The father of Spice

The most prolific inventor of the now-outlawed cannabis substitutes is John W. Huffman, emeritus professor of organic chemistry at Clemson University in South Carolina. In the 1990s, he led a team that produced 465 synthetic cannabinoids – designed as pharmacological tools to help us understand the brain’s reactions, and to develop medicines such as anti-inflammatories. Ironically, he was actually funded by the federal National Institute on Drug Abuse. His discoveries were published in a series of papers, journals and a book called The Cannabinoid Receptors. In 2008, one of these compounds – named JWH-018 after its creator – was identified by a lab analysing a new street drug, dubbed Spice, in Germany. “I thought it was hilarious at the time,” Huffman told The Washington Post. Then he started hearing the horror stories, and he thought: “Hmm, I guess someone opened Pandora’s box.” In 2011, the US Drug Enforcement Administration banned five synthetic cannabinoids; three of the five were Huffman’s. Even today, many share a common ancestry in his work. Huffman thinks users are “idiots”, and dislikes the attention his creations have brought him. “I don’t want pest calls,” he says. “You know, ‘Why did you make the compound that murdered my son?’, and this sort of stuff.”