Demi Moore was reported as having had “convulsions” after smoking an undetermined substance (probably “Spice”) late last week. Spice and K2 are both generic names used to refer to a wide range of synthetic cannabinoids, designer drugs intended to mimic the effect of marijuana on the brain. Many varieties of spice boast that they are made of “legal herbs”, which is always almost untrue — and even when the substances involved are legal, they are not intended for smoking, and tend to have severe adverse effects. A physician quoted in the linked article above states that spice usage can often lead to “prolonged seizure and seizure-like activity”, and that the lack of quality control makes purchasing these compounds a potentially lethal form of gambling with the amounts of chemicals involved.
Yet one of the most stunning things about this story is how little attention it’s getting. If Demi Moore had collapsed from a new flu strain, the public health resources of the entire country would be focused on dealing with the issue in a major way; people would be lined up to buy their hand sanitizer and get their flu shot. Because her collapse was addiction-related, and we see addiction as being “not a public health problem” or just a natural price of stardom, it is essentially ignored — despite the fact that the same condition is epidemic in almost every community in the nation. Where are the people lined up to buy lock boxes for their prescription pills? Where is the public education campaign asking people to do this? Where are the resources of the CDC aggressively pursuing an answer? Where are the parents boycotting those stores that sell stuff like this to our kids? Where is leadership from the addiction treatment community to get any of this done? There is a bill currently in Congress to outlaw Spice, K2, and other compounds, but the designer drug industry will only continue to flourish, pushing more and more dangerous compounds that have been carefully engineered to evade the strictest legal rules, regardless of what effects that engineering has on the health of those who use it. Without widespread public education and public health resources available to everyone, substance-seeking and addictive behavior will just move on to more and more lethal experiments.
What we are experiencing now in the “War on Drugs” bears many similarities to what the country experienced during Prohibition. Outlawing alcohol did little to decrease drinking; instead, people moved on to bootleg methanol, which caused seizures, blindness, and death. What we are seeing in the proliferation of spice compounds is the same pushback against ineffective and harmful legislation. Marijuana is safer, less addictive, and less likely to cause violence than alcohol; it has been grouped in with other, much more dangerous drugs like cocaine, and been outlawed along with them. For those who claim it is a “gateway drug”, I would like to note that the marijuana substitutes being produced now are, technically, legal — those who want to smoke marijuana are very interested in staying within the bounds of the law. No one bothers with “legal” synthetics of heroin or cocaine, because those drugs cause a potent addiction that makes the drug a priority over all legal or moral concerns. Marijuana does not do the same.
If we believe that all mind-altering substances should be forbidden and illegal, then it makes no sense at all to have alcohol freely available and encouraged throughout our society. If we agree that some mind-altering substances can be taken recreationally, when well-controlled and in safe circumstances, then legalizing marijuana becomes a sound health and economic choice.
I do not personally endorse anyone taking mind-altering substances, or breaking the law. But I think it’s foolish that we seem willing to sacrifice countless people to harmful synthetic drugs rather than legalize a substance that wouldn’t even be the most damaging or addictive substance a 21-year-old could purchase anywhere in the country. Demi Moore is a highly visible personality, but for every celebrity whose drug use makes the news, there are millions of others who are being harmed out of the public eye. That’s an epidemic, and it’s time we worked towards stopping it.