This is not the first time I have been urged to write about the problem of kids always looking for a new legal high. Believe that things have gotten a lot more serious than the “whippets” we used to do out of whipped cream cans when we were kids.
One terrifying new drug kids are abusing are bath salts. Yes, that’s right ordinary bath salts. Bath salts are used as a drug by grinding it up and snorting it. While this is a relatively new issue, law enforcement officials all say it’s just a matter of time before it worsens.
The drug can be snorted, smoked, injected or swallowed and is cheap, addictive and causes users to act unpredictably.
In Bangor, Maine, police respond to one to three calls a day involving the stimulant, which looks like cocaine but usually contains mephedrone or methylenedioxypyrovalerone, known as MDPV.
Penobscot County in Maine accounts for about 32 percent of the state’s 121 bath salts poisonings — overdoses — through the first nine months of this year
Since mid-April, police and have responded to more than 143 incidents involving bath salts.
The thing that is common with bath salts users is severe delusion, paranoia — people are out to get them. People are chasing them. Sounds kind of like what is currently happening with music great Sly Stone who is holed up in his van.
Because the drug users truly fear for their lives, they pick up knives, guns and other weapons and are a danger to themselves, the people who love them and the law enforcement and medical personnel dispatched to help, the Rockland sergeant and others say.
At least two men in Maine, one in Bangor and one in Rockland, attempted to commit suicide by cop while under the influence of bath salts.
He used a Waterville man — recently found standing at the edge of the woods screaming nonsense at nearby trees — as an example of a bath salts user who didn’t even realize police were there.
Synthetic bath salts are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration because the drug is not marketed for human consumption, so users take a risk every time they consume the concoction of lab-made drugs.
The paranoia experienced by users sometimes lasts well beyond when the drug leaves their system. The flashbacks can last for days. Hopefully, this fad will end soon. Americans have a hard enough time keeping drugs out of their bodies and the bodies of their children.