'Spice' is far from nice

COEUR d'ALENE - It's a hard drug with a barcode.

It's got a scary, intense and dangerous high, but some kids are still finding it and using it.

Spice, a synthetic marijuana, remains popular with the juvenile crowd, according to drug investigators with the Kootenai County Sheriff's Office.

"Apparently they are buying it in Spokane or ordering it online," Lt. Stu Miller said Thursday.

Meantime, Miller said, "We have not seen an adult using it for some time."

"When you take too many hits of Spice, you feel like your heart is going to explode in your chest (and) that you will die," said Geoffrey Getter, 24, of Stanwood, Wash., which is north of Seattle. Getter, who is in Coeur d'Alene for a drug rehabilitation program, agreed with others in the program to talk about the little known drug.

Getter said Spice has given him scary hallucinations.

"To this day I ask myself, 'Why did I just keep lighting it?'" he said. Within a two-week period of using Spice he lost his girlfriend, he totaled his car, he stole from his family, he became homeless and ended up in jail.

This month, authorities in Colorado began investigating the deaths of three people and the hospitalization of 75 others after possibly smoking Spice.

The illegal drug has multiple other names on the street, such as Black Mamba, K2, Yucatan Fire, or Herbal Incense to name a few.

"The things that are in there are never, ever meant to be in the human body," Getter said.

When he stopped using Spice he vomited blood for three days, he said.

"What I've experienced, it's like (intravenous) drug use," said Jason Dynes, of Moscow, who's also in Coeur d'Alene for rehab.

Spice has made Dynes, 37, feel paralyzed, delusional, paranoid and thrown him into violent rages. Dynes, a 20-year methamphetamine user, said he never wanted to use Spice again after his first try.

"My first experience with Spice was the exact experience I had when I tried to commit suicide on cocaine in a hotel room when I shot up," he said. "That was the experience I had by taking like three hits of Spice."

He went on to use it a couple more times, but it was too "insane" and unpredictable to continue.

Flakes of the material are smoked like marijuana, but the drug is cheaper and stronger.

Getter, Dynes and others in rehab who spoke with The Press said they bought Spice at so-called "head shops" where customers buy smoking implements such as glass pipes, at smoke shops, at gas stations and online. Their experience was that clerks sold Spice regardless of a customer's age.

If the word got out and teens learned where to go, they'd flood a business to score Spice. Even when illegal, they found they could buy it "under-the-counter" at businesses.

Brandi Rudy-Glanzer, 21, of Idaho Falls, said the high is really unpredictable.

"You can be violent and delusional and you can exhibit symptoms of being on heroin," she said.

She said she passed out outside houses during parties, sometimes in the snow, or took off her clothes and ran around, leaving herself incredibly vulnerable.

Spice made her feel way up and sometimes way down, depending on the chemicals used for that Spice.

"For me, I used Spice for about six months and it led to heroin and methamphetamine," Rudy-Glanzer said.

Coming down from Spice was horrible, she said.

"Your body just feels depleted after you don't have it," she said. "I was just exhausted and depressed. I didn't even want to be alive anymore."

She feels betrayed and misled by the producers of the drug.

"It's just packaged so cute," said Rudy-Glanzer. "Other drugs you get you know it's just dirty and bad."

She said it's definitely marketed to a younger consumer. She's seen kids as young as 13 use it.

"It's not just in like a Ziploc bag and ripped and burned," she said. "They're like little silver shiny bags."

The packages have catchy names and suggest different flavors such as bubble gum or blueberry and different scents. It doesn't have the smell of marijuana - one many parents would quickly recognize on their teens.

"Spice is popular and very dangerous," said Neil Uhrig, a school resource officer and juvenile crime detective for the Post Falls Police Department. The Coeur d'Alene Police Department didn't respond to a request for information about the drug.

Uhrig said, "I find that it is commonly used among juveniles who are on probation, specifically because it doesn't give a positive result on standard urine tests that they are subject to."

Spice is made from an inert plant leaf that has been soaked in a chemical that produces the high.

"There are presently over 100 different chemicals that gives the high," Uhrig said. Under current Idaho code, only a few of those chemicals have been banned, he said.

"So what we are seeing from the creators of this drug is that they switch to a legal chemical and use it until the Legislature bans it, and then they change it again," Uhrig said. "I have encountered more 'legal' Spice than 'illegal' Spice precisely because of this."

Police don't have what they'd call a "street test" to determine if the Spice a person has is illegal, he said.

"Presently, we have lots of different tests for meth, cocaine, marijuana and other drugs - but we have nothing for Spice," Uhrig said.

So if Uhrig encounters Spice he is unable to do much until a state lab confirms that it is a banned substance, which takes about a month.

"When I visit with students, I ask them to tell me about past drug use," Uhrig said. "They commonly admit to past use with Spice, but many find it to be a 'scary' high and don't care for it. Marijuana is more popular."

A 16-year-old Coeur d'Alene boy - who has now graduated from local Pastor Tim Remington's Good Samaritan drug and alcohol rehabilitation program - said he had started using Spice when he was about 13 or 14 years old.

He recalled many horrible experiences using the drug but kept coming back to it for some reason.

"I started because I was on probation and I couldn't smoke weed anymore," he said.

Soon he learned to make Spice, buying the chemicals online or wherever he could. He said he could whip up a batch at home in an hour.

"They have so many different chemicals out there it's unbelievable," he said. "That's the thing: There's so many different ones you don't even know what to expect."