Warning: Not For Human Consumption (No, Really)

Doctors recently treated a Louisiana woman for redness in her right forearm that developed after she attended a party.  She admitted that she had the bright idea of injecting a drug into her arm two days earlier.  Doctors discovered that she had developed necrotizing fasciitis (doctor speak for a flesh eating bacteria), which spread so rapidly that they had to amputate the woman’s arm, shoulder, and collarbone, as well as perform a radical mastectomy.  What was the drug that caused such massive destruction in such a short time period?  Meth?  Heroine? Crack?  Nope.  Bath salts are at it again and it seems the government is helpless to stop it.

As we reported last fall, “bath salts” are a designer drug that contains stimulants that act much like meth and cocaine.  They are highly addictive, and their reported side effects include hypertension, extreme paranoia, hallucinations, and suicide.  Who would have guessed that a drug that mimics meth could string you out just like meth?  Well, now we can apparently add flesh-eating bacteria to that list of side effects.

How are these bath salts still legally available for purchase at many convenience stores? No one buys the idea that they are actually enhancing that spa retreat feeling in your bathroom.  Most states have actually attempted to ban them, but are running into one little problem.   The chemists who design these products are one step ahead of the lawmakers and are altering them to get around new laws.  For example, in Pennsylvania, a state law banned six chemical compounds of bath salts.  The makers responded by simply tweaking the formula, and voila, they were back on the market in no time.  Many other states have hit similar snags in their attempts to regulate these products.

We will be watching the evolution of this issue. Can the government get its act together and get this stuff off the market?  A host of lawsuits have already been filed against the makers of bath salts.  How will the fact that the makers are changing their products to get around anti-drug laws affect any defense that they are labeled as “not intended for consumption?”  In the mean time, we should continue to get a few more gem headlines courtesy of bath salts.  For instance, “Man Bites Car, Bath Salts to Blame?”