San Diego Broadens Ban On 'Spice'

This is KPBS Midday Edition. I'm Maureen Cavanaugh. The synthetic marijuana drug called, "spice", is legal in much of the state. Because drugmakers slightly alter their formulas to get around bans on specific chemicals. Now, San Diego is trying to outfox the drug designers by outlawing the effects of spice, rather than its chemical makeup. Pictures of brightly colored packages with names like fruit punch, the Joker and OMG are spread out. Their wrappers are decorated with cartoon characters. Kathryn Turner is a chief deputy city attorney of San Diego. She sewing -- showing examples. The spice packages are sold as potpourri, but very expensive potpourri. They still called -- so-called potpourri can be smoked. California banned the compounds used to make it. The chemists slightly change the molecular architecture of these campgrounds. These changes mean the drug still get you high, but now it's legal. Because the chemicals keep changing, there's no way to completely predict how the body will respond. Sometimes that means seizures and comas. More than 500 people in San Diego were hospitalized for bad spice reactions in the past six months. Up from 100 in the six months before. Now, the city is following other states, such as Rhode Island and Florida by banning not just specific chemicals used, but any compound that produces a similar reaction in the brain. I would just take some of this solution out -- Jerry Yang is a chemist, he pulls from a shelf a glass trait of Ninety Six tiny test tubes. He explains how they are used to test if a new spice is similar to the old version. I just measure how much color is being generated. It sounds comically simple. The test is easy, he says what stuff is where to draw the line. How are you going to manage that, are you going to screen every product in the world and figure out its response and then set limits based on what you learn. He worries about broadening the band too much. Now, if you ban anything that elicits a response, how are you going to manage banning things that we didn't intend to. You might know if you have heroin or cocaine, how are you going to know if you -- if the carbon atoms on the molecule, that's a different level. Margaret Dooley-Sammuli is a policy director of the San Diego ACLU. She doesn't think the policies will block the use. It feels good to ban something, like you're doing something. Spirit -- If your goal is to prevent harm, to keep people safe, the problem with making possession a crime is that people don't call for help when they need it or when someone else needs. The city's Kathryn Turner insists allowing spice to be sold legally isn't the solution. She argues this new local take the focus off specific chemicals that are banned. What is it doing to the human body, protecting people here in San Diego from being that comic guinea pig. With spice, users never know exactly what the smoking. The city of San Diego voted unanimously to ban the sale. Manufacture, possession and distribution and related drugs goes into effect immediately. Joining me on the use of the drug spice is Cynthia Burke, she's Dr. Cynthia Burke SANDAG criminal Justin it -- justice research director. The city of San Diego is not the only jurisdiction in San Diego concerned about the use of spice. How widespread is its use? I haven't seen, we know from high school surveys nationally, about what the uses and it's relatively low. What we know from our data at tran eight. -- SANDAG . A number of cities have tried to ban sale of the substance. They've come up against the same problems federal law enforcement has. The composition keeps changing. What we saw in our data, one in two juveniles who are in juvenile hall say that they've tried spice. Of those, three quarters used in the past year. For adults it's about one in four and about the same have used it at the same team. -- Time. We also asked the individuals, do use it as a substitute for marijuana and do use it to avoid drug tests? Drug test commonly test for marijuana, you can't test for -- can test for spice, individuals who might be under requirements for drug testing, those on probation or parole, are more likely to you spice. Certain pockets of the population are more likely to use it. Because it has, up until this point been legal, and also because it makes it easier for people to avoid being detected? Yes. The use being so high among juveniles, is -- it may go to some of the availability. You just go into a convenience store, find it in many places, $15.00. It's easy to get. You can tell your parents it's potpourri your insight -- incense. That's why public education and the attention that's being garnered by this legislation is just as important as the ordinance. We heard that there are an increasing number of people being hospitalized with bad reactions to spice. Nausea, vomiting, foaming at the mouth, loss of consciousness, violent behavior, passing out, increased heart rate, in November 2015, 17 people have been using spice went in and the age range was from 13 to 59. Is there information on the street that it's safe? 80% of those who would never used it said it was bad or bad, 66% of those who had met -- had used it said it was very better bad. Lower than those who had used it but relatively high. There's that knowledge, I equate it to Russian roulette. You try to get the same high as marijuana, but there are a lot of other negative effects. It may do the same thing that THC does, but it does a lot of other things. You don't know what chemicals are how much is being used. They spray the herbal material with chemical compounds and there's variance, you don't know what you're getting. You said in the beginning, there are other jurisdictions beside San Diego who are trying to outlaw in some way, the spice. It's very difficult, because it seems not only because the chemical compounds keep changing, but because there seems to be a piecemeal approach. Do you find that in the accessibility of spice, even though one city might outlaw? This reminds me of when we had curfew laws. In one place it was 10:00, and another it was 11:00. I'm hoping we will be able to track what happens with this ordinance in place. Maybe, we can get a consistent regional policy. Never we can do something regionally you will get more effect. Somebody who is in San Diego might go to another jurisdiction that doesn't have the ordinance. I would hope that would be the next step in looking at this. In terms of talking about possession, what's being outlawed is the manufacturing sale distribution possession, there are civil and criminal penalties. I think that the intent of the law, is trying to protect people. CRI number of juveniles using this. Given pop 47 and other changes we are not just to get people walking down the street with it. Stop people from getting it, more than anything else. I've been speaking with Cynthia Burke , SANDAG criminal justice researcher.