Los Angeles firefighters and paramedics help a person who fell ill in downtown Los Angeles, on Monday, Aug. 22, 2016. Firefighters evaluated 18 patients and took 14 of them to hospitals for doctors to determine the cause of the symptoms, said Fire Department spokeswoman Margaret Stewart.
For the second time in less than a week, dozens of people in downtown’s Skid Row area fell ill Monday after smoking a tainted batch of fake marijuana, prompting another massive emergency response, taxing paramedic crews and leading police to scour through homeless encampments.
Eighteen people were evaluated at the scene, where 14 of them were transported to hospitals, fire officials said.
The department received the call at 10:21 a.m., and paramedic units lined up at 429 E. Fifth St., not far from where a similar event occurred on Friday. That’s when the Los Angeles Fire Department initially reported that 18 people fell ill. The numbers later climbed to at least 50 people, and 38 of them were hospitalized after they smoked the batch of fake marijuana known as Spice, medical officials later said.
Dr. Marc Eckstein, medical director for the Fire Department, said emergency personnel are seeing people smoke Spice then have seizures or fall over.
He also said LAFD ambulances and firefighters are being diverted to Skid Row because of the drug. On Monday, 12 paramedic ambulances and 75 firefighters were in the area.
The fake cannabis is a designer drug in which different herbs or plant shrubs are sprayed with home or lab-made liquid chemicals to mimic the effect of tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. The street drug is sold under names such as Scooby Snax, K2, Paradise and Black Magic.
Los Angeles police Capt. Don Graham confirmed that drug dealers are selling Spice for $1 a cigarette, making it easy for Skid Row residents to buy the drug.
“Sometimes it can cause violent behavior, sometimes it causes catatonic behavior,” Graham said.
He said LAPD officers are going encampment to encampment to talk about the drug with local residents.
The crisis is concentrated around the area of Sixth and San Pedro streets, he said.
In addition to the recent incident that started last week, about 20 people on Skid Row were sickened by Spice several month ago, Graham said.
Skid Row is a 54-block area in downtown Los Angeles that has become “synonymous with homelessness and poverty,” according to the Urban Rescue Mission, located on San Pedro Street.
The Rev. Andy Bales, who heads the Union Rescue Mission, said on Friday drugs are a major problem on Skid Row.
“As long as we have people on the street in that brutal reality, they’re going to be looking for an escape,” Bales said.
He said unscrupulous dealers take advantage of the homeless, with some even going as far as “setting up tents” so they can blend in with the Skid Row population.
As Bales explained, Spice is a cheap high, the equivalent of a last resort. People buy it around the middle of the month, after their general relief checks run out.
“It’s usually a dollar a hit,” he said.
Spice emerged in 2009 and its popularity grew. In 2014, 3,682 calls were made to poison control centers nationwide because of Spice. By 2015, that number doubled to 7,794 calls. So far this year, there have been 1,562 exposures reported by the American Association of Poison Control Centers.
Downtown resident Mo Calhoun, 37, said she’s witnessed people smoking Spice a block away from her residence near Skid Row. She said drug dealers come to the neighborhood, sell the drug and leave.
“People are losing their life over a dollar joint,” Calhoun said.
It’s a chemical concoction billed as synthetic marijuana, also called “incense” and “K2.” It’s usually diluted with water, sprayed onto herbs and smoked like weed.
The artificial THC, which mimics the active ingredient in pot, is usually an oil or crystalline powder. After it’s watered down, it is sprayed onto dried plant material and chopped up herbs. The result looks somewhat like pot or tobacco. It is often sold in head shops in small shiny packages for about $50 for about 2 grams, according to Vijay Rathi, a special agent with the DEA.
It’s a cocktail of synthetic cannabinoids cooked up in a lab, often in Russia or China, It can contain any number of ingredients from a hodgepodge of more than 700 chemicals. The potpourri of chemicals is not listed on its flashy packaging.
It looks like marijuana, is ingested like pot but it can have a more intense impact on the body. It’s for users seeking a more intense high, police say.
Spice’s side effects are more severe and can include hallucinations, aggressive behavior and hypertension, police and health officials say.
Some strains have been declared illegal, but that’s not true of all synthetic drugs. Underground chemists in China and India are making new strains quicker than the DEA and U.S. Food and Drug Administration can ban them, officials say.