this study by ted carpenter examines issues we are talking about today. his remarks will be followed by comments by others. a few words about my friend and mentor, ted. ted carpenter is a senior fellow for policy at cato. he served as the director of foreign policies that he's -- studies. please the author of nine and the editor of 10 books on international affairs, including "the fire next door." his other books include "smart policywer." he serves on editorial boards. he is the author of more than 600 articles and policy studies. his articles have appeared in "the new york times" and many others. as a guest on television and radio, in latin america, europe east asia. he received his phd from the university of texas. with that, ted carpenter. [applause] mr. carpenter: thank you very much. he is correct that this is a timely topic. it seems like every time you turn around and is a major news article about synthetic drugs and the alleged threat to public health and safety. my study focuses on designer drugs, a subset of synthetic drugs, artificial substance

with that, ted carpenter. >> thank you very much, chris. he's certainly correct that this is a timely topic. it seems like every time you turn around lately there is a major news article about synthetic drugs and the alleged threat to public health and safety. now, my study focuses on designer drugs, which is a subset of synthetic drugs, artificial substances that mimic the effects of traditional mind-altering drugs. now, synthetic drugs have been around for a number of decades. we certainly are familiar with the methamphetamine phenomenon in the united states and that's been around for better than three decades. and if you go back even farther than that back to the 1960s and the flap over the use of lsd. so this is not a new issue per se. what we have seen, though in the past five years or so is a new family of synthetic drugs. those are the ones i call designer drugs. and there are two major categories. there's some exceptions to this, but two major categories. one, synthetic marijuana often goes by the name of k-2 or spice. and then bath