What you said about what we said last week

In response to last week’s cover story on the synthetic drug epidemic sweeping the District, readers drew parallels to drug epidemics of years past and shared terrifying anecdotes about the effects the drugs are having on users now.

why wrote, “I can’t help feeling synthetic drugs in this generation is like crack from previous ones: it’s used by a population we don’t much worry about, isn’t it? DCPD could look the other way when it was destitute folks sprawling on the street – it’s once these folks start snatching babies and punching innocent people that causes them to do something. So sad…”

And while we can’t verify the claims made in this comment, SOS wrote to describe alleged observations of Spice’s effects. They’re sobering: “While Anderson’s article is very informative, it really needed to say more about the horrific affect this drug has on its users, which are predominately young and African American. I was at the emergency room at Providence Hospital with my husband due to his high pressure and saw one young girl (early twenties) looking very wild and actually chained to bed she was sitting on. I asked what was going on and I was told she was on K2 and had to be chained because her behavior was so erratic. As I was leaving, there was yet another young woman being carried in on a stretcher who was drooling at the mouth and also chained to the stretcher. On the other side of the emergency room there were several policeman standing outside of one of the doors. The doctors told me that this is a crises and that young people using these synthetic drugs are being bought in all the time.”