Madison: Wisconsin's State Senate passed a statewide K2 ban May 17 on a voice vote. The action means that only one step remains before synthetic cannabinoids marketed as incense under names including K2 and Spice will be as illegal as their natural counterparts in Wisconsin - a floor vote by the State Assembly. That vote is likely to come in the next scheduled floorperiod, which begins June 7. Earlier, the legislation cleared Senate and Assembly committees on unanimous votes.
The push for a statewide ban has been ongoing for more than a year as municipalities and counties began enacting a hodge-podge of bans, with little debate. Hyperbolic rhetoric focusing on a couple isolated incidents portrayed K2 as a deadly scourge that targeted youth. In a state where alcohol related mayhem is a daily occurrence with well over a hundred daily DUI arrests, K2 should not be a major concern. Just like Congress in 1937, Wisconsin elected representatives have failed to do the due diligence or consider the unanticipated consequences of creating new crimes where none existed before. If a bad reaction to a substance is all that is needed to justify locking someone up, what about alcohol?
Meanwhile, the Green Bay Press Gazette reported Monday that authorities made a major move against a chain of five smoke shops that sold synthetic cannabinoid products. The Green Bay raid came April 15 under the city's local ordinance after an incident where two teens reportedly had a bad reaction.
Tests of the substance found the chemicals were not among the five synthetic cannabinoids prohibited by the DEA and the local ordinance. This could explain the bad reactions. The five chemicals frequently marketed as K2 had been marketed since 1995 or so. This means there was 16 years of human use to gauge the effects and dosages. By making these 5 illegal, authorities have actually caused new, less understood substances to be substituted for something with a track record. That is the legacy of prohibition - it always makes things worse.
While the substances were not directly covered under the Green Bay ordinance, they are covered under a clause that declares anything that causes cannabis like "high" is illegal. This broad definition could conceivably cover a number of currently legal products that could cause an effect that someone might subjectively compare to cannabis, including alcohol and over the counter and prescription medications, perhaps even things like herbal supplements like St. John's Wort. Some get an effect comparable to a mild pot buzz from that or Chamomile tea. Will grandmothers sipping a little Chamomile tea be the next "Al Capones" because it gave them a mellow feeling?
While Wisconsin prosecutors and law enforcers are often portrayed as overworked and underfunded, testimony from representatives of both at the hearings and news coverage was enthusiastically in support of adding these new laws. This comes despite how much time this will divert resources from what should be job one - protecting life and limb and truly making communities safer.
The Green Bay Press Gazette report discusses the local ordinance is already making for more work for officers and creating new costs for testing:
Products seized from all five shops were sent to the State Crime Lab in Wausau, where they were identified as synthetic marijuana. However, the products did not include any chemicals banned by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration or the city ordinance. The broader city ordinance also bans drugs that produce the same effect as marijuana.
Authorities plan to test the seized products to see if they produce the same effect as marijuana, said Green Bay police Lt. Bill Bongle, who declined to say how police would do that.
"There are so many varieties, and some of them deviate by maybe a couple molecules, chemically, so the people that produce this stuff are constantly trying to change the formula to stay ahead of the law," he said. -- "Synthetic marijuana targeted in Green Bay", Green Bay Press Gazette, May 23, 2011.
Perhaps Lt. Bongle and his colleagues plan to use a Bong to test the material? Seriously, wouldn't limiting K2 sales to adults be a smarter move than creating a new stream of people to our expensive and overcrowded prisons, jails and probation/parole offices? The incidents cited to justify prohibition at the hearings and in media have involved people under 18. While no one wants K2 to be anywhere but a laboratory, criminalizing it only makes these compounds unavailable for research. Considering how tight budgets are these days, repealing laws rather than enacting more costly new ones should be the plan. And repealing cannabis prohibition would put K2 and other synthetic cannabinoids back in laboratories while finally allowing the cannabis industry to fully blossom, from medical cannabis to taxing and regulating cannabis for adults and using the hemp plant for everything from food to fiber and even building materials. Just what the Wisconsin economy needs to create good jobs and a sustainable green industry.
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