Pa. boy, 13, ill after smoking synthetic pot, dies

[TheLostBoys]

If his parents had taught him better, he might've avoided this costly mistake.

Logic, sometimes no matter how much parents teach their kids right & wrong, the kids still do stupid stuff. For instance, my father taught me not to touch his rifles & handguns from an early age, like 2 years old but when I was 6 or 7, I went into the closet, got a chair & reached the empty revolver which was in a box & pulled it down, then I also grabbed the bullets that were in another box & began to load the revolver.

I then went over to my parents bed & sat there while I "acted" like I was shooting the gun but never pulled the trigger because looking back at it now, only conclusion I can come up with is I thought I could hurt someone if I did pulls the trigger or maybe someone was watching over me, either way, I was very lucky I didnt shoot myself. I then unloaded the handgun & put everything back in its place fearing I would get into trouble if I got caught.

Bottom line is I was lucky & maybe I used common sense, I dont know, I was very young but bad things do happen to kids no matter how much parents teach their kids the right thing & you cant blame parents for all bad things do, altho that is an easy way for police & who ever else to blame.

Its a tough f**king world out there & if you have kids, good luck!

 

[Blanch]

I feel bad for the kid, more so his parents, but like stayfaded said he kinda had it coming. I never really feel bad for ppl that OD. The only time i feel some sympathy for them is when they were really trying to quit. Besides that, you know the risks and if you didn't then you sure as shit do now. If I ever OD don't keep me on a ventilator or try some expensive surgery to keep me kicking. Just let me die. Everything in life has a risk and a reward, when you risk too much and loose then it's time to face the music.

 

[Spite Suicide669]

Why is everyone in this thread such a fucking dick?
A kid decides to get high, he dies, and you say he deserves it.

I hope you all realize what assholes you are.

This is an unfortunate incident, lets hope its doesnt happen often or to your own kids.

You need to rewire your brains to feel sympathy and compassion for something like this.
We are all drug users here and some sort of accident can happen to any of us.

The responses in this thread are as bad the news itself.

Amen.
To qoute a wiser person, every death is tragic.

 

[MemphisX3]

so hold on....ugh....


HE SMOKED IT OUT OF A FUCKING PEZ DISPENSER AND THEY ARE BLAMING THE SYNTHETIC POT?

 

[Spite Suicide669]

Why is everyone in this thread such a fucking dick?
A kid decides to get high, he dies, and you say he deserves it.

I hope you all realize what assholes you are.

This is an unfortunate incident, lets hope its doesnt happen often or to your own kids.

You need to rewire your brains to feel sympathy and compassion for something like this.
We are all drug users here and some sort of accident can happen to any of us.

The responses in this thread are as bad the news itself.

Amen.
To qoute a wiser person, every death is tragic.

 

[f33lg00d]

Kids will suffer most from these research chemicals, since kids usually are the most ignorant about their own health(atleast I was) if its up to them. I personally wouldnt touch these, but 6-10 yrs ago id been like " omfg kewl legal weed lets make a gravity bong ". If not for these prohibition laws the kid would most likely have smoked a joint and had a laugh & could still be alive, and this chemical would never have been mass produced or even known about.

False, he'd still be dead because he would have smoked the weed ,instead of spice, out a pez dispenser.

 

[Syrax]

I'd say it's more about education than anything else. Prohibition or not. He just needed someone to tell him the safest way to do what he was doing.

Is he dumb for not knowing that inhaling plastic fumes would really fuck him up? I guess. But who cares. It's not really too different from somebody driving drunk into a telephone pole. Or somebody IVing pills, etc. It doesn't really serve much of a purpose to blame the individual when they don't receive education that was obviously needed.

If you think about it, the fact that he was a kid doesn't really matter. Adults do things just as stupid and risky in attempts to get high. But if you show people the safest way to do things and effectively communicate the dangers, lives can be saved.

Harm-reduction education is most applicable to people like this. As opposed to those of us who spend time meticulously researching drugs online before putting them in our body. 8)

 

[23536]

What would harm reduction look like for this particular thing? Pamphlets in elementary schools about proper smoking technique?

 

[killermunchies]

^ Exactly, I occasionally indulge in jwh chemicals because I got busted a few months ago and if I smoke marijuana, I will fail a drug test, they will re-seize my car and I will go to jail for a long time, not to mention when I get out, I will have no place to live.

