Oregon Public Broadcasting

A new recreational drug that hit the market this spring has sent 23 Oregonians to the hospital. The drug is illegal in many European countries but freely available in Oregon and most other states. Amelia Templeton reports.

The drug is called Spice or K-2.

It’s sold in stores as incense, but people are buying it to smoke. It's freely available to both kids and adults. And its become so mainstream amazon.com sells it.

Spice contains a man-made compound that's almost, but not quite, identical to THC. That's the active ingredient in marijuana.

The slight molecular difference between the two is the reason Spice isn't regulated under current law. And  Dr. Zane Horowitz of the Oregon Poison Center says Spice appears to affect the brain in ways that marijuana doesn't.

That means scary side effects.

Zane Horowitz: "Patients come in, they're agitated. They're sometimes hallucinating. They're sometimes having a racing heart rate"  

Horowitz says Spice is sending one or two people to the emergency room each week, mostly teenagers. But he doesn't know of any deaths associated with the drug.