DXM to be age restricted?

Here is a bill I completely missed.

H.R. 3250 was introduced into the United States House of Representatives on July 28, 2015 and is titled "DXM Abuse Prevention Act of 2015". The PDF version of the bill is located here. The sponsor is Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH).

The aim of this bill is to set a mandatory minimum age requirement for purchase of Dextromethorphan (DXM) at 18 years. No one 17 years of age or younger will be allowed to purchase DXM or DXM-containing products. The only exception to the age requirement is if the purchaser is an active member of the United States military.

On July 31, 2015, the bill was referred to the Energy and Commerce's subcommittee on Health. No further movement on the bill has occurred.


ForensicToxGuy

What do Etizolam, Zopiclone, O-Desmethyltramadol, and Salvinorin A all have in common?

As an addendum to the blog post from yesterday discussing the Synthetic Drug Control Act of 2015, roinonsteroids and other fine folks over at Reddit.com/r/researchchemicals have outlined the identity of other substances on the list.

Interestingly, the five benzodiazepines listed are etizolam, zopiclone, and “3 benzos that have never appeared on the research chemical market”.

As mentioned earlier, etizolam is not a benzodiazepine; it is a thienodiazepine. I guess it could be listed as a benzodiazepine derivative.

Zopiclone is also not a benzodiazepine. In fact, more often than not, it is described as a non-benzodiazepine hypnotic. Zopiclone is not available in the USA, but the S-enantiomer (eszopiclone) is marketed as Lunesta and is currently found in Schedule IV of the CSA.

 

Salvinorin A, one of the terpenoid compounds found in the Salvia divinorum plant, as well as O-desmethyltramadol, the active metabolite of the drug tramadol, are included in the 13 opioids/opioid-like substances.

Image from Erowid.org

https://www.erowid.org/plants/show_image.php?i=salvia/salvia_divinorum2.jpg

 

One wonders how the legislators constructed this list?

Is this just a grab bag of chemical names from research chemical websites? Or did actual chemists and toxicologists construct this list?

Considering that the folks at Reddit/r/researchchemicals and Reddit/r/drugs believe that a  large amount of these substance have never appeared on the market or aren't very common at all, this piece of legislation seems very Draconian.

Knowing that it they are on the DEA's Drugs and Chemicals of Concern list, I'm honestly surprised that mitragynine/7-hydroxymitragyine (alkaloids found in the plant Mitragyna speciosa or Kratom) isn't listed anywhere.

 

ForensicToxGuy

 

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is...

New legislation has been introduced into the United States House of Representatives entitled "Synthetic Drug Control Act of 2015". It is a long piece of legislation for one reason...

The folks who wrote this thing have included a humongous amount of additional substances to be added to Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act.

From my count, the bill includes:

121 phenylalkylamines
117 cannabimimetics
16 arylcyclohexamines
26 tryptamines 
8 benzylpiperidines
5 benzodiazepines
13 opioids and opioid-like substances
8 piperazines
2 tropane alkaloids

Wow.

316 Schedule I controlled substances listed in those drug classes.

As a comparison, if you include the recently announced scheduling of MAB-CHMINACA, there are currently 25 synthetic cannabinoids/cannabimimetics classified as Schedule I controlled substances at the Federal level. This legislation increases that number to 117 substances, which is a 368% increase in number of controlled synthetic cannabinoids.

What are we doing here?

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is insanity.

This is insanity.

And to make matters worse for the non-chemist, the initial text of the bill, contains only chemical names - there are no common names included. There are no JWH-xxx or AB-XXXXXX or Alpha-XXX listed.  I am not going to go through the list line-by-line at the moment and detail what exactly is included, but here are two examples of drugs that are to be newly scheduled if this legislation is passed and signed.

Methoxetamine is listed as its chemical name 2-(ethylamino)-2-(3-methoxyphenyl)cyclohexanone. There is no mention that this substance is commonly known as Methoxetamine.

Etizolam is listed under the Benzodiazepines designation (even though it is not a benzodiazepine; it is a thienodiazepine) as 4-(2-chlorophenyl)-2-ethyl-9-methyl-6H-thieno-[3,2-f][1,2,4]triazolo[4,3-a][1,4]diazepine. There is no mention of the name etizolam.



Oh joy. The cat and mouse games of the government continue.

Schedule hundreds of compounds thereby making them illegal to possess and use and eventually (pretty quickly I might add) hundreds more compounds with completely unknown pharmacology and toxicology will flood the market. Great plan.

ForensicToxGuy

P.S.

To all the crime labs out there who test for Schedule I controlled substances, if this legislation passes, your life is about to become more complex because now you have to include these in your testing panels. That's job stability and security, I guess.


The PDF version of H.R.3537 can be found here.

Notice of Intent: MAB-CHMINACA to be placed into Schedule I

The United States DEA has filed a notice of intent to place the synthetic cannabinoid MAB-CHMINACA into Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. The pre-publication text of the notice can be found here. The official notice will be published on 9/16 here.

MAB-CHMINACA is also known as ADB-CHMINACA. The chemical name is

N-(1-Amino-3,3-Dimethyl-1-oxoButan-2-yl)-1-(CycloHexylMethyl)-1H-INdAzole-3-CarboxAmide. The alphabet soup naming convention is shown by red-colored bold uppercase font.

 

 

I've covered this compound previously here and here.

As you can see from the chemical structures detailed above, ADB-CHMINACA is closely related to many other synthetic cannabinoids, namely AB-CHMINACA, which was placed into Schedule I about 8 months ago. The difference between the two compounds is a tert-butyl moiety vs. an isopropyl moiety.

When this compound is officially scheduled (probably around a month from now, so around October 15th), it will be the 25th synthetic cannabinoid explicitly scheduled by the US Federal Government in approximately 4.5 years (since 3/2011).

The current list of Federally controlled synthetic cannabinoids is (in alphabetical order):
 

5F-PB-22

AB-CHMINACA

AB-FUBINACA

AB-PINACA

ADB-PINACA

AKB48/APINACA

AM694

AM2201

CP-47,497

CP-47,497-C8 homologue

JWH-018/AM678

JWH-019

JWH-073

JWH-081

JWH-122

JWH-200

JWH-203

JWH-398

PB-22

RCS-4/SR-19

RCS-8/SR-18

THJ-2201

UR-144

XLR-11

 

Well, as history has shown, a new synthetic cannabinoid will now reign supreme and we'll still continue to see hospitalizations and potential fatalities. And rest assured, it'll be a substance with unknown pharmacology and toxicology.

 

Next research chemical up!

 

My vote is for 5F-AMB.

 

"And the beat goes on, the beat goes on
Drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain..."


ForensicToxGuy