^ Imo, those are all good reasons not to smoke pot.

I feel bad for the kid but at the same time, it seems like common sense to not inhale burning plastic, though not everyone is raised right and I think that has more to do with it. If his parents had taught him better, he might've avoided this costly mistake.

I'm in the same boat as you and I agree completely. It's a fact of life that 13 year olds will do dumb things. At the same time though, the kid was dumb, and ultimately died a tragic death. It's no different than if the kid ran into a busy road instead. Kids will always do dumb things and some of those things will end tragically. While the situation is sad, the incense really isn't to blame here. I've used various JWH's countless times and I've managed not to get chemical burns on my lungs. When millions of people get their hands on something, odds are a few of them will fuck up pretty badly.

 

[Darksidesam]

The brain is still developing till the age of 21,
so at the age of 13, well you can have an idea!
I was still making shiz with lego at the age of 13,
(Im 20 btw)
maybe some people dont see sense as much?
I know in the past year alone, ive grown up a lot and i think of better ways of doing stuff, or i can look at life from different angles.

point being is
the kid wasnt educated on HOW to smoke it, as its seen as a Taboo near enough in society and unfortunately because of this, he lost hes life.
Where as if it was seen as less of a taboo and we accepted that peope use substances, then there would be safety guidance provided for it,

 

[Doctor X]

It's great to see non-biased, impartial reporting like this.
You'd think if they were trying to falsely place the blame on the smoke, they wouldn't shouldn't have mentioned that the idiot smoked it out of a Pez dispenser...

 

[xstayfadedx]

How did we know this kid didn't know how to smoke the right way? Today I know elementary school kids who know how to roll joints and in todays age smoking marijuana is not "taboo". Its looked at as everyone does it and did you ever wonder how he got the synthetic marijuana? I'm sure if he figured out how to smoke out a pez dispenser then he knew how to smoke the correct way too. Its just the thirteen year old can't get a bong or what not so they do stupid shit like this.... Man if he was really desperate he could of used aluminum even though that's just as bad but in the end this kid had not just one but TWO lung transplants! That clearly says don't fucking do it but he did and now he's dead.

Everyone acts like thirteen year olds are as dumb as rocks. When I was thirteen I was in 8th grade and we had tons of kids smoking pot but not out of no damn pez dispenser.

 

[alasdairm]

It was certainly not the chemicals in the drugs that damaged his lungs.
It was certainly the chemicals released by the burning plastic.
How can the reporter lie like that?

certainly? to what information do you have access, that those closer to this story do not?

how can you be so certain of what you're saying? i think this is a sad tale and i agree with you that the conclusion being drawn seems shaky but i think you're guilty of doing exactly the same...

alasdair

 

[23536]

a medical opinion on this:

Dr. J. Douglas Bricker, dean of Duquesne University's Mylan School of Pharmacy, said that although he doesn't underestimate the danger of the ingredients in the man-made designer drug, smoking synthetic marijuana in a plastic PEZ dispenser would have been a "significant factor" in Brandon's death.

"[The drugs are] fairly potent, but nothing in the literature has been shown to cause any lung toxicity," he said. But Bricker said plastic -- such as that found in the candy dispenser -- heated at high temperatures will release highly toxic cyanide gas and carbon monoxide.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/westmoreland/s_764280.html

---

Thats how they're all given

Technically, self-sterilization makes a person eligible for a Darwin too.

 

[slimvictor]

certainly? to what information do you have access, that those closer to this story do not?

how can you be so certain of what you're saying? i think this is a sad tale and i agree with you that the conclusion being drawn seems shaky but i think you're guilty of doing exactly the same...

alasdair

Actually, I am relying on what is known as "common sense" to support my argument.
What the kid smoked was packaged and sold for the purpose of smoking (though the label may have hidden that fact), and if it destroyed the lungs, we would have heard of many, many more such cases.
Common sense tells us that inhaling the fumes of burning plastic is incredibly toxic.
If that is not enough for you, you must think that many, many common-sensical things are based on shaky conclusions.

 

[slimvictor]

Many people have said that the parents should have taught the kid that burning plastic produces toxic smoke.
But I strongly suspect that the people who say this are not parents. (Or, possibly, that they are parents to infants.)
They clearly have no idea of the incredible amount of information that is required to be taught to a child, or the fact that the child may go and do something that s/he was specifically taught not to do.

