Who would start a SYNTHETIC marijuana ring?

[jmowreader]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/02/us-usa-florida-breakingbad-idUSBREA010X720140102

I can understand starting a ganja ring, or a meth ring, or a heroin ring...but why risk prison making something anyone can buy over the Internet?

[TheBlackAdder]

1. If it's synthetic... you can patent it. Natural plants and compounds can't be patented.

That's one reason why drug companies push synthetic drugs and dislike natural variants.

They cannot monopolize the market on it.

[jmowreader]

4. This isn't a pharmaceutical operation, BlackAdder

Unlike natural marijuana that has a lot of healing properties, synthetic marijuana is only good for getting high on.

[TheBlackAdder]

5. Perhaps the synthetic version is not detectable using dogs or machines.

It may also leave the body faster, to invalidate drug testing.

[Warren DeMontague]

2. "Synthetic" marijuana is bullshit.

Basically they're just calling some random psychoactive chemicals- usually harmful- "marijuana". As if anything that gets anyone fucked up in any fashion, is "marijuana".

It's clever from a drug warrior perspective, though, because then whatever awful health effects this crap causes can be linked to the word "marijuana", regardless of whether there is any actual chemical or physical relationship.

[In_The_Wind]

3. I thought they stopped making Spice 2 years ago.

It said more than 700 pounds (315 kg) of 79,000 individually packaged packets of synthetic marijuana were seized with an estimated street value of $1.25 million.