One of the more controversial and dangerous new "designer drugs" making its way into the hands of young Minnesotans isn't being smuggled in from a foreign country or peddled on street corners.

Labeled as an incense often called K2 or Spice, it's being sold at some corner convenience stores and on the Internet and is being used by some as a legal substitute for marijuana.

It goes for $20 to $50 a packet and boasts appealing flavors such as watermelon, cotton candy and pineapple express.

Despite its accessibility, popularity and legal status, the product, experts say, is not regulated at any level and can be extremely dangerous -- even deadly -- for some users because it can affect their neurological and cardiovascular systems. An Iowa teen's suicide has been linked to the substance.

Several states and the city of Duluth have already banned it. Two Minnesota lawmakers are pushing for a statewide ban.

"You really do not know what you are getting," said Carol Falkowski, drug abuse strategy officer for the Minnesota Department of Human Services. "Use of this product is a risky proposition."

Other drugs, she said, have taken off as quickly as this one. "Crack cocaine. I would say the magnitude is comparable," she said.

The substance is a mixture of leafy-looking herbs and spices that are sprayed with a psychoactive chemical, then smoked.

Even though it's categorized as an incense that the back of the packets say is "not for human consumption," it's being sold -- often next to pipes -- as a legal marijuana replacement.

Although the product itself has no age requirement for purchase -- it's incense, after all -- many store owners, aware of how it's being used, are requiring buyers to prove they are at least 18.

The product had an innocent beginning.

Its major components are synthetic cannabinoid compounds, which are psychoactive molecules created by a Clemson University chemistry professor who was working on appetite stimulant treatments for nausea and glaucoma.

When somehow the recipe got into the wrong hands, the result was the cannabinoid-sprayed incense products like K2 that would purportedly give users a marijuana-like high when smoked.

Part of the problem is that its effects vary widely.

It may be relatively harmless for some, but others may experience extremely rapid heart rates, drastically raised blood pressure, hallucinations and delusions. And because it's unregulated, experts say, the potency in each bag can differ significantly.

"The part I've been emphasizing is that you don't know what a person is taking and how their body is going to react to it," said Dr. Anthony Scalzo, director of toxicology at St. Louis University and a national expert on the substance.

Scalzo explained that the receptors in individuals' brains react very differently to certain chemicals, much as sleeping pills put some people to sleep while keeping others up all night.

Dangerous reactions

It's affecting some users' cardiovascular and neurological systems. "We're not just talking modest heart-rate increases; we're talking massive heart-rate increases," he said. "And really concerning are blood-pressure increases -- I've seen as high as 200/120."

Most worrisome, Scalzo said, are the "psycho-tropic" effects, which can cause changes in behavior and perception. "You have a happy-go-lucky kid, who's not depressed, he smokes this stuff and all of a sudden he kills himself."

One 14-year-old on the drug tried to jump out of a fifth-story window, he said. A 21-year-old college student pleaded with Scalzo to help him, saying days after inhaling the substance, he still was having hallucinations of demons. A 22-year-old began to experience intense, narcotic-like withdrawal symptoms when he stopped using it.

On June 6, David Rozga, 18, who had just graduated from high school in Indianola, Iowa, tried K2 for the first time. Minutes later, he became extremely agitated and started acting strangely, his friends said later. Shortly afterward, the distraught teen went home, found his father's hunting gun and killed himself. Police said his reaction was K2-related.

"He was a very clean-cut kid; he was a good, Christian young man," said Mike Rozga, his voice cracking at times as he recalled his son's abrupt death.

A growing problem

At the National Institute on Drug Abuse's convention last December, St. Louis was the only U.S. city where there had been any reported cases, said Falkowski. This June, "there was at least some buzz" in almost all of the major cities represented, she said.

"It's big business," said Scalzo, who said a store in St. Louis told him this summer that it sold nearly 700 packets daily.

Not all retailers are jumping on board, however.

"We know we could make a lot of money off this, but there's a moral issue here," said Paul Christianson, manager of the gift department at the Electric Fetus, a record/gift store in south Minneapolis. "This product is clearly labeled not for human consumption, but it's clear that it's being used for that and we don't want to be involved in that market."

The substance has already been banned in more than a dozen states and in many European nations. Duluth banned it last month and a statewide ban could follow when the Legislature reconvenes in January.

State Rep. Denny McNamara, R-Hastings, said he "fully intends" to introduce a bill that would ban the product. State Sen. Katie Sieben, DFL-Cottage Grove, said she is also dedicated to a ban.

The Minnesota Board of Pharmacy is taking action to categorize synthetic cannabinoids as a Schedule 1 drug. If the board is successful, it would regulate the product and make a city or statewide ban unnecessary.

In the meantime, parents are urged to talk to their teens about it.

Rozga said he had talked to his son about drugs, alcohol and sex.

"It quite frankly never occurred to us as parents to talk to him about things we didn't know about."

Amelia Rayno • 612-673-4115