This photographer has snapped photos of 17,000 different species - and he's not done yet
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CNN
16 hours ago
- CNN
This photographer has snapped photos of 17,000 different species - and he's not done yet
National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore describes his 19-year journey creating the Photo Ark, which already boasts 17,000 recorded species. View more of his work at
National Geographic
4 days ago
- National Geographic
What exactly is in gas station weed?
Edibles containing the psychoactive compound delta-8-THC, derived from federally legal hemp, are available even in some U.S. states where cannabis remains banned—although they are not FDA-approved. Photographs by Rebecca Hale This article is part of The New Cannabis, a National Geographic exploration into the most critical questions raised by today's stronger, stranger, ever more accessible weed. Learn more. Though the term is widely used in today's cannabis culture, synthetic marijuana is a bit of a misnomer. The truth is, 'there's no such thing as synthetic marijuana or synthetic cannabis,' says Deepak Cyril D'Souza, professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine and director of the Yale Center for the Science of Cannabis and Cannabinoids. Usually people use synthetic marijuana to refer to a cannabis product that was derived from hemp and contains the psychoactive substance delta-8, or one that was produced from a series of compounds that were synthetically made in a lab (aka synthetic cannabinoids). While both types of products mimic the effects of THC, the primary psychoactive compound in marijuana, 'synthetic cannabinoids are between 10 and 200 times more potent' than the usual THC in cannabis, D'Souza says. Yet many people don't realize this, and synthetic cannabinoids are very easy to purchase. They are often sold at gas stations, bodegas, convenience stores, and smoke shops around the United States. And because of a loophole in federal law, which makes delta-8-THC legal (unlike delta-9-THC, the primary psychoactive compound in cannabis), teenagers can buy gummies, flavored vaping cartridges, and other delta-8-containing products right off the shelf. (Delta-8 tends to be less potent than delta-9 but still carries risks on its own.) A study last year found that 11 percent of high school seniors reported using delta-8. This selection of cannabis edibles contains both delta-8-THC and delta-9-THC. Synthesized delta-8 also comes in other forms, including vapes, tinctures, and smokable hemp flower. How delta-8 products differ from regular marijuana Delta-9 creates the high that people typically experience from consuming cannabis. Delta-8 has psychoactive effects that are similar to those produced by delta-9, though delta-8 is naturally less potent. While delta-9 continues to be illegal at the federal level, delta-8 is legal because of a loophole in the U.S. Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, which legalized the cultivation and sale of hemp. Though hemp and marijuana both come from the Cannabis sativa plant, they differ in their chemical composition, especially their concentration of delta-9. By definition, hemp may not contain a delta-9 concentration of more than 0.3 percent on a dry weight basis, whereas marijuana can contain significantly more. Hemp also contains small amounts of delta-8. To get enough delta-8 for commercial products, manufacturers extract and convert CBD (cannabidiol, another compound naturally present in cannabis that is legal and nonintoxicating) from hemp to delta-8 in a lab, using chemicals such as sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, toluene, or heptane. Despite delta-8 being legal on a federal level, some states have banned or severely restricted it in recent years, which puts its legal status in a gray area. Even so, delta-8 remains legal in more states than not, as well as in Washington, D.C. Unlike products that contain delta-9, delta-8 products are not regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which means that potency and purity can vary. There's also a risk they may contain undetected impurities from the environment or the conversion process, research has found. In fact, common contaminants in delta-8 products include residual solvents, pesticides, microbes, and heavy metals like lead, arsenic, and mercury, all of which may pose their own health risks, according to studies. Meanwhile, there was a significant uptick in concerned calls from consumers to America's Poison Centers about experiences with delta-8, with an 82 percent increase from 2021 to 2022 (to 3,358 calls). Even without the presence of impurities, delta-8 can have problematic effects, especially because many people are consuming it in high amounts since they view it as 'weed lite' or 'marijuana lite,' experts say. 'A lot of young people think delta-8 is not as potent as delta-9,' notes Akhil Anand, an addiction psychiatrist and clinical assistant professor at the Cleveland Clinic. 'But because of the lack of regulations, the way it's consumed, and the risk of contaminants and adulterants … people can become dependent or addicted.' Edibles, like this chocolate bar containing delta-8 and delta-9, make up the third largest segment of the legal U.S. cannabis market, behind flower and vaping products. K2, spice, and skunk: 'off-the-charts intoxicating' Unlike delta-8, synthetic cannabinoids are a class of substances that are made in a lab and designed to mimic THC from cannabis. 