed in Minnesota. Carlson said his supplier made a mistake and has since switched to a legal formula.

"If I get busted, I would demand a jury trial," said Carlson, who complained Monday to the City Council that police were harassing customers in front of his store.

From The Patriot-News:

When horror stories about bath salts and synthetic marijuana began circulating, lawmakers in Pennsylvania acted swiftly to ban the so-called fake drugs.

But manufacturers are even quicker.

Today is the first day that brands of bath salts, synthetic pot and salvia are illegal in this state.

By Wednesday, a yet-to-be-named product will be on the shelves of at least one local head shop, promising to have the same effects of synthetic marijuana.

“It’s incredible,” said George Geisler of the Pennsylvania DUI Association. “But they say that as fast as these products are outlawed they will come up with new ones, so it will never end.”

That has some wondering whether this will continue as a cycle: more new drugs and more new laws.

Since Gov. Tom Corbett signed the ban into law last month, customers at Hemp’s Above in Mechanicsburg have been asking: “Are they coming out with anything else?”

Owner Brian Edmonson said about three-quarters of his sales came from synthetic pot while it was legal. Now he’ll sell a new mixture, but he said the stuff doesn’t have a name, and he’s not sure if he should call it incense, or potpourri — or something else.

Edmonson says he asks for identification from every customer, but most of his clients are over 30, and about half use synthetic marijuana for therapeutic reasons.

The forensic society might not be prepared for these drugs.

“They can’t test it like they test coke and marijuana,” said midstate attorney Justin McShane, who says he specializes in forensic science.

When you’re caught with an illegal drug — in your possession or in your blood — police have to confirm that the substance is actually the outlawed chemical compound.

For drugs that are familiar, there is an answer key. McShane says that isn’t down to a science for these newly banned synthetic drugs. He thinks it will cause problems in the courts.

Edmonson says his suppliers tell him Pennsylvania’s law is one of strictest of the 30 states that had banned the fake drugs by midsummer. But some fear the laws can’t keep up.

From ABC News:

When John W. Huffman invented a whole class of chemicals that mimic the effect of marijuana on the human brain, he never intended for them to launch a whole "legal marijuana" industry.

But now that "Spice" and other forms of imitation pot are sending users to emergency rooms across America, the retired professor has an idea of how to stem the epidemic. If the federal government would legalize the real thing, says Huffman, maybe consumers wouldn't turn to the far more dangerous fake stuff.

Huffman, who developed more than 400 "cannabinoids" as an organic chemist at Clemson University, says that marijuana has the benefit of being a known quantity, and not a very harmful one. We know the biological effects of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, Huffman told ABC News, because they have been thoroughly studied. "The scientific evidence is that it's not a particularly dangerous drug," said Huffman.

The "JWH" class of compounds that Huffman invented to mimic marijuana's effects, meanwhile, have not been tested the same way. "The physiological compounds effects of [JWH] compounds have never been examined in humans," said Huffman. What we do know, he says, is that "it doesn't hit the brain in the same way as marijuana, and that's why it's dangerous."

From Vadvert UK:

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today announced availability of the industry’s first GC/MS compendium to test for synthetic cannabinoids, recently declared controlled substances by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. They are most commonly found in “herbal incense” blends.

The compendium  available from Agilent at no cost to qualified forensics labs, contains detailed procedures for sample preparation and GC/MS method, plus a searchable mass-spectral library to test for 35 synthetic cannabinoids and their derivatives. The method and library were developed in collaboration with the Criminalistics Division of NMS Labs, an independent forensic laboratory certified by the American Board of Forensic Toxicology and the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors.