How this chemist unwittingly helped spawn the synthetic drug industry

UNINCORPORATED JACKSON COUNTY, N.C. — The chemist who unwittingly helped spawn the District’s synthetic drug epidemic is a hard man to find. His phone numbers are listed under his wife’s name. Strangers who call his laboratories at Clemson University are told he doesn’t return messages.

To find him, you must travel deep into the Smoky Mountains and take a road that winds into the clouds. There, atop a mountain, you will discover a stooped, elderly man padding about a house cloaked in mist.

John W. Huffman is his name. But he is better known by his initials: JWH. In the world of synthetic drugs, few letters carry greater notoriety. They have materialized on thousands of advertisements selling what are known as synthetic cannabinoids or marijuana. And government authorities have banned nine JWH substances, making him arguably the nation’s most prolific inventor of outlawed synthetic marijuana.

Huffman’s compounds, experts say, laid some...

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/how-a-chemist-unwittingly-helped-spawn-the-synthetic-drug-epidemic/2015/08/09/94454824-3633-11e5-9739-170df8af8eb9_story.html