I-Team 10 Investigation on synthetic marijuana tonight at 5, preview of part 2 at 6

Posted at: 02/03/2012 1:51 PM | Updated at: 02/06/2012 10:27 AM
By: Berkeley Brean | WHEC.com

Tonight at 5, you can watch I-Team 10's investigation into one of the most dangerous things out there for you and your children. 

***A preview of Part 2 is at News10NBC at 6 with the full undercover report on News10NBC at 11.***

I-Team 10 is investigating the sale of a substance that is causing some people to have seizures and get rushed to the hospital.

The trouble is -- it's easy to get and it's absolutely, 100% legal.

It's synthetic marijuana.

It comes in small, glossy packages labeled as incense, spice or potpourri. It goes by the name White Rhino, Mr. Happy and K2. They all come with a warning -- "not for human consumption."

But the dirty little secret in this town is that smoking this can get you a marijuana high and the people who sell it know exactly why you're buying it.

And we know this because we went undercover.

"Hey what's up?" the store clerk said to our producer with a hidden camera.
"Hey man, you got K2?" our producer asked.

With a hidden camera we went into a half dozen stores in and around Rochester. We wanted to see what happened when we asked about smoking synthetic marijuana, sold as potpourri and incense.

"Now when you say strong it's going to get me a lot higher?" our producer asked a different store.
"I guess," the clerk answered. "I've never actually tried any of them. I just kind of go by what other people say when they come in."

We go into a convenience store on Clifford Avenue.

"You guys got this K2 stuff?"

The product sits right on their counter.

"Are there different strengths?" our producer asked.
"Yeah. Some are strong and more strong, more strong," the clerk said in broken English.

We went into the store on Clifford Ave. because it's where Shane Ross shopped for his high.

"I went into the store and purchased a bag and I rolled it up. I tried it and immediately it got me high," Ross said.

Ross is in rehab now and off synthetic marijuana. He said his K2 high literally paralyzed him on his couch. "It also gave me sharp pains in my heart. Sometimes I thought I was going to have a heart attack because my heart was beating so fast," he said.

What Ross was smoking was a combination of herbs laced with man-made chemicals that mimic the THC in marijuana. Watch a portion of our interview with him

"The problem is most parents are in the dark about this. The kids know, but the parents don't," Ross Amico said. Amico is a drug counselor at DePaul. We talked to him on the night he was talking to parents in Brighton about the dangers and prevalence of synthetic marijuana. He says the product is legal and packaging makes it look harmless. The packages even come with the warning: "not for human consumption."

"So if I'm a kid I go home. 'Oh, what did you get today?' 'Oh I just got some incense mom.' And the parent looks at it and oh, it's not for human consumption. Blah, blah blah. They don't think anything of it," Amico said. "The reality is these kids are then smoking it." See a portion of the interview

And they're ending up in the hospital.

The Emergency Department at Strong hospital sees at least one person a day because of it.
Dr. Tim Wiegand showed us the synthetic marijuana doctors took from patients in the E.D. They're the same packages we see in the stores. Dr. Wiegand says he's seen heart palpitations, hallucinations and seizures.

"THC and marijuana don't cause seizures. We know that," Dr. Wiegand said. "Well these incense products tend to cause seizures in some individuals." Watch a portion of the interview

Shane Ross says he never suffered a seizure -- but it sure felt close. He said getting the stuff was easy and that the clerks who sold it to him knew exactly what it would be used for.

"When I went there I was like, is this going to show up in my system? And they're like, no. I'm like are you sure? And they're like no," Ross said. "So I'm like what affects does it give me? And they're like it's the same as marijuana. It's going to get you high."

"So they knew you wanted to smoke it," I asked.
"Right. They knew that it was for smoking. They knew it wasn't used for incense," Ross said.

But what would they say to us?

We go back inside the convenience store where Shane Ross got his.  

And we get the same answers.

"Compared to weed, it's not going to like, it gets a similar high?" our producer with the hidden camera asked.
"Yeah," the clerk said in broken English. "You know what this is the, take you very high but not show in system. That's what people with you know with the, what's the name, probation...drug tests."

With this, we decided we had to go back with our regular camera to see if the stores and the clerks could explain themselves.

"How's it going?" I asked the same clerk on Clifford Avenue.
"How you doing sir?" he said.
"Good. We're from channel 10 and we wanted to talk to you a little bit."
"Me?" he asked.
"Yeah."

Watch News10NBC at 6 on Monday. You'll see the answers we get were very different from the ones we heard when they did not know they were on camera.

Important Note
It's not against the law for those stores to sell it.
It's not against the law for people to smoke it.
Anytime the government outlaws one of the samples -- we're told the manufacturers just change the chemical compound and it's legal again.

For more Rochester, N.Y. news go to our website www.whec.com.

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