Rope a Dope: U.S. Anti-Terrorism Labs Enlisted in the War on "Legal" Synthetic Drugs

Arkansas deploys facilities built to detect chemical and biological weapons to keep tabs on ever-evolving synthetic pot products
Scientific American (US)
Wednesday, November 23, 2011

A worldwide arms race has erupted between inventive street chemists who concoct "legal" highs and government officials who wish to regulate and interdict the proliferation of synthetic cannabis products that can send their users to an emergency room or the morgue. In Arkansas officials view the problem as severe enough that they have now deployed a network of federally funded laboratories within their state (in collaboration with state and private laboratories) to keep tabs on the protean ingenuity of street chemists, who reformulate these drugs faster than governments can pass regulations to control them.