Bath Salts - the new drug problem

[IDrinkaRum]

States are thinking of banning bath salts, due to the fact drug users are now using them to get high and are suffering dangerous results as the price

Mississippi lawmakers this week began considering a proposal to ban the sale of the powders, and a similar step is being sought in Kentucky. In Louisiana, the bath salts were outlawed by an emergency order after the state's poison center received more than 125 calls in the last three months of 2010 involving exposure to the chemicals.

Also, there is one story of a man snorting the stuff who slit his face & stomach repeatedly with his skinning knife! There's the man whose son, while high on the chemicals that are sold benignly as bath salts who slit his throat (fortunately or unfortunately missing all the major arteries in his throat) who ended up shooting himself in the head. One man, who killed a sheriff's deputy may or may not have been under the influence of the drug.

Is this over-reacting? Should there be a banning or a restricted sale?

[Mikkel]

Are there any legal use for those so called bath salts? Are they even safe to put in your bath?
I think they should be banned. If they were important and if there were no safer alternatives there would be doubt, but this? If people want something in their bathwater, I'm sure there are safer things to use.

[Aethian]

What the hell is wrong with people? My Mom LOVES using bath salts. They help remove rough skin as well as like Epsom salts ease her poor joints. Just because they smell nice is a added bonus.

Whats next...people are going to start snorting bananas and they are going to ban those?

[AdminAssistant]

That's a major overreaction. We can't save everyone from their own stupidity.

[Mikkel]

As I read the article, they aren't banning all bath salts, just those with MDPV. They aren't ordinary bath salts but a drug sold as bath salts.
Somewhat analogous to "poppers" sold as air fresheners.
I would be concerned for those people using the drug bath salts, there may be some effect of breathing the steam from the bath water too.

ETA: Wikipedia say:

It was however an offence under the Medicines Act to sell it for human consumption, so it was often sold as "plant food" or "bath salts" although, as it has no use as such products, this too was possibly illegal

[MadMike]

If we're going to ban anything that could potentially be misused, then we're going to have to ban everything.

[Lace Neil Singer]

People also get high using glue and plastic bags; let's ban those, too!

Whatever happened to personal responsibility?

[LadyBarbossa]

If we're going to ban anything that could potentially be misused, then we're going to have to ban everything.

Exactly. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that snorting bath salts or other various substances probably isn't good for you. Hell, I've heard you can even get high off sniffing fingernail polish, are they going to ban that too? I don't think everyone should be punished because a few morons here and there want to Darwinize themselves.

[Rantsylvania 6-5000]

Snorting bath salts, sucking on toads...there's nothing people won't try in their quest to get high!

That's a major overreaction. We can't save everyone from their own stupidity.

If we're going to ban anything that could potentially be misused, then we're going to have to ban everything.

Seriously!

People also get high using glue and plastic bags; let's ban those, too!

And everything in aerosol cans!

Whatever happened to personal responsibility?

They tried to smoke it.

[Jack]

Just to clarify again, these are not actual bath salts. They're no more bath salts than K2 is "incense" - they're just labeled as that to avoid touching drug laws by marketing them for consumption. They come in like 500mg tins and are very obviously not actually for putting in the bath. They're also not really worth it IMO.

[Andara Bledin]

Put this down as more misleading headlines.

This particular item has no value as a bath salt; that was merely a label given the product to escape other well-known legal issues with sale of the product.

Also, as a psychoactive, the government's going to have a hard-on about removing it from the market, anyway. Even the stuff that can't be proven to actually harm anyone is controlled, so things like this that lead to an inarguably high reaction rate are going to come under heavy fire.

While I'm libertarian in my views on drug control, I'm also very leery of anything that affects dopamine reception as that seems to be a pretty solid recipe for trouble in too many cases.

^-.-^

[KitterCat]

In northern Mississippi's Itawamba County, Sheriff Chris Dickinson said his office has handled about 30 encounters with users of the advertised bath salts in the past two months alone. He said the problem grew last year in his rural area after a Mississippi law began restricting the sale of pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in making methamphetamine.

This bit made me laugh. So after going through the state laws and federal laws and making it harder for meth addicts to get their high off meth from cold medicine, what does the connoisseuring meth head do? They find something else to get high off of. Something that’s more potent to get high off of. Does anyone else here find it really messed up that a drug user can get illegal drugs more easily than I can get legal over the counter cold medicine?

While I'm libertarian in my views on drug control, I'm also very leery of anything that affects dopamine reception as that seems to be a pretty solid recipe for trouble in too many cases.

^-.-^

Hello to another Libertarian. Don’t take this wrong, but even if a drug effects the dopamine receptors of the brain I have to say if the idiots want to take them let them. I’ve actually found myself becoming more and more of a Machiavellian mindset with libertarian ideals when it comes to drugs. If you want to take drugs it shouldn’t be the governments job to say that you cant. If you don’t want to take the time to research what your going to take will do you do, than we should let Darwin and natural selection take its place. Let the idiots die in their stupidity so that the rest of us don’t have to pay for their prison sentence.

[Skunkle]

Yeah, these are just skirting laws. Poppers (usually amyl nitrate or similar) were and still are sold quasi-legally; Playboy used to have ads for brands like Rush, which were touted as "liquid incense", "locker deodorizers", "air fresheners" and even "cassette tape player cleaning fluid".

Ever seen those little glass tubes with a cork in each end and a tiny silk rose inside? They're usually in a cardboard point-of-purchase display on the counter by the register in convenience stores. Know what I'm talking about? Very few people buy 'rose tubes' for the roses. If you see a POP display of copper brillo pads near the rose tubes, even better (or worse). Glass tube + copper wool = crack pipe. The rose tubes are also called 'stems'. Though I've never seen hard evidence (and, admittedly, I've never tried it) there are claims that some shady convenience stores will grab a rose tube and a chore pad and ring 'em up when the customer asks for a "kit" or "crack kit"; I'm suspicious of these claims, but I'm fairly certain some stores know what these items get used for.

Incidentally, there is an "online convenience store" which sells almost everything you'd find at a real one. They sell rose tubes. That page has one single other item on it, which isn't suspicious at all:
http://www.advantageservice.net/wild_rose.htm

The "bath salts" are, as stated, just labeled as such to make them pseudo-legal. But I'll bet anything some people who read about this go into their master bathroom, look at the glass jar by their bathtub filled with layers of what looks like pastel-tinted rock salt (REAL bath salts) which they've thrown into many a hot bath, and freak out. "OMG!! I've been using illegal drugs!!" Call me evil, but I crack a grin when I imagine that.

[protege]

If you don’t want to take the time to research what your going to take will do you do, than we should let Darwin and natural selection take its place. Let the idiots die in their stupidity so that the rest of us don’t have to pay for their prison sentence.

Unfortunately, that's not always what happens. Every now and then, someone else gets hurt when a meth lab explodes. I have very little sympathy for addicts who blow themselves up while fixing their drug of choice. But, what about the kid playing in the house next door...who is injured when the lab explodes?

[Mytical]

Or worse yet the kids IN the meth house who's only 'crime' was being born to a waste of skin? I could care less what somebody does to themselves...more power to them. When they take innocents out instead that they should be buried UNDER the jail..I mean .. incarcerated *whistles innocently*

As for the bath salts thing, I think I am going to go with the 'remove all warning labels and let Darwin's law take full effect' and shrug my shoulders for effect.