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Bluelight Crew
full http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2012-1...florida-is-the-next-big-drug-craze-dangerous/
The controversy over kratom is poised to break into the mainstream, as distributors have begun packaging it in shiny aluminum cases with names like "Pissed-Off Elephant" and "Slothapuss." With bong shops suddenly pitching the plant as the next great legal high and news stories sparking blowback, advocates worry legal action might be inevitable.
The busty clerk at Grateful J's head shop in Boca Raton holds out a small brown vial. The label reads "Lucky," and she promises the stuff packs a punch.
"You'll want to throw it to the back of your throat," she suggests. "I'd say drink the whole thing. Maybe drink half, wait a little bit, and see how you feel."
The potion is kratom, and it's taking center stage in America's next big drug scare. In recent months, MSNBC reported that kratom has sent users to the ER, the Daily called it a "hallucinogenic drug" with "potentially fatal side effects," Forbes asked if it was the next bath salts, and ABC Action News in Tampa claimed that "it can be more difficult to get off than heroin." Kratom is legal and supported by a vocal community touting its health benefits, but in the wake of bath salts and synthetic pot — drugs tied to scores of gruesome crimes this year, including (probably erroneously) the "Miami Zombie" attack — lawmakers are eager to ban the next big thing.
"It's not a safe high by any means," Frank LoVecchio, director of Phoenix's Banner Good Samaritan Poison and Drug Information Center, says. "If you take enough of it, it has opiate-like activities. It makes people high kind of the same way morphine or heroin would make them high."
But is kratom actually a youth-menacing brain-destroyer or merely another victim of Reefer Madness-like hysteria? That question has become important as the drug finds its way to South Florida and lawmakers debate whether to prohibit it. New bans, after all, cost taxpayers, prosecutors, and cops thousands of dollars and countless hours.
full http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2012-1...florida-is-the-next-big-drug-craze-dangerous/
The controversy over kratom is poised to break into the mainstream, as distributors have begun packaging it in shiny aluminum cases with names like "Pissed-Off Elephant" and "Slothapuss." With bong shops suddenly pitching the plant as the next great legal high and news stories sparking blowback, advocates worry legal action might be inevitable.
The busty clerk at Grateful J's head shop in Boca Raton holds out a small brown vial. The label reads "Lucky," and she promises the stuff packs a punch.
"You'll want to throw it to the back of your throat," she suggests. "I'd say drink the whole thing. Maybe drink half, wait a little bit, and see how you feel."
The potion is kratom, and it's taking center stage in America's next big drug scare. In recent months, MSNBC reported that kratom has sent users to the ER, the Daily called it a "hallucinogenic drug" with "potentially fatal side effects," Forbes asked if it was the next bath salts, and ABC Action News in Tampa claimed that "it can be more difficult to get off than heroin." Kratom is legal and supported by a vocal community touting its health benefits, but in the wake of bath salts and synthetic pot — drugs tied to scores of gruesome crimes this year, including (probably erroneously) the "Miami Zombie" attack — lawmakers are eager to ban the next big thing.
"It's not a safe high by any means," Frank LoVecchio, director of Phoenix's Banner Good Samaritan Poison and Drug Information Center, says. "If you take enough of it, it has opiate-like activities. It makes people high kind of the same way morphine or heroin would make them high."
But is kratom actually a youth-menacing brain-destroyer or merely another victim of Reefer Madness-like hysteria? That question has become important as the drug finds its way to South Florida and lawmakers debate whether to prohibit it. New bans, after all, cost taxpayers, prosecutors, and cops thousands of dollars and countless hours.
full http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2012-1...florida-is-the-next-big-drug-craze-dangerous/
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