Which synthetic cannabinoids are on the market?

This version has been translated from Polish and links to the relevant test kits have been added. In a life-threatening situation call 112. This article is informational and serves harm reduction. It does not encourage the use of psychoactive substances and does not replace medical advice.

Mostly not the ones people have heard of. European drug checking services have published 100 samples containing a synthetic cannabinoid between April 2025 and August 2026, and MDMB-4en-PINACA is in 40 of them. JWH-018, JWH-210 and AM-2201, the compounds that still carry most of the search traffic, appear in none.

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What the labs found

Compound Samples
MDMB-4en-PINACA 40
5F-ADB 21
MDMB-INACA 17
ADB-BUTINACA and ADB-BINACA 12
Other synthetic cannabinoids 33
JWH series and AM-2201 0

Samples containing more than one compound appear in more than one row, which is why the column exceeds 100. Geographically it concentrates in England with 31 samples, Austria 23, Switzerland 20 and Slovenia 11.

One caution about that zero. Our corpus is dominated by 2025 and 2026 records, and the JWH generation was at its peak more than a decade earlier, so this says those compounds are not being found now rather than that they never were.

Browse the alerts database · MDMB-4en-PINACA in the library

Why the potency argument is really a mixing argument

These compounds are full agonists at the CB1 receptor where THC is only a partial one, and that difference in receptor behaviour, rather than potency alone, is what separates the family from cannabis. The practical problem is that they are dissolved in solvent and sprayed onto plant material, so they do not distribute evenly. One end of a bag can be inert and the other end a hospital visit, which is also why "I smoked some yesterday and I was fine" tells you nothing about the rest of it.

The part that has changed: vapes and CBD flower

Fifteen of the 100 samples were detected alongside nicotine, which does not happen in a bag of herb and does happen in vape liquid. Another 32 came back with CBD, THC or CBN, meaning cannabis or CBD product carrying a synthetic on top of it, and one of those was reported as CBDA 4.0%, free CBD 8.1%, total CBD 11.5%, CBN 0.1%, plus MDMB-4en-PINACA and ADB-BUTINACA. Read that composition again: it is legal CBD flower, correctly labelled for its cannabinoid content, sprayed with a synthetic so that it does something. You buy it in a shop, you get an accurate CBD certificate, and you get a full CB1 agonist nobody mentioned.

Plant material sold as cannabis, with the 4-AP reagent. No cannabinoid reaction.
Plant material sold as cannabis, with the 4-AP reagent. No cannabinoid reaction.

What the 4-AP reagent shows

The cannabis reagent identifies THC and CBD, so it works by exclusion: a correct cannabinoid reaction indicates THC or CBD is present, and the absence of that reaction on material sold to you as cannabis is the warning. It will not name which synthetic cannabinoid you have, and nothing in a bottle will, because there are hundreds of them and the reference reactions do not exist for most.

THC and CBD with the 4-AP reagent, the reaction you want to see
THC and CBD with the 4-AP reagent, the reaction you want to see
Cannabinoid TLC, which measures how much rather than whether
Cannabinoid TLC, which measures how much rather than whether

Cannabis 4-AP reagent, 7.30 EUR · Cannabinoid quantity kit · How to detect synthetic cannabinoids

What we would test, and when

Cannabis from a source you do not know, every time, because it is a 7.30 EUR bottle and 100 tests. CBD flower or hash bought as a legal product, for the reason in the composition above. Vape liquid, on a dried drop. And anything that hit far harder than you expected: keep what is left and send it to a lab, because that result ends up in a database and helps everybody else.

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Questions?

Can I see or smell a synthetic cannabinoid on weed?

No. It is sprayed from solution and dries invisible. Herb containing MDMB-4en-PINACA has repeatedly been submitted by people who believed it was ordinary cannabis.

Are synthetic cannabinoids stronger than THC?

They act differently, which matters more. THC is a partial CB1 agonist and most of these are full agonists, and full agonism at CB1 is what the case literature associates with seizures and cardiac events.

Does the reagent tell me which one is present?

No. It indicates whether THC or CBD is present. Absence of the expected reaction is the warning; identification needs a laboratory.

What about HHC and THCP?

A different question. Those are cannabinoids and they do react. The compounds on this page are not cannabinoids in the botanical sense, they are synthetics that happen to hit the same receptor.

Where do the pharmacology figures come from?

The substance library, which aggregates dose.wiki, PsychonautWiki, TripSit and Erowid and lists its sources on each compound page. The sample counts are ours and you can recount them in the alerts database.