Zombie Apocalypse Megastore

Zombies are no longer fictional characters that inhabit our movie screens. They have become “real” in the eyes of some people thanks to the new synthetic drugs that are young people have discovered.

HEADLINE from last week: “Man Eats Family Dog After Police Say He Ingested K-2.” This is not a “National Enquirer” headline. This came directly from the Waco, Texas, ABC TV affiliate.

Witnesses claim Michael Daniel assaulted people at his home, chased a neighbor, and began barking and growling. He then picked up the family dog, strangled it, and then began to eat it, hair, flesh and all. Family members claim Daniel was experiencing a bad trip after ingesting K-2.

This is only two weeks later after the infamous Miami incident, where a man, high on synthetic drugs, chewed off the face of a homeless man along a stretch of busy highway. Since then similar zombie/cannibal incidents have been reported in Manatee County, Florida, Maryland, Louisiana, and now Texas. The Maryland incident involved a man reported a man killing and then eating his roommate’s heart and brain. They all have been attributed to synthetic drugs.

Spice, K-2, potpourri, space, bath salts, etc. are forms of synthetic marijuana that until recently were legal and found in many stores. Essentially they are a mixture of dried herbs and spices mixed with chemicals. These drugs are undetectable by smell or drug testing and are quickly becoming the drug of choice amongst drug users.

Here in Clare County, the health department demanded that retailers take the synthetic drugs off their shelves. This is not the case, however, in other counties.  One only has to make the short drive to Bay City where I’m told synthetics are sold at Earth Oddities, Kings and CB Discount.

I’m sure in short order, the sale of synthetics will be banned statewide. However, will that solve the problem? I don’t think so. Because they are readily available, cheap, and provide a quick high, drug users will continue to purchase the drugs illegally.

And that’s a problem. Along with the cannibalistic atrocities, several murders and violent crimes have been attributed to synthetic marijuana. If meth makes people hallucenogenic, synthetics drive some people to violent acts and craziness. It is, say many, the worst drug to come along in a long while.

It’s great that Clare County has prohibited the sale of synthetics. They acted quicker than a lot of counties in this regard. However, as many of us know, a lot of Clare County’s drug problem comes from downstate. Drug users continually run down to buy their drugs off of Detroit area streets to bring them back here to sell and use.

If one is to believe the zombie apocalypse is near- after all it is trending all over the internet, and we all know to believe everything we read on the internet, then we need to do everything we can to eliminate these drugs that make some people want to act like zombies.

More importantly, synthetic drugs, whether they are bath salts, K-2 or whatever, have no business being in the hands of irresponsible drug users. Let’s hope they get a clue, and get off the crap, asap.