November 24, 2010, Washington D.C.: Using its emergency powers, the Drug Enforcement Administration announced that it will temporarily ban five synthetic marijuana compounds,often known by brand names such as K-2 or Spice, effective in "no fewer than 30 days."
The author and friends roll up a dud joint behind a north Montrose bar on a sunny Indian summer afternoon. Contrary to what that Atlantic Monthly might believe, this K-2 Blue stuff was not the answer in "the case against cynicism."
Each of these little bags of synthetic weed cost $20 at a Montrose convenience store...
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— from the DEA Website
This report was written in the last freewheeling days before the federal ban.
At first, it seemed like there wasn't much to this synthetic cannabis malarkey. Tasked by my editor with staking out the wilds of these new, legal "herbal incense" smoking products, I had duly hopped on my bike and gone out and plunked down a total of $20 plus tax for two anemic 1.5-gram sachets of two different brands of the stuff.
The deal went down at a shady, Vietnamese-run Montrose convenience store, Cypress Hill's "Hand on the Pump" blaring in my ears from my iPod as the product exchanged hands.
One of the bags went by "K-2 Blue" and the other was an allegedly mango-flavored concoction called "Spicy Green Herbal Mysteries." (Had I been so inclined, I could have also chosen Spice, Yucatan Fire, Solar Flare, or my favorite brand name, Happy Shaman Herbs. In addition to convenience stores and gas stations, head shops are gold mines for the stuff.)
The little sacks sat in a desk drawer for a while, but at a staff party in October, some co-workers and I twisted up a J of the K-2 Blue and fired it up. The effects were minimal, possibly only imaginary. I noticed, or thought I noticed, that the colors in Greek Village along lower West Gray might have seemed a little more vibrant on that warm Indian summer afternoon. And perhaps I was a little more amenable towards certain co-workers with whom I have had testy relationships. It was very forgettable, and it seemed like just another bogus legal "substitute" for an illegal drug, like Ecstasy's no-account little sister Eve back in the day.
Meanwhile, on a slow Friday afternoon a couple of weeks later at work, I happened upon the Herbal Mysteries Spicy Green and some leftover Zig Zags in my desk drawer. Oh well, I thought, let's give this crapola one last chance. Maybe different brands had different effects. That was what it said on the Internet, anyway, and we all know the Internet never lies.
There so happened to be a couple of friends of a co-worker on the premises, and these two guys, whom we'll call "Moises" and "Hector," expressed an interest in joining me.
Moises, a bespectacled, twentysomething Hispanic man with a shaven head, said he had a long and fruitful relationship with the "Kush" brand of synthetic marijuana. He had a little bag of it in his pocket even then. He said he smoked it just about every day.
Sure, he allowed, he would rather be smoking real weed, but he said he was subject to drug-testing at his job, and since this stuff didn't show up on his urinalysis, it was his only choice.
"It kinda relaxes you at night, or sometimes I smoke a little through the day," he said, and added that he was careful never to get too high at work. (He's a telemarketer.) "I smoke half of a little tiny joint, and they will last a good while. I don't do it in big amounts."
He said it was safe; he'd never had any problems with it, except for that one time... "I'd smoked some and I was driving, and I kinda nodded off, except instead of my head falling forward, it fell back."
He chuckled and shook his head. "I got carried away that time," he said.
Hmmm. Moises didn't look like the kind of guy who would fake a high. And why would anyone pretend to nod off like that behind the wheel? Maybe there was something to this after all.
The three of us adjourned to the parking lot behind the Houston Press building, right there across the street from the new downtown YMCA on the corner of Pease and Milam. We sparked up my poorly rolled joint of Spicy Green Herbal Mysteries. I could feel it hit, or "bind to my receptors" as the chemists would say, even before I exhaled the first lungful of odd-smelling smoke. I passed it to Moises, who passed it to Hector. And repeat. And repeat again. Conversation ground to a halt, as did time. A cop car slid south down Milam, about 100 feet from us.
"I wonder what would happen if he stopped and questioned us," wondered Hector aloud.
We chuckled and shook our heads. There wasn't a damn thing he could do. As these products are officially marketed as incense and labeled "Not for Human Consumption," there is no law, or at least no law in Houston (yet), against possessing or smoking them. We could just as easily have been toking on banana peels as far as the cops were concerned.
But to me, this stuff was far, far more potent than banana peels. (Yep, I once tried them too.) A few minutes later, my feet and hands had gone cold. I had major cottonmouth. And to put it simply, I was freakin' stoned.
