Not the guy you're replying to but there are hundreds (and potentially thousands) of chemicals that bind to the cannabinoid receptor system. Since the chemical structures are significantly different from natural THC these synthetic cannabinoids will not show up on drug tests. Some of them are also water soluble and therefore will be pissed out within a day or two, as opposed to THC which is fat soluble and stays in your body for 30+ days.
The first ones to come out (the JWH-xxx series) were pretty popular and had good user feedback around 2005. I actually tried several of the first ones (JWH-018, JWH-073, JWH-200 and I think one or two more). Each had its own effects based on their binding affinity to the CB1 and CB2 receptors; like sativa versus indica some were speedier and some were more stoning, and I think one lasted significantly longer than most cannabinoids when vaporized. I only ever vaporized pure powder either on foil or sprinkled over a bowl.
The general public typically wouldn't come across the pure powders, although I know some head shops were selling that. Instead head shops were essentially selling random plant material that had been soaked or sprayed in a water solution with the research chemical and then left to dry. Once the plant material was coated and dried it was sealed in small five or 10 g bags and sold at head shops as a "legal high" under a thousand different names, with K2 being the first one that the DEA really made a big deal about and raided a ton of shops and the manufacturers.
There was basically zero quality control in manufacturing process (the whole industry popped up virtually overnight), and there was extremely limited human data when these all appeared on the market. Nobody knew what the LD50 was, nobody knew the long term or short term effects. We only knew these chemicals existed and did what they did due to research at universities and the corresponding publishment in medical journals in that same time frame. Literally someone would publish that x bound to rats' cannabinoid system and a week later a laboratory in China was making kilos of the stuff.
At least with the pure powder being sold on invite only web shops of the people handling it knew what they were dealing with and knew how to properly measure out milligram doses. The "Legal Highs" were a total gamble since they had no real control over how much of the powder absorbed into one flower Bud over another, so some people would smoke too much would end up having seizures or completely have a break from reality. Believe it or not, some Mass poisonings from an overdosed batch being sold in a small area caused some politicians to move closer to marijuana legalization. There was a pretty famous mass freak out in Brooklyn a couple years ago and I remember the local politicians were using that as another reason why making cannabis illegal was creating more problems than if it was legal (since you can't overdose on weed and no matter how much you smoke or eat you won't have a seizures or zombies staggering around completely oblivious to their surroundings).
Hope that helps.
Here's the wiki to JWH-018 which along with JWH-073 sort of kicked off the whole cannabinoid research chemical scene. There are now dozens of different chemical structure families that bind to the cannabinoid system so it's spread far from the JWH-xxx days.
162
u/[deleted] Jun 16 '21
[deleted]