Life After D.A.R.E.

Five years ago America was introduced to synthetic marijuana. After scientist John Huffman discovered that slightly altering the chemical formula for cannabinoids could achieve effects similar to those of THC, drug makers jerry-rigged his findings and carted the result out to head shops and gas stations, and a nation under strict drug prohibition toked up. Its unregulated production is reminiscent of bathtub meth: Chemicals from Chinese factories are mixed with other chemicals, sprayed on plant mulch, packaged and shipped off to be sold and smoked. By achieving neurological effects similar to those of marijuana but without the legal consequences, shady chemists created a hit.

Before long, their hit became a medical nightmare. In 2010 synthetic marijuana caused an estimated 11,406 emergency-room visits nationwide; in 2011 the number jumped to 28,531. Most alarming is the drug’s child-friendly marketing, with brand names that sound like cereal: Scooby Snax, Spice, LOL and Galaxy Gold.

Lance Dyer is the most prominent figure in the crusade against the drug. Along with the organization Warriors Against Synthetic Pot, he descended on the Texas state capitol this February to lobby for stricter enforcement. The Georgia native’s motivation is personal. Three years ago his 14-year-old son, Dakota, who had no prior mental health or drug issues, fatally shot himself in the head after, his father claims, he smoked a synthetic cannabinoid. Dyer and his wife held their son as he took his final breaths; one month later, Dyer sold his small business and has spent the years since advocating for tougher legislation. Instead of banning synthetic marijuana outright, legislators banned the specific molecular structures of synthetic cannabinoids. Manufacturers played cat-and-mouse in response, tweaking their product to create compounds not targeted by the laws. Before long, the DEA stepped in, applied the Federal Analogue Act, which bans chemicals “substantially similar” to controlled substances, then began a law-enforcement sweep named Project Synergy I & II. By 2014 more than 377 importers had been arrested and hundreds of kilograms of synthetic pot, along with more than $71 million in cash and assets, had been seized.

The drug’s popularity has fallen since its peak in 2011, but Texas and some other states experienced a significant spike in use last year. Over one 48-hour period in Dallas in May 2014, 40 people were hospitalized due to the drug; in November, Austin had more than 25 hospitalizations. In 2012 Texas logged 71,069 arrests for marijuana possession, second only to New York out of the 48 states that report such data to the FBI. It’s enough to make one wonder if users are forced to seek synthetic alternatives in the face of marijuana’s outsize legal risk. Some attribute the sudden rise in use to a shift in supply: After the Project Synergy sweep, manufacturers began to import over the Mexican border instead of through the coasts.

Dyer and WASP are a new kind of antidrug crusader that emerged in the wake of the failed war on drugs and the liberalization of Americans’ opinion of marijuana. WASP models itself after Mothers Against Drunk Driving; the comparison is dismaying given that MADD’s prohibitionist campaigns are calculated for maximum public awareness (it has called for the arrest of bar patrons for public intoxication and campaigned against California’s medical-marijuana proposition).

Dyer can seem equally calculating. After years of giving legislative testimony, he has become media-polished, using the same language and teary voice each time he describes his son’s death. Yet his approach and beliefs differ radically from those of his antidrug predecessors. He characterizes synthetic marijuana as an exceptional drug whose pharmacology and effect on the brain are not entirely known. Stories shared by WASP members highlight the terrifying effects it can have: the teenager whose heart stopped without apparent cause; the Navy veteran who was found on a soccer field, his left arm slit open and a packet of Spice nearby.

Puritanical champions of total drug prohibition have lost their standing among legislators and the American public. The model legislation WASP has written eschews punishing individual users, who are mostly kids, and targets manufacturers and peddlers instead. Dyer, for his part, does not target other “legal highs” such as kratom, a mild and naturally mood-altering leaf from a Southeast Asian tree; he merely wants to ensure that synthetic cannabinoids don’t end up in it.

Dyer doesn’t target marijuana either. Although he doesn’t embrace pot, he supports its medical uses and believes prohibitionist efforts are ineffective. People will always get high. According to one university study, synthetic cannabinoids are, after marijuana, the most-used drug among high schoolers.

This suggests an obvious question: Why not legalize real, natural weed so users aren’t driven to dangerous alternatives? Even inventor Huffman is dismayed at what his creation has become and supports marijuana legalization. Unsurprisingly, the marijuana industry supports antisynthetic efforts; even the DEA doesn’t conflate synthetic marijuana with real marijuana. “There’s never been an overdose on marijuana,” said one DEA public relations officer. “We’re even against calling it synthetic marijuana.”

That isn’t typical antidrug rhetoric, nor is Dyer’s. The day after his capitol visit, he delivered a talk to schoolchildren in Atlanta that he emphasized wouldn’t be a standard DARE lecture. “The first words they’ll hear out of my mouth are ‘I’m not giving you the don’t-do-drugs speech; you hear that all the time,'” he told me. “I say, ‘If you feel the need to try a mind-altering substance, if you succumb to peer pressure, don’t do this one. Don’t do synthetic cannabinoids.'”

As home chemists get savvier and the globalized drug industry makes it easier for new creations such as synthetic marijuana to take hold, it’s clear the shift in approach is necessary. Not everything that’s for sale can be assumed to be regulated. A successor to synthetic marijuana is sure to come, and as long as drug prohibition remains in effect in America, Dyer’s is a message that even good, God-fearing potheads can get behind.