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Banning Bath Salts, Harshing Your High
Photo by SuperFantastic via Flickr
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Photo by SuperFantastic via Flickr
Put down those bath salts, step away from the tub - we know what you're up to! LA City Councilmember Paul Koretz is calling for a citywide ban on the sale and use of "bath salts" and has deemed them a designer drug, according to KTLA.
How have seemingly innocuous bath salts become a dangerous substance? When Koretz put forth the motion at a meeting last night, he referenced an "influx of reports of dangerous and sometimes deadly incidents stemming from the consumption and abuse of the powdery substance, either through smoking, injection or snorting."
Health experts have noted that bath salts in question contain synthetic stimulants that are comparable to cocaine or meth and that they pose similar risks including "rapid heart beat, an intense high, euphoria, extreme energy, hallucinations, delirium, insomnia, psychosis, paranoia, suicidal thoughts, chest pain, heart attack and stroke."
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Are these your average bath salts you can buy at any drugstore? Not exactly. These are drugs marketed as regular bath salts and are available in drugstores, but they carry a higher price ($25 - $40 per packet vs. $3 for "non-drug" bath salts) and contain different ingredients. These "salts" can also be purchased online and found in head shops.
Louisiana placed a ban on bath salts a month ago and several other states including Kentucky, Mississippi, California and Missouri have contacted the Louisiana Poison Center in their own consideration of bans.
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