Life sciences
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Over the past five years the number of internet sites advertising "legal highs" has literally exploded, as have user reports of experiences (both pleasurable and frightening) with these substances and the number of emergency room visits by users. Although the majority of these "legal highs" have been described as bath salts and herbal extracts, most contain neither plant derived compounds nor components of personal hygiene products. So-called "bath salts" largely contain synthetic analogs of the natural compound Khat; spice-related materials, claimed to be "legal marijuana," are mostly synthetic analogs of cannabinoid receptor ligands that were developed as research tools. This review describes the emergence and properties of these two groups of "legal highs" from a medicinal chemist's perspective.
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Cannabimimetics (commonly referred to as synthetic cannabinoids), a group of compounds encompassing a wide range of chemical structures, have been developed by scientists with the hope of achieving selectivity toward one or the other of the cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2. The goal was to have compounds that could possess high therapeutic activity without many side effects. However, underground laboratories have used the information generated by the scientific community to develop these compounds for illicit use as marijuana substitutes. This chapter reviews the different classes of these "synthetic cannabinoids" with particular emphasis on the methods used for their identification in the herbal products with which they are mixed and identification of their metabolites in biological specimens.