Just two days after a suspected synthetic marijuana poisoning in New York City sent 33 people to the hospital, a new report finds that overdoses related to the street drugs are rising across the country.
Tuesday’s mass overdose in Brooklyn left dozens of people shaking, vomiting, and passed out in the streets around the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. Its suspected cause was synthetic marijuana, and law enforcement officials raided a number of stores on Wednesday to search for its source.
Commonly referred to by the street names K2 or Spice, synthetic marijuana encompasses a large group of lab-made chemicals designed to mimic the effects of marijuana. These chemicals are often sprayed on dried, shredded leaves or sold as a vaping liquid. But the synthetic forms are typically much more potent and much more dangerous than marijuana, causing complications ranging from kidney damage to toxic psychosis.
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