however you are right, drugs affect everyone differently but its a pretty established fact that the chemicals contained in these "products" are far from harmless and all evidence points to them being more dangerous from a mental health standpoint than most classic psychoactives
TL;DR. I think very few people smoke(d) Spice (TM)? because they simply couldn't access marijuana.
This became so bad that at its height it was near impossible to buy unadulterated cannabis, then suddenly a product pops up in head shops that seems to get people stoned, costs pretty much the same as weed and wasnt full of glass/silica/paint, it became an instant success
this of course led people to realise there were other such chemicals capable of getting you high in some way that were also not yet illegal with the likes of 4-methylmethcathinone aka mephedrone becoming hugely popular because it was powerful, easily available and cheap,
the HUGE danger this brought with it was that there was (arguably still is) a belief by those who dont know anything about the chemistry that as its not illegal it must be "safe" this of course was not the case at all
In the US it may have been more for that reason but its actually quite a rare occurence that people are drug tested in the workplace here unless you work a mission critical job like say an air traffic controller, i have never been personally subjected to a drugs test in 2 decades of employment
thankfully for the tech savvy not too many years later came the advent of the dark web markets such as silk road which gave people access to clean weed fairly easily. say what you will but i believe the dark net markets are actually a force for good, although there isnt the "community spirit" which existed in the original silk road, there were many good people on there
now im sure there are those reading this thinking "good people?? these are drug dealers! theyre scum!" but that isnt the case, especially in those days, people cared about providing clean quality substances to people who wanted them, no one was "pushing" anything and almost everything was of the finest quality. again its an issue of the image the media has created. its a shame im so terribly poor at writing in general or i could write a fairly interesting book or article about this sort of stuff
I know what you mean about community though. Where I'm from most of the dealers are the stereotypical goofy hippies who seem to worship cannabis and see it as a cure for anything. It's a little obnoxious to listen to them rant sometimes, but at least I know they genuinely aren't going to poison anybody for a few bucks, they just really like weed.
later on other brands using different mixes came about one of the biggest being called "Black Mamba" this too was generally a mixture of synthetic cannabinoids sprayed onto smokable herbs, but then came the psychoactives bill which banned most of these chemicals meaning that they started to be produced illicitly and also led to the mixture of chemicals used in them being even further twisted.
this brings us to now and while fringe analogs of synthetic cannabinoids are no doubt still being used and by no means are they likely to be good for you the problem chemical is actually more likely to be MDPV or a derivative of it (methylenedioxypyrovalerelone if memory serves correctly) otherwise known as Monkey dust or simply "Dust" it wouldnt surprise me to see some form of dissociative analog in there too, something like 3MeO-PCP
MDPV is not a cannabinoid but more a stimulant of sorts which gives a very short high with very long acting unpleasant side effects. of course its highly unlikely we will ever know exactly what is in that crap but one thing is for sure you have one and only one thing to blame for the problem and that is the prohibition of other substances proven to be less harmful. were we to make a sensible move the likes of the one Portugal has it would likely alleviate the problem greatly, even simply legalizing the sale and recreational use of cannabis would likely greatly reduce the problem (whilst also creating businesses, jobs, tax revenue and tourism to name but a few economic benefits)
how do i know all this stuff? experience i have no shame in admitting i became interested in psychoactive chemicals at one point in my 20s and spent a few years deeply researching and trying a staggering number of chemicals both the classical psychoactives we all know and a large number of "research chemicals" MDPV was in fact one of said chemicals, i only did it once and i did it via insuffluation it gave me a 15min buzz followed by 3 days of no sleep, twitchyness, paranoia and toward the end a similar situation to amphetamine psychosis including hallucinations, from what im told smoking it only serves to intensify all of this. of all the chemicals i tried there were few i could label as fundamentally "bad" but MDPV was definitely one of those few
i fully agree with you that at this stage any comparison to cannabis is pretty idiotic, not only do we not actually know what is in the stuff but even if it were synthetic cannabinoids and nothing else theyre likely now so far removed from the original substance that they have totally different effects just look at what happens when you modify something like amphetamine, both MDMA and Meth are amphetamine analogs but you dont see many people homeless, toothless and brainless due to an MDMA addiction. a quick read of PIHKAL or TIKHAL will show you just how much the effects of a chemical can change with only a tiny modification
its a shame that people arent more biochemically aware or theyd know that articles like this are packed with poor information but sadly thats not the case so we end up with people demonising other substances based on poor information from supposedly trustworthy sources