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cannabinoid(?) hospitalized 24 festival goers in Ohio

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entheogenic-gnosis

Rising Star
CNN affiliate WEWS reported that some festivalgoers consumed ultra-potent marijuana candies in the morning and by afternoon, there were 20 overdose cases.

24 victims may have consumed synthetic THC candies

(CNN)Twenty-four people attending a music festival in Ohio were hospitalized Saturday from drug overdoses, according to the Richland County Sheriff's office.

No one lost consciousness and everyone seems to be OK, Sheriff's Capt. Donald Zehner said Saturday afternoon

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I really hope this was not caused by THC...I really don't see 24 individuals freaking out from cannabis, by who knows...

-eg
 
The initial sheriff's department report did not say what caused the onset of illnesses but patients were treated with Narcan, said Nikki Workman, spokeswoman for OhioHealth Mansfield Hospital. Narcan is used to counteract overdoses of opiates such as heroin or oxycodone.
Paramedics initially believed the overdoses were caused by opiates but when victims did not respond to the Narcan they had the candies tested and they came back positive for a high dosage of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, WEWS reported.


Zehner said late Saturday that the culprit was still classified as an "unknown substance," and the investigation was ongoing.

Synthetic cannabinoids can be anywhere from two to 100 times more potent than natural THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, according to the Centeres for Disease Control and Prevention. This general unpredictability is due to the unknown chemical composition of these drugs, which, the National Institute on Drug Abuse noted, may change from batch to batch
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...at least research chemicals are being considered, though somehow I feel cannabis itself has already prematurely been blamed...

...the public (and these reporters) have a very hard time differentiating cannabis from synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists...

-eg
 
Muskogee Herbman said:
It'd be great if it turned out to be something like alcohol or a caffeine pill.

I'm still a little confused on how they thought this was an opiate O.D....
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Strong oral cannabis may well appear similar to opiate OD to the unwary medical practitioner.

I find it quite likely that a bunch of people ate some hash brownies that were too strong and couldn't cope. Or the people around them misidentified their state and decided to help prevent them from dying of an opiate overdose. Which could be seen as reasonable.

Concerns about potency of cannabis edibles have already been raised in the past couple of weeks, IIRC.
 
Opioid overdoses are characterized by a distinct narcosis as well as tell-tale miosis, to me it seems difficult to imagine THC intoxication being confused for opioid overdose, there may be very minor similarities, but this seems odd to me. Again, to me this indicates that those who consumed the drug likely told paramedics or hospital staff that it was a research chemical of some sort, and not knowing the pharmacological properties of the unknown substance they were given an opioid antagonist as a precaution.

I don't think THC is the substance responsible, it's possible that cannabis may have been involved, or that these people may have also taken cannabis, but to me, and this is just my opinion, it sounds a lot more like a research chemical, possibly a cannabinoid receptor agonist, was the compound responsible.

Again, I only know what's been reported in the news, which is very unclear, the CNN article seems to have difficulty differentiating edible cannabis, cannabis extract, and cannabinoid receptor agonist research chemicals, though just looking at the situation and how it was handled, my suspicions lead me to believe a research chemical was involved...

And sadly, cannabis will still probably take the blame, whether responsible or not.

-eg
 
There's been a recent trend in publications relating to the dangers of cannabis concentrates and edibles, and I am of the opinion that these publications are largely alarmist, and often quite inaccurate.

Here's an example:
Marijuana is perfectly safe" is one of the marijuana legalization movement's most widely accepted (and most important) truisms.

Comical estimations of what would constitute a "lethal dose" -- such as orally consuming more marijuana than the stomach can physically hold -- lead to the also-accepted truism that it's impossible to overdose on marijuana.

That may not be true.

With high-dosage edibles, it's easy to become "uncomfortably high," and with a recent trend called "dabbing," it's also easy to become so high that the user passes out. And passing out leads to the only recorded method of marijuana-related death.
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Even if the substance in the Ohio festival overdose case was cannabis related, I'm sure they will highlight the dangers of these types of cannabis, rather than the fact that it was only a "scare" and all parties involved walked away unharmed.

I live in a state where cannabis is legal, and there was an incident at a high school where a student gave out cannabis cookies without informing his victims that the cookies contained THC, those who ate the cookies were hospitalized, and were fairly freaked out, so going to the hospital from cannabis intoxication does occur...but you figure a crowd of adult festival goers would be able to recognize a heavy cannabis experience, and differentiate it from a dangerous drug reaction, 24 is a lot of people to be freaked out just from cannabis.

Maybe it was cannabis, but for some reason I doubt it...

-eg
 
Some synthetic cannabinoïds are pharmacologically different from THC. I've once taken 3 grams of realy potent hash, and the major side-effect was extreme drowsyness. But it wasn't unpleasant at all. No sickness. If you realy want to get serious OD symptoms from THC, i don't know how much you should take, but it must be realy bizare amounts.
Some synthetic cannabinoïds aren't just much more potent, but also much more dangerous. THC is a partial cannabinoïd agonist. Some synth's are full agonists. That's realy a wholy different thing in terms of risk.
I believe that some synthetic's are realy dangerous.
Cannabinoïd receptors are probably the most dominant receptors in the human body. In numbers that is. They regulate GABA, serotonin, dopamine, etc and you'll find them in virtually every human cell. Full agonists can realy mess up your Chemistry if you take too much of them. It's not the same as partial agonism. People have been hospitalised because of taking too much of them before. They're also much more addictive.

