Since about 20 years, smoking mixtures, such as Spice or K2, have become popular alternatives for cannabis. These smoking mixtures contain synthetic cannabinoids, which are reported to cause more psychological problems and stronger behavioral impairment. However, comparing the effects of synthetic cannabinoids with natural cannabis has been problematic due to the differences in pharmacological properties of these two substances. Therefore we compared the effects of these drugs in two groups of participants with similar acute subjective intoxication levels. By using this method, it was found that both drugs equally impaired neurocognitive performance, while dissociative effects were more pronounced when using the synthetic cannabinoid.
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