'It's not really cannabis at all,' Anand says, because synthetic cannabinoids are entirely manufactured from chemicals. Some of these synthetic products—with names like K2, spice, Scooby snacks, or skunk—are marketed in colorful packaging as herbal incense or potpourri, and they're often made by spraying synthetic compounds (such as naphthoylindoles, naphthylmethylindoles, phenylacetylindoles, and others with equally tongue-twisting names) onto dried plant material so it looks like cannabis, Anand says. These products are not legal—when it comes to their manufacturing, sale, or consumption—at the federal level or the state level. In fact, many of these compounds have been banned by the federal government and classified as Schedule I controlled substances by the Drug Enforcement Administration. In recent years there have been several arrests and indictments of people involved in synthetic cannabinoid drug trafficking rings, including arrests this year related to a website-driven scheme to provide K2 and spice to people in prisons. Because standard drug tests are designed to detect traditional THC, they won't detect synthetic cannabinoids. Not surprisingly, these products often appeal to people who are concerned about being tested for drugs such as those in the military, the federal government, or the prison system, D'Souza says. A complicating factor: 'We can't test for these in the emergency department,' Anand explains, 'so it becomes challenging to treat these patients because we don't know what they have taken.' And the patients can't or won't tell emergency department doctors what they have taken because 'they're often not in the right state of mind,' Anand says. Consuming synthetic cannabinoids can be dangerous. One review of studies found these products were responsible for a 'higher toxicity than THC and longer-lasting effects,' including increased risk of psychiatric disorders. And deaths have been linked to synthetic cannabinoids laced with chemicals found in rat poison. In a study in the July 2025 issue of the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, researchers analyzed adverse effects associated with the use of synthetic cannabinoids, as reported in 49 published studies. The predominant ones involved the neurological and cardiovascular systems, with symptoms such as seizures, altered consciousness, tachycardia (rapid heart rate), and hypertension. Another 2025 study found that people with a dependence on synthetic cannabinoids exhibited more impulsivity and self-harming behaviors than their healthy peers. These products are especially risky for teens because their brains are still developing, D'Souza adds. 'These can be off-the-charts intoxicating because manufacturers are putting high concentrations in these products,' says Robert Welch, a pharmacist and director of the National Center for Cannabis Research and Education at the University of Mississippi. 'My advice is just to avoid this stuff because there's no way to know what you're taking.' Besides being dangerous in their own right, these synthetic products take attention 'away from the health benefits that properly grown and sourced cannabis products can have,' Welch says. 'People don't understand the differences.' A version of this story appears in the September 2025 issue of National Geographic magazine.
National Geographic
4 days ago
- National Geographic
Why synthetic pot could be the future of pain relief
Photographs by Sergiy Barchuk This article is part of The New Cannabis, a National Geographic exploration into the most critical questions raised by today's stronger, stranger, ever more accessible weed. Learn more. They call it the holy grail of pain-relief research: a medicine that is comparable to the strongest opioids but lacks their potentially devastating side effects. When biophysicist and structural biologist Kaavya Krishna Kumar set out looking for a novel way to develop one, she knew she needed to start with a substance that hit the body incredibly hard. So she took to the seedier corners of the online forum Reddit, where she learned about an illicit street drug with a reputation for making people both very high and very sick. 'It's OUT OF THIS WORLD POTENT,' read one recreational user's post. 'A very, very small, almost invisible amount of powder skyrockets you into stoned euphoria.' The drug is called FUBINACA, and it's what's known as a synthetic cannabinoid, a molecule designed in a lab to target the same parts of the nervous system affected by tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the main psychoactive compound in cannabis. Underground chemists have been making drugs like it since the early 2000s, when recreational marijuana was still criminalized in the United States and synthetic cannabinoids began catching on as cheap, quasi-legal alternatives. From their powdered form, they're typically dissolved into solvents, which are then sprayed onto plant shreds to be sold, with a wink, as incense or potpourri. 'Not for human consumption,' the label may read—a dodge against regulation. Sold under monikers like spice or K2, these gray market synthetics have raised public health alarms for both their toxicity and their contamination risks. The exact chemicals and their concentrations can vary from product to product, with side effects ranging from mania to heart attacks. But Krishna Kumar—then at Stanford Medicine, now at Weill Cornell Medicine—saw in FUBINACA a tool for better understanding how our pain-management system works. And after some clever molecular modeling, she and a team led by researchers from Stanford and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis devised an innovative way of modifying it. Earlier this year, the team published a study showing a FUBINACA-derived drug providing sustained pain relief in mice, seemingly without psychoactive or tolerance-building side effects. Such side effects have stymied progress on other would-be cannabinoid pain relievers, dampening enthusiasm for what once seemed like a promising opioid alternative. Now some scientists hope the research can breathe new life into that work—and perhaps open up even wider therapeutic frontiers. Fubinaca wasn't always a street drug. It was developed by Pfizer and patented in 2009, part of an effort to create 'a superpowered aspirin with no side effects,' according to former Pfizer chemist Darin Jones. Like THC, synthetic cannabinoids activate a powerful chemical receptor known as CB1. In humans and other mammals, CB1 is found on nerve cells in the brain and, crucially, on cells elsewhere in the body. It's known to influence not only the perception of pain but also sleep, metabolism, and memory, making it a promising target for pharmaceutical research. (A second cannabinoid receptor, CB2, seems mostly to regulate the functions of immune cells.) Of course, the path to market for any new drug must take into account future profitability. And while it's unclear just what scuttled Pfizer's research, Jones theorizes it had to do with the increasing legality of medical marijuana, which was suddenly 'pennies a pound' at proliferating dispensaries. But when the company published its patent, that became a blueprint for so-called garage chemists to replicate the formula and create analogues. