SPECIAL REPORT: Synthetic marijuana’s effect on mid-Missouri

The pictures in our home capture us at our best.

Charli Cavaness keeps the picture of her son, Barron’s, graduation in 2012 from Eugene High School in Cole County.

“I happen to know this day, he was drug-free,” Cavaness said at her home on Honey Creek Road. “You know…it was a good day.”

The Cole County Jail also has a picture of Barron Cavaness – a mugshot taken in April, after arresting him for an assault at the home. A probable cause statement claims Barron tried to get another drink from the refrigerator after returning from a family party in Columbia. When his mother tried to stop him, he elbowed her in the jaw, knocking her to the ground. The sheriff’s office found him an hour later, after he ran into the woods.

Barron Cavaness pleaded guilty to assault in September. He was sentenced to a year-long recovery camp in southwest Missouri.

While the statement makes no mention of it, Charli Cavaness knows her son’s use of synthetic marijuana played a part in his behavior that night, and the hundreds of nights that passed since his high school graduation.

“You’re the parent, you’re used to taking care of everything,” Cavaness said. “It’s going to be alright, I’m going to take care of you. Well, no, you can’t.”

Cavaness said she caught her son several times with the colorful packages filled with leafy green material that law enforcement of medical professionals have struggled to grasp. Synthetic marijuana, also known as K2 or “spice”, is marketed most often as a legal form of marijuana, Sergeant Shannon Jeffires of the Callaway County Sheriff’s Office said, and has had a disproportionate effect on that community than others in mid-Missouri.

“They think that they can purchase it, and possess it and not get in trouble for it,” Sgt. Jeffries said.

The National Institute of Health reports synthetic cannabinoids like K2 affect the same parts of the brain THC does, the active ingredient in marijuana. However, the synthetic drugs use an altered version of THC, igniting stronger effects.

“Because the chemical composition of many synthetic cannabinoid products is unknown and may change from batch to batch, these products are likely to contain substances that cause dramatically different effects than the user might expect,” the NIH website reads.

The sheriff’s office began noticing shops selling the drug in the late 2000s, Sgt. Jeffries said. While many are drawn to it because of its perception as legal marijuana, the sergeant with more than a decade worth of narcotics investigation said its physical effects trend more towards that of heroin or methamphetamine.

“I know the community in Callaway County has become really impatient,” Sgt. Jeffries said. “They would set these shops up in neighborhoods. And that brings all that undesirable traffic to those neighborhoods, which brings crime and even accidents. There have been people that have stopped, purchased their synthetic cannabis, ingest it right there, and as they started the drive there, passed out and get involved in accidents.”

ABC 17 News received several reports taken by the office of callers complaining or reporting stores selling the drug. One person asked how to start a petition to get one store closed. Sgt. Jeffires said once law started to come out banning some of the chemical compounds used on synthetic marijuana, stores started hiding the product, requiring buyers to know passwords to get it.

For law enforcement to make a case against a shop selling it, Sgt. Jeffries said they must first buy a pack, then send it to the Missouri State Highway Patrol lab for testing. Those results often take six months to come back. However, as producers change the chemical formula to stay ahead of state or federal law, tests came back with varying degrees of success.

“Most of the time it came back not as one of those chemical bans. Hence, why these investigations take so long.”

And while authorities try to make a case, users of the drug and their families report symptoms of use like extreme paranoia.

“When I saw the self-mutilation on his arms, and the thoughts that were in his mind for days, not just that moment,” Cavaness said of finding her son in his closet one night, having burnt himself with a hot coat hanger. “You don’t sleep K2 off, like alcohol or marijuana.”

Karma Lee, a preacher in the Fulton and Jefferson City areas and a recovering drug addict, said he first saw people using synthetic marijuana in the 1990s. He said people started using it to get a marijuana “high”, but avoid the drug showing up in a urine test, since many tests didn’t accommodate for the chemicals in K2. As time went on, the drug became stronger, and started affecting users more heavily.

“One hit at you, and ‘Boom!’ Flat on your face,” Lee said.

“One of the bad things is one of the ER physicians told me, ‘We don’t know how to treat K2 use,'” Cavaness said of taking her son to the hospital after using synthetic marijuana. “‘We can test and get a positive THC level, but we don’t know the effects, the short term or long term effects of K2, and it affects everyone differently.'”

Federal authorities seized property at two Callaway County smoke shops in July, Inscentives Resale in Fulton and S&J’s Smoke Shop near Holts Summit. Both stores are mentioned in the call logs received from the sheriff’s office, but so far, no arrests have been made or charges filed from the prosecutors office.

“You can’t make people do stuff,” Lee said of effectively treating addiction to synthetic marijuana. “All you can do is educate them, you know, to the parents is educate them as much as you can, and turn them loose, man. And pray that you taught them well enough that they don’t try something that’s going to kill them on the spot.”

Charli Cavaness said her son often purchased his synthetic marijuana from S&J’s Smoke Shop. She shares her story in hopes others realize the model of a “perfect family” is often hard to attain, and that drug addiction plays a powerful role in disrupting that dream.

“It needs to be out there in the public. Just throw it in people’s faces. It’s not just K2, I bet drug abuse affects every family, somewhere, somehow. Whether it’s today, or in the past, or will come in the future. It’s just rampant.”