Synthetic Drugs Are Killing Kids
WHITFIELD: Chemically produced drugs sold as legal alternatives to cocaine, marijuana, and meth are showing up in the streets, all across the U.S. and they're overtaking one North Dakota City. Here's CNN's Drew Griffin.</s>DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the week of June 10th, 2012, law enforcement in Grand Forks were dealing with an outbreak of violent overdoses. A mysterious drug on the streets had already killed two teenagers.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've got multiple overdoses. We've got two young men who have lost their lives. What's more serious than that?</s>GRIFFIN: Jim Purdon is the U.S. attorney for North Dakota.</s>TIMOTHY PURDON, U.S. ATTORNEY, DISTRICT OF NORTH DAKOTA: That was unprecedented. I've been U.S. attorney now going on four years. This is the only time we've reached out to a school system, to the university and said, there's this danger on the streets right now that people need to be aware about.</s>GRIFFIN: As the emergency warnings were being issued, investigators were desperately trying to find out what this drug was and more importantly, where it came from.</s>CHRIS MYERS, FIRST ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY, DISTRICT OF NORTH DAKOTA: It took lab analysis to determine the true nature of these substances, when we learned what they were, 2 ci NBOME and 2 cc NBOME that was new to us.</s>GRIFFIN: They are synthetic designer drugs. Chemicals designs to imitate the high of the banned drug, LSD. These drugs are so potent. A dose the size of a few grains of salt is enough to get high. North Dakota's top federal drug prosecutor had never heard of them and neither had Christian Bjerks' parents.</s>DEBRA BJERK, CHRISTIAN BJERK'S MOTHER: I had to go to the internet and look up information on it. And I really didn't understand the whole synthetic drug. I didn't know what it was. Didn't know how dangerous they were.</s>PURDON: The message we got after we went on the internet was that somebody had said it was OK for these drugs to be on the street and they had been tweaked. But that's all we knew.</s>GRIFFIN: Parents across the country are now learning the painful truth about synthetic designer drugs.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Investigators say he overdosed on a synthetic marijuana --</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Otherwise known as k-2.</s>GRIFFIN: With deaths and overdoses reported almost daily.</s>WHITFIELD: All right. Drew Griffin is with me now in the NEWSROOM. So these synthetic drugs, is it ability availability? Why is it so accessible?</s>GRIFFIN: I think it's so accessible for two reasons. One, it comes in nice little packages through the mail. So most of these kids think there is some kind of cleanliness and legalness to it, because it's distributed in this way. The other thing is, it's easy to get. All you need is a credit card. You're not meeting a street dealer down on the corner. You're just ordering it online.</s>WHITFIELD: How is it so accessible?</s>GRIFFIN: Because it is all internet-based. Not drug cartels, we're not talking about gangs, we're talking about chemical companies, mostly in China, who are shipping this to distributors in the United States, who are putting it on web sites and you can just click what you want. It comes in any size you want.</s>WHITFIELD: And why is there no policing of this? Why is that?</s>GRIFFIN: The police are trying to catch up constantly. There's so much of it out there, it's labor intensive kind of cases. It mostly happens, like in this, when you have deaths or some kind of a serious illness, then the cops have to backtrack. And what you'll see in this special is how long it took before the police even knew what they were dealing. What was this drug? Take it to a lab, analyze it then find out where it came from. Then backtrack all the way through the internet, multiple jurisdictions. The cases are hard to crack. There are plenty of people who are trying to evade the law. It's just like every other drug we have. There's money to be made and people willing to figure out a way to do it.</s>WHITFIELD: And if you're a user, is the synthetic drug more appealing because of its potency, or is that kind of overthinking about it?</s>GRIFFIN: I think there is overthinking. It's the ease of use and the ease of attainment. People are not thinking, this is going to be better than LSD, they really don't even know --</s>WHITFIELD: Or that it's potentially more dangerous, not even thinking about those things.</s>GRIFFIN: Not even thinking. And many of the kids get in trouble because they have no idea what the potency is. They just think it's something new, came in the mail, let's give it a shot.</s>WHITFIELD: All right. Drew Griffin, thanks so much. Of course, it's very frightening says well, especially for young kids. Tonight, Drew Griffin has more on the dangers of synthetic drugs. Don't miss the CNN special report, "Deadly High: How Synthetic Drugs Are Killing Kids." that's tonight, 7:00 Eastern Time. All right, what will the feds do to rein in cops who go rogue? Our legal guys weigh in, next.