Punch Newspapers
19- Dec- 2016

Let’s face it, many people use marijuana in Nigeria. And though its cultivation and use are illegal, marijuana is smoked openly.
While the majority smoke Indian hemp, many people steep it in local gin or water and sip it like tea; while others eat is as vegetable.
Marijuana goes by various names, including cannabis, weed, igbo, Indian hemp, pot, etc.
While the name it goes by may not necessarily matter, what is of concern is that there is fake marijuana in town, and its effects are deadlier than those associated with the better known Indian hemp that smokers are probably familiar with!
According to an analysis published in The New England Journal of Medicine , unlike the real Indian hemp that is grown in the farm, fake marijuana is actually produced in the laboratories traced to China, and it contains harmful and unsafe chemicals.
Scientific researchers led by Dr. Axel J. Adams, say this fake weed is 85 times more potent than ‘original’ marijuana! They warn that smoking, drinking, or eating fake marijuana, even just once, is a big risk that can affect your health and future.
Adams says synthetic marijuana is a designer drug that mimics the effects of cannabis sprayed onto a herbal base material. And it can be bought online, in head shops, and other stores.
As dangerous as it is, the ingredients found in synthetic marijuana have been banned in many European countries. That tells you how dangerous they can be!
A medical toxicologist at the New York University School of Medicine, Lewis Nelson, warns that unlike the normal marijuana as we know it, synthetic Indian hemp is “really quite different, and the effects are much more unpredictable. It’s dangerous, and there is no quality control in what you are getting.”
What are the effects of synthetic cannabis?
Toxicologists say synthetic cannabis may make the user develop sudden mental illness that makes him behave strangely or to believe things that are not true. In medicine, this is called psychosis.
They warn that in some cases, psychosis may be prolonged, and it may worsen existing symptoms.
Anyone with history of mental illness is worse off, the researchers warn; as the synthetic cannabis is stated to be more toxic to the brain and more addictive than regular cannabis.
The researchers say the ingredients in synthetic Indian hemp is more than a single substance, and there could be a “multitude of combinations” of ingredients concocted in laboratories that are suspected to be domiciled mostly in China.
Other undesirable effects most commonly reported by users include drowsiness, light-headedness, and fast or irregular heartbeat.
Smokers may also suffer severe clinical features such as delirium (a mental state in which you are confused and not able to think or speak clearly), cardiotoxicity (a weak heart that cannot pump or circulate blood), seizures, acute kidney injury, hyperthermia (extremely high body temperature), and death.

http://punchng.com/beware-marijuana-may-fake/