Spice is a nickname for a herbal mixture containing one or more of a group of drugs called synthetic cannabinoids.

Spice was originally a brand name of a drug, sold as a ‘legal high’ along with other brand names like Black Mamba, Annihilation, Exodus Damnation and Happy Joker. They contained a non-psychoactive herbal smoking mixture that had been mixed with one or more of a group of drugs known as Synthetic Cannabinoid Receptor Agonists (to give them their full name) or SCRAs for short.

Spice (and Mamba) are now used as nicknames for any type of herbal mixture that has been coated with an SCRA. SCRAs can also appear as powders or liquids for use in e-cigarettes although in the UK SCRAs are now almost always smoked in a herbal form, however, SCRAs have also turned up as adulterants in a number of other drugs. In recent incidents in Oldham, pure crystals of SCRAs were sold as MDMA resulting in multiple hospital admissions.