Fake pot has become a real crisis in Washington, D.C. attorney general says

This is not real pot. (Photo: Kelley McCall/AP)

It comes in small packages, sometimes with cartoon images, and has names like K2 or Spice or Scooby Snax or Stoopid. It’s cheap and easily obtained under the table at convenience stores or gas stations or even online. And experts say it can cause chest pains, vomiting, seizures, hallucinations or violent psychotic episodes.

It was originally called synthetic pot because the chemical cocktail aimed to replicate the effects of THC, the active ingredient that gives marijuana consumers their high.

But to law enforcement officials like Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine, fake pot means real trouble — more violent crime, more emergency workers at risk, more people unaware of the potentially grim downsides of this booming trend.

One problem: People hear “synthetic marijuana” and get the wrong idea — that it’s no more harmful than smoking a joint, Racine told Yahoo News in an interview broadcast on Sirius XM.

In fact, Racine said, “Some sort of violent psychotic reaction” is not at all uncommon, because the ingredients people are smoking often have no relationship to the ones found in marijuana.

Washington, D.C., is working hard to crack down on the substance, notably by shutting down businesses found to be selling it, but also by working with federal agencies like the Drug Enforcement Administration to combat trafficking. Varieties of synthetic pot frequently originate in labs scattered throughout China and all over the Pacific Rim.

Racine said that one weak link in the law enforcement chain has to do with testing: Field kits aren’t configured to handle synthetic pot, and some individuals think that “they’re not going to come up ‘dirty’ when tested for the substance.”

But, he said, a “dirty” test may be the least of your problems “if you’re ending up in the emergency room after having had a violent chaotic fit that may indeed have caused harm and injury to people.”