The synthetic marijuana drug known as “Spice” and “K2,” as well as other names, remains a problem in the state, despite a recent ban on 10 versions of the popular marijuana alternative in the state.

According to Sedona police, the drug can no longer be found in the city as of last week. Use of the drug, however, remains an issue despite the ban due to the chemical nature of the synthetic product. According to Sedona police officer Truman Peyote, Arizona banned the top 10 versions of Spice, but thousands of versions exist.

“Let’s say that you’re looking at a diagram of a molecule. You have branches coming off different bits of the molecule,” Peyote said. “You might have this branch coming off and, let’s say it’s got two oxygen molecules coming off the top of the branch and a hydrogen molecule at the bottom. As soon as you outlaw that version, a chemist will just go in and take one of those oxygen molecules, move it from the top to the bottom and now it’s totally different according to the law, but it’s the exact same thing in the end. As soon as you outlaw one they just make a different version.”

Eventually, he said, mass- produced versions are made illegal. One problem, however, is that local producers have begun to make the product as well. Peyote said the drug has signs and symptoms consistent with marijuana use.

“It’s a synthetic version of THC,” Peyote said. “That is the active ingredient in marijuana. Marijuana is simple since it’s a natural-growing plant, so you can outlaw marijuana that easy, because it grows one way.”

The problem with Spice, he said, is that it is made synthetically in “lab” conditions.

“Then they can put it on anything. It’s a liquid form that can be sprayed,” Peyote said. “The whole Spice idea is they take little bits of synthetic matter chopped up fine, so it looks like marijuana leaves, and they spray the synthetic THC on it. It’s not just pure, it’s mixed with all kinds of incredibly horrible chemicals.”

The high from Spice, he added, while similar to marijuana, can also bring hallucinations and unknown side effects as well.

“I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a death from marijuana in the last 10 years that wasn’t attributed to getting in a car and driving, whereas there have already been documented deaths from this stuff literally just from ingesting it,” Peyote said.

According to Cmdr. Ron Wheeler with the Sedona Police Department, no businesses within the Sedona city limits currently sell Spice.

“It’s not in the state of Arizona,” Wheeler said. In Sedona, he said there have been no issues with the drug that police officers have been involved in.

“We know that there have been issues in Cottonwood and over on the Prescott side of the mountain, but we don’t know of any issues here,” Wheeler said.

The drug has been banned in much of Europe, after its popularity soared in recent years and led to investigations into the ingredients used in the synthetic product. Countries in which it is banned include Germany, France, Chile, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Austria. The drug has recently caught on in other countries as well, including the United States, leadingindividual states to write legislation banning the drug. In Arizona, the House of Representatives passed House Bill 2167, which bans 10 chemical components found in Spice. The bill passed in February. The drug, sold primarily as an incense, is still available at a number of locations and online retail sites.

In America, Spice has been linked to a number of negative side effects, including chemical dependency, hospitalization, hallucinations and more. Youth under the age of 18 are not allowed to purchase Spice.

Business owner D Bernardo said she doesn’t sell the product in her Sedona shop.

“If it’s too good to be true then it usually is. What I’ve found, in my stores, is I don’t want to sell it because it’s not healthy for my customer. A lot of people in the industry actually laughed at me because I probably lost a couple hundred thousand dollars of sales by not selling it,” Bernardo said. “For me I just didn’t want that kind of money. I have morals and it wasn’t about making a buck. I just know that it’s not healthy for people.”

She said, at trade shows for instance, manufacturers were making millions of dollars from the product.

“There’s been all kinds of what they call ‘legal’ herbs sold over the counter for years, but when they started spraying it with that one chemical, I knew it wasn’t healthy for people,” Bernardo said. “It wasn’t something that I wanted any part of. I tried to educate the general public when it came in.”

Since the new legislation passed, Bernardo said demand for Spice has dropped significantly.