There are many, many dangers in the world, from burning plastic to downed power lines to back-stabbing drug dealers to sticking forks in electric sockets to crossing the street to kidnappers to choking on food.
To teach a child about everything dangerous in the world would require the parent to focus only on dangers for 16 years.
That would also mean that the parent only viewed the world in terms of dangers. It would require a completely psychotic parent, actually. And you still couldn't be sure that the kid would listen.

Instead, parents want to teach kids the basic dangers - of which there are many - and also take time to enjoy life.
Such enjoyment is impossible if the parent only focuses on dangers, which is what the people who make such comments are demanding (though they don't realize it. Instead, they imagine that life with children has lots of extra time and chances to teach them, and that there are many opportunities when the kids are focused, alert and ready to take in new information, and that the kid will definitely process and remember the information, and that the kid will never doubt or mistrust the information, and that the kid will never act as if s/he doesn't know the information. I would likely have made a similar comment before I had kids, but now that I am aware of the complexity of the situation, I would not.)

 

[Pindar]

a medical opinion on this:
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/westmoreland/s_764280.html

To add:

Although cannabis itself has a comparatively low acute toxicity, it cannot be dismissed that at least some of these compounds could cause severe or even life‐threatening intoxications when overdosed. This is particularly likely for compounds which act as full agonists at the CB1 receptor, e. g. HU‐210, CP‐55,940 or WIN‐55,212‐2 considering that THC only acts as a partial agonist at this same receptor site [19, 34]. Recently, an increase in the number and severity of symptoms observed in hospitalized persons after
consumption of herbal mixtures containing JWH‐122, e. g. ‘Lava Red’ and ‘OMG’, was observed in Germany
[65] and Italy (EWS report, 07.12.2010). Some of these patients suffered from generalised muscular spasms and/or loss of consciousness, requiring artificial ventilation. This emphasizes that even slight changes in the molecular structure might lead to a dramatic increase in toxicity, bearing in mind that with JWH‐018 such symptoms were not reported.

http://www.unodc.org/documents/scientific/Synthetic_Cannabinoids.pdf

And I wonder how he got the synthetic cannabinoid to begin with? From a classmate? Ordered it online?

 

[alasdairm]

Actually, I am relying on what is known as "common sense" to support my argument.
What the kid smoked was packaged and sold for the purpose of smoking (though the label may have hidden that fact), and if it destroyed the lungs, we would have heard of many, many more such cases.
Common sense tells us that inhaling the fumes of burning plastic is incredibly toxic.
If that is not enough for you, you must think that many, many common-sensical things are based on shaky conclusions.

so you're just guessing. maybe an 'educated' guess, but a guess nonetheless.

harm reduction should be based on more than guessing.



alasdair

 

[cj]

What would harm reduction look like for this particular thing? Pamphlets in elementary schools about proper smoking technique?

My thoughts exactly. While it is tragic it is also reality that young teens will do stupid things and inevitably some will die that is just life. Doesnt make it not tragic or sad. My issue with this whole thing is the reporter he or she has an agenda and is using this childs death to advance it. I consider this part of the ongoing media blitz against synthetic cannabinoids that has been launched over the last couple months.

 

[Syrax]

Yeah I get it. This kid could've easily died from solvents just the same with the way he was doing things. Or he could've been one of those kids who die from "the choking game."

I'm not a parent by any means. But I know most parents aren't aware of all this crazy shit unless they're super neurotic and over-involved. Most people over a certain age have probably never heard of synthetic marijuana.

I'd like to believe that something could've been done to help this kid make a better decision though. But maybe that gets too far into my unrealistic HR views. He needed a friend or an older kid to tell him what he was doing was dumb.

I would really think that the smell of burning plastic would immediately bother him. I mean, I can recall times when I or someone I knew did kind of dumb things with drugs around his age. Maybe not this dumb, but it is what it is. It's a very sad situation for his family.

But yeah, the focus of this story is definitely not the kid. It's going to be used to further manipulate public opinion about synthetic cannabinoids. You know there are people in PA who now believe that a child died from smoking "fake weed" because they heard it from someone or saw it on the local news.