I think synthetic cannabinoïds are realy a serious concern when it comes to public health. There are places where this stuff is being used as if it's just cannabis, mostly because of the dodgy legal status. But given how addictive the stuff can be, AND how realy damaging some of it can be as well when used excessively (addiction and excessive use is something that tends to coincide), i think it's realy unwise to treat the stuff as if it's equal to cannabis.
 
Even if these candies were made almost entirely of high grade hash oil, I still don't see 24 people being hospitalized. I'm certain it must have been some synth cannabinoid that they say is THC because of using tests that don't distinguish THC from other cannabinoid compounds, or because your average news reader probably wouldn't understand what a synthetic cannabinoid is but would recognize "synthetic THC".

We are seeing more and more of these stories pop up where someone starts passing candies containing rc's off as something else at a festival and endangers large numbers of people. This should serve as a strong reminder to be careful out there in festi land. Bring your own party favors if at all possible, bring test kits and use them if you'll be imbibing the local party favors, and be extra careful in taking any candy from strangers in particular.

As someone who often likes to bring mushroom and cannabis edibles to festivals, this is a real eye opener. While I'm always extra careful to disclose ingredients and dosage to anyone with whom I should happen to share my medicine, looking back, it is a little alarming how willing people are to eat something on faith alone. This also goes for the white powders in capsules as much as it does for the homemade goodies.

Please be discerning.

Dance safe my friends
♥
 
dragonrider said:
Some synthetic cannabinoïds are pharmacologically different from THC. I've once taken 3 grams of realy potent hash, and the major side-effect was extreme drowsyness. But it wasn't unpleasant at all. No sickness. If you realy want to get serious OD symptoms from THC, i don't know how much you should take, but it must be realy bizare amounts.
Some synthetic cannabinoïds aren't just much more potent, but also much more dangerous. THC is a partial cannabinoïd agonist. Some synth's are full agonists. That's realy a wholy different thing in terms of risk.
I believe that some synthetic's are realy dangerous.
Cannabinoïd receptors are probably the most dominant receptors in the human body. In numbers that is. They regulate GABA, serotonin, dopamine, etc and you'll find them in virtually every human cell. Full agonists can realy mess up your Chemistry if you take too much of them. It's not the same as partial agonism. People have been hospitalised because of taking too much of them before. They're also much more addictive.

I think synthetic cannabinoïds are realy a serious concern when it comes to public health. There are places where this stuff is being used as if it's just cannabis, mostly because of the dodgy legal status. But given how addictive the stuff can be, AND how realy damaging some of it can be as well when used excessively (addiction and excessive use is something that tends to coincide), i think it's realy unwise to treat the stuff as if it's equal to cannabis.
Click to expand...


Cannabinoid receptor agonists primarily target the CB1 receptor, which has several functions but just to be short, we will call CB1 the psychoactive cannabinoid receptor and CB2 the body receptor, so most these synthetics are aimed at high CB1 receptor agonism.

These synthetic cannabinoid agonists will often have NO chemical relation to any natural cannabinoid*, so it's not like this is simply THC or a natural cannabinoid core with an added "this" or subtracted "that", these are novel compounds which simply have high activity as the same receptor sites as THC with particular focus on CB1 receptors...

So, if your taking an aminoalkylindole class of cannabinoid receptor agonists that was recently devoloped and only has a minimal amount of human use, there's really no.way of knowing what it could do to you. Does the compound have toxic metabolites? Does it lead to physical damage long or short term? Can it cause death? We simply don't know yet.

I'm not saying these are "bad" compounds, I'm saying there are people with "bad" habits of marketing compounds before anything is known about them, you can't blame the compounds, and who knows, some of these compounds may turn out to be medically valuable, we just don't know.

* picture attached shows structural variations of cannabinoid receptor agonists.

Some of these cannabinoid receptor agonists are active in microgram dose...

-eg
 
dragonrider said:
Some synthetic cannabinoïds are pharmacologically different from THC. I've once taken 3 grams of realy potent hash, and the major side-effect was extreme drowsyness. But it wasn't unpleasant at all. No sickness. If you realy want to get serious OD symptoms from THC, i don't know how much you should take, but it must be realy bizare amounts.
Some synthetic cannabinoïds aren't just much more potent, but also much more dangerous. THC is a partial cannabinoïd agonist. Some synth's are full agonists. That's realy a wholy different thing in terms of risk.
I believe that some synthetic's are realy dangerous.
Cannabinoïd receptors are probably the most dominant receptors in the human body. In numbers that is. They regulate GABA, serotonin, dopamine, etc and you'll find them in virtually every human cell. Full agonists can realy mess up your Chemistry if you take too much of them. It's not the same as partial agonism. People have been hospitalised because of taking too much of them before. They're also much more addictive.

I think synthetic cannabinoïds are realy a serious concern when it comes to public health. There are places where this stuff is being used as if it's just cannabis, mostly because of the dodgy legal status. But given how addictive the stuff can be, AND how realy damaging some of it can be as well when used excessively (addiction and excessive use is something that tends to coincide), i think it's realy unwise to treat the stuff as if it's equal to cannabis.
Click to expand...

Structure of cannabinoid receptor agonists

-eg
 

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