Synthetic marijuana or spice has been linked with brain damage, psychosis, and kidney failure (photo: Houston PD)

Since I reported last summer about the dangers of K2/Spice, or synthetic marijuana, the news has gotten a lot worse.

Robin Smith of Forest Hill, Maryland, has one of the saddest stories. At 15, her son Kyle experienced a sudden psychotic break after using synthetic marijuana.

"I had a normal child on a Thursday and a not normal child on a Friday," says Smith, who will tell her story to Anderson Cooper on an upcoming episode of CNN's Anderson360. "My son came home from school, smoked K2, and took a loaded gun into the woods."

Two years later, Kyle, now 18, has been institutionalized 17 times for psychiatric care and has made 3 suicide attempts. Most recently, he underwent electroshock therapy at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center, where he's currently in outpatient treatment.

Smith has a petition on where she is trying to raise awareness and support for tougher laws outlying synthetic marijuana, which is also commonly known as K2, Kush, herbal incense, and potpourri. Sold in neon-hued packets  with names like "Mr. Happy," "Phantom Wicked Dreams," "Scooby Snacks" and "Lava," synthetic marijuana has become increasingly possible with preteens, teens and twenty-somethings, who think it's safer than pot (and even legal) because you can buy it at gas stations, convenience stores, and head shops. (And absurdly easily online.)

Spice, Stroke, and Brain Damage

This is actually the second time a tragic story involving a teen and permanent damage from spice has made headlines. In February, 16-year-old Emily Bauer of Cyprus, Texas, suffered a series of strokes and was put into an induced coma after ingesting Spice at a party. CNN covered the case after Emily Bauer’s sister, Blake Harrison, wrote a desperate plea on CNN’s iReport detailing her sister's story and pleading with news organization to alert parents to the potential tragic results of spice use among teens

Typical packaging for synthetic marijuana (photo: from retailer)

Even after months of treatment, Emily Bauer is still blind, partially paralyzed, and suffers from severe cognitive impairment. The family has launched a charitable organization, Synthetic Awareness for Emily (SAFE) to focus attention on the issue.

Spice and Kidney Damage

These cases aren’t isolated, though. Also in February, the CDC issued an alert describing 16 cases of kidney damage from synthetic marijuana. The first warning came from Wyoming, where three patients were hospitalized with sever kidney damage; others came from Oregon, New York, Rhode Island, Oklahoma and Kansas. The kidney damage from many of these cases was very severe, five to the point of requiring dialysis.

In December, 2012, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) released a report showing that synthetic marijuana was responsible for 11,400 emergency room visits in one year. The vast majority of those admitted were between the ages of 12 and 29. Worse, the data used in the report were from 2010, when Spice didn’t have anywhere near the popularity it has now.

Soon after the report came out, Anderson Cooper invited Dr. Ian Smith to discuss the dangers of synthetic marijuana for teens and young people on his show Anderson Live.

And back in 2011, before synthetic marijuana had received much media attention, Forbes reporter David Kroll reported on an article in Pediatrics detailing the cases of three teenage boys in Texas who had heart attacks after smoking spice.

Why Is Spice So Dangerous?

Synthetic marijuana resembles its natural counterpart in the sense that it looks like a handful of green leaves and twigs - but that’s where the similarity ends. The leaves and twigs don’t come from Cannabis plants - they can be just about any herb (tea is often used) which has then been sprayed or soaked with a solution of synthetic chemicals. Spice hasn't been associated with the extreme violence associated with the other news-making synthetic drug, Bath Salts, but by causing hallucinations and paranoia it can lead to dangerous behavior.