New York Times, 16 Jul 2016 – The police raids around a gritty Brooklyn intersection were meant to show that city officials were taking charge after 33 people had been stricken by suspected overdoses of K2. But the spectacle, captured by a crush of news media, came up all but empty, without a single packet of the drug seized. The outcome of the attempted crackdown underscored the challenges the authorities face in combating K2, a potent substance that is easy to distribute and hard to regulate. Its low price and powerful high have made it popular among some homeless people, and its effects have periodically transformed patches of the city – like the one on the border of Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant where the raids were carried out – into theaters of public drug use.