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration reports that law enforcement has encountered hundreds of different synthetic cannabinoids, most of them manufactured in Asia. Variants of Pfizer's FUBINACA, the first of which was detected in Japan in 2012, are known as some of the most toxic. In 2014 dozens of deaths in Russia were linked to an analogue called MDMB-FUBINACA. Two years later, another variant was behind a mass overdose in Brooklyn, New York, that the media characterized as a 'zombie outbreak.' But Krishna Kumar hoped to pick up where Pfizer left off, harnessing that potency. First, she examined how MDMB-FUBINACA attached to human CB1 receptors in a dish. Compared to other synthetic cannabinoids, she found, it held tighter and activated effects more powerfully. Then, using a Nobel Prize–winning technology called cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), she flash froze that FUBINACA molecule while it was affixed to CB1 and scanned the conjoined pair with a beam of electrons. The result was a 3D picture, down to individual atoms, of how the drug fit so well into a pocket, or binding site, on the receptor's surface—like a key in a lock. Chronic pain affects as many as one in five people worldwide. As early as the Middle Ages, Arab physicians sought dosages of cannabis that 'killed pain but did not intoxicate,' wrote historian Martin Booth. That image provided a starting point for designing new versions of FUBINACA that might, by stimulating the receptor in new ways, keep the original's potency while limiting side effects. For that, Krishna Kumar turned to Susruta Majumdar, a Washington University chemist and pharmacologist, whose lab had previously shown that activating a particular site on an opioid receptor could inhibit chemical reactions that lead to tolerance. Might this be possible for CB1? The researchers knew that CB1, a cousin to that opioid receptor, had a potential binding site with similar qualities—but it was deep inside the receptor and, in Krishna Kumar's cryo-EM snapshot, blocked by clusters of atoms. It was also the wrong shape to fit FUBINACA. So Majumdar's team started sketching bespoke attachments for the cannabinoid, chains of atoms that might help the molecule worm its way in. Meanwhile, Stanford scientists took another approach, animating the static snapshot using computer simulations, showing how atoms in the drug and the receptor moved around each other. The simulations revealed something surprising: The atom clusters blocking that tantalizing site sporadically moved aside, opening what biochemists call a cryptic pocket, allowing researchers a glimpse in. Tweaking their designs to fit, Majumdar's team made one other crucial adjustment in the hope of nixing FUBINACA's psychoactive side effects. The newly accessible site, it turned out, could accept a compound with a positive electric charge, which hinders a molecule from crossing the membrane separating blood from the brain. By tacking a charged group of atoms onto FUBINACA, researchers confined its activity to CB1 receptors outside the brain—where it can't get anyone high or act on the brain's reward circuitry, limiting risks of misuse and abuse. New versions of FUBINACA were injected into rodents experiencing various kinds of pain. And one variant, which the researchers called VIP36, showed indicators of relieving chronic pain from three different sources—inflammation, nerve damage, and headaches—even after days of repeated injections. True, says Washington University neurobiologist Robert Gereau, all that molecular tinkering had reduced the drug's potency—and thus its pain-relieving effects. But where that might have left other cannabinoids toothless, Gereau says, VIP36 remained 'effective in a range that is useful clinically,' precisely because FUBINACA packed such a wallop to begin with. VIP36 is still in its baby steps phase. It has yet to be tested in humans, who have fewer CB1 receptors outside of their brains than rodents do. And, for now, the new compound can't be taken orally, only injected. But even if the drug never reaches your medicine cabinet, the research could still chart new pharmaceutical paths. For one, it might occasion a reassessment from those skeptical of cannabinoids' potential as medicine—a constituency that includes the world's largest pain-research organization, the International Association for the Study of Pain, whose official position is that science has so far failed to prove cannabinoids either safe or effective. 'This is the perfect paper to help re-put steam into the cannabinoid field,' says Michael Burton, a neuroscientist and cannabinoid researcher at the University of Texas at Dallas. What's more, Majumdar says, there may be other cryptic pockets in other receptors related to CB1, many of which have nothing to do with pain. Some have been linked to heart disease, for instance, or substance abuse disorders. This opens an enticing possibility: What the researchers have learned about changing a receptor's behavior could help them tinker with a whole range of drugs. Majumdar is already planning to revisit a previous study that unsuccessfully targeted a hard-to-reach opioid receptor. He imagines redesigning antidepressants, maybe cancer drugs. 'Targeting diseases beyond pain is expected in the near future,' he says. 'We are just scratching the surface.' This story appears in the September 2025 issue of National Geographic magazine. Set Design: Mat Cullen, Lalaland Artists
