TOLEDO, Ohio — Crews with the Toledo Fire and Rescue Department are seeing a spike in run-ins with the synthetic cannabis drug, K2 or "spice."
K2 is a synthetic cannabis product enhanced with over 200 chemicals.
According to Toledo fire crews, there were eight K2 overdoses in January 2019 and 160 for the entire year.
This January, there were 67 overdoses.
"We may have somebody who may be in a comatose state or excited delirium or maybe a psychotic stage," TFRD spokesperson Pvt. Sterling Rahe said.
Rahe said the department is seeing a rise in K2 usage among the homeless population in the downtown area.
"I think that has to do with — when the mission lets out for the day, the homeless come out. A lot of them go over to the library area and that's fine. But, this is where a lot of this is happening," Rahe said.
Leaders with the Toledo Lucas County Public Library said they are paying close attention to the trend in an effort to stay on top of the issue.
"One thing that we are doing is just reaching out to local law enforcement and the Drug Abuse Response Team (D.A.R.T.) to see if there's anything that we can get involved in; education, making sure our staff is abreast of the trends of what's happening," TLCPL Director of Operations Mike Graybeal said.
"Our primary mission is to care for the citizens and in this case, we want to make sure these people are as safe as we can. If we can get them away from the K2 or stop that usage, that's what we want to see," Rahe said.
Toledo fire officials will continue to track the statistics. The department's EMS supervisor has started the dialogue with law enforcement and city council to figure out what they need to do to stem the tide.