Once seen as a drug-test-safe alternative to smoking the real thing, synthetic pot products have come under fire in the last two years with the man-made cannabinoid compounds – and their chemical analogues – used to create substances that mimic the cannabis high being increasing banned, including in Duluth in 2010. 
 
However, the owner of a well-frequented head shop in Minnesota’s fourth-largest city is challenging the analog ban in court, despite the increasing evidence that unlike medicinal marijuana, synthetic pot can pose a risk to the user. 
 
In a story released Sunday, the Duluth News Tribune conducted some old-school investigative journalism with a modern twist by having four synthetic pot products that go by a variety of monikers – like “No Name” and “Hypnotiq” – tested by MedTox Laboratories, located in Minneapolis. 
 
MedTox reported that all four products they studied contained AM-2201, an analog to one of the synthetic cannabinoid chemical compounds outlawed by the Duluth City Council in August 2010. As is the case with chemical variations on MDMA (Ecstasy), synth pot analogs are devised in the lab in order to legally skirt around the ban of specific compounds. 
 
In May of this year, the Minnesota State Legislature banned drug analogs, defining them as chemicals that can potentially result in a “stimulant, depressant or hallucinogenic effect on the central nervous system.” Such wording is being challenged by Jim Carlson, owner of Last Place on Earth in Duluth, which sells such synth pot products with misleading names like “Smokin' Camel Kush” (Kush, of course, being the name of a particularly popular strain of real cannabis). 
 
Carlson considers the analog law to be “too vague,” and plans to keep on selling the synthetic marijuana until his lawsuit is settled one way or the other.
 
Beyond consulting the private sector, the News Tribune sought the validation of an institution of higher learning, as the MedTox results were further reviewed by Dr. Kendall Wallace of the University of Minnesota-Duluth Medical School’s Department of Biomedical Sciences, and the doctor concurred that AM-2201 is an analog of an illegal compound.
 
For his part, Carlson retorted to the News Tribune that the ban is too arbitrary, as legal substances can be depressants like alcohol or stimulants like caffeine. The obvious difference being that the chemicals found in Sierra Nevada and Starbucks' products are not outlawed, meaning Carlson’s suit is a long shot at best and he may have to rely on selling bongs to be used with actual weed to get him through the holiday season.
 
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