Wagoner Officials Educate Students, Parents On Dangers Of Synthetic Drugs

A Green Country community is using education to fight the war on synthetic drugs.

The drugs are sold over the counter and police say they're made to look safe, but police say they're anything but. Instead, they're highly addictive and targeted toward teens.

"More and more deaths are being seen as a result of this product," said Cindy Farmer, Director of the Cherokee County juvenile drug court.

Farmer used real-life stories to give teens and parents a dose of the dangers behind synthetic drugs, at a forum organized by Wagoner Schools administrators and the Wagoner Police Department.

"He was boiling on the inside, his heart was racing, he gets his keys, gets his vehicle, drives 80 miles per hour down the road, crashes into a house and dies," Farmer said.

11/27/2012 Related Story: Green Country Man Speaks About Synthetic Marijuana Addiction

For the past several years, Farmer has dedicated much of her time to studying the effects of man made drugs. They're most commonly known as K2 or spice. The makers of the drugs use flavors and packaging to target kids, but Farmer said there's something important missing from those labels.

"Those spice products contain chemicals that the chemical companies themselves call poison," Farmer said. "These products are not marked 'Danger.' They don't have the skull and cross bones, they don't have a warning 'Contains poison, contains illegal substances.'"

States have responded by banning some of the chemicals used to make the drugs, but Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics officer Mark Stewart said the manufacturers are always one step ahead.

"As soon as we do ban a substance, they'll change the molecular structure of it. And now all of a sudden it's sold, same packaging, same branding, same labels--not for human consumption," Stewart said.

Some of the side effects of synthetic drugs are vomiting, agitation, paranoia and even heart attack.