Senator Schumer is urging the DEA to ban new synthetic drugs. The senator issued his message at Batavia High School, which recently sent four students to the hospital after they ingested a drug identified as "Cloud 9."
Chris Dailey is the Superintendent of Schools in Batavia. He says they haven't been taking these incidents lightly, and are on the lookout for this particular substance.
"Cloud 9 would be anything that could be used in a vaporizer or e-cigarette. Some people have gone to the point of just putting it on their tongue."
Dailey says they've updated their code of conduct to include prohibition of these kinds of drugs and the devices used to take them.
"Also, we've actually added a counselor that specifically deals with this, with drug and alcohol issues. So we're doing everything we can and working closely with our community partners to help out the families when this does impact them."
The chemical make-up of Cloud 9 varies by supplier, because it is not regulated, but many of the strains contain variants of the chemical called methylenedioxypyrovalerone, or MDPV. A strong stimulant, MDPV is found in the the Middle Eastern drug khat and is commonly synthesized to make an assortment of recreational drugs referred to as bath salts.
Robert BoeckmanJr. is a Professor of Chemistry at University of Rochester. He says the process of making these kinds of designer drugs by slightly altering their chemical structure could inadvertently make them more harmful to those who take them.
"You don't know in detail what these changes are going to do. All you know is that qualitatively, they have the same gross pharmacological effect. You know nothing about their potency. You know nothing about how they may be metabolized; they may be metabolized in such a way that produces toxic metabolites. There are all sorts of things."
Boeckman says synthetic drugs like Cloud 9, K2, Spice, and others are not terribly chemically complex, and someone with a certain level of training in organic chemistry can make them. He says this is also why they are so difficult to ban.
"There's always going to be this kind of arms race, if you will, between the chemists who are interested in kind of doing this crazy stuff and the legal authorities who are trying to regulate it."
Senator Schumer says the DEA has identified around 300 unique synthetic drug chemicals that he wants banned as soon as possible. But Boeckman says this misses the point.
"I don't think there is much you can do except educate the users to not be stupid, and not to seek these kinds of mechanisms of escape."
Some lawmakers have attempted to address the problem by banning or regulating substances based on the activity of the molecule, and how it effects neurotransmitters in the brain, as opposed to its exact chemical composition.
