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?”

Thinking about trying one of those electronic cigarettes to help you quit smoking?  May we suggest going with the nicotine gum instead?  It may taste terrible and be tough to chew, but at least it won’t blow up in your face, as one Florida litigant is now alleging.  His electronic cigarette allegedly blew up in his face, leaving him in a hospital with severe burns, missing his front teeth, and missing a chunk of his tongue.

The man was in his home office when the device allegedly exploded, leaving behind burned carpet, furniture, pictures, and office equipment.  That must have been quite the explosion.   The culprit appears to be a faulty lithium rechargeable battery inside the device.  Investigators do not know the brand of electronic cigarette or type of battery. The fire department chief, Joseph Parker, said that “the best analogy is like it was trying to hold a bottle rocket in your mouth when it went off.”  Ouch!  With a statement like that, we’d say its a pretty safe bet that Chief Parker will be called as a witness for the plaintiff if a lawsuit is filed when a lawsuit is filed.

We previously reported on some of the issues surrounding electronic cigarettes here and here.  However, we certainly didn’t see this BOMBshell coming.  It should be interesting to see what may have caused this explosion, since there appear to be no other similar incidents involving electronic cigarettes.  Was this guy using the device improperly?  How old was this electronic cigarette? Was the battery put in incorrectly?  Did Al-Qaeda get their hands on it?

Discovery in this case should be interesting.

Remember the old adage, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity?”  You may not want to mention it if you run into a General Motors executive anytime soon.  GM saw its prized Chevy Volt’s January sales plummet over 60 percent due, at least in part, to negative publicity over alleged fire risks.

As we previously posted last November,  the Chevy Volt – GM’s extended electric car – was alleged to be at risk to catch fire due to potential design flaws.   The bad press continued in December in the mainstream media.   The result?   In January of 2012, GM sold a whopping 603 Chevy Volts.  This was down from 1529 units the prior month.  By comparison, Nissan Leaf sales were also down in January, but only from 954 to 676.

So it certainly appears that the alleged fire risk played a large role in the declining sales, even though it may not account for the entire decline.

Both GM and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently concluded that the alleged fire threat is much ado about nothing.  As we also posted in January, we are pretty confident this investigation was completely on the up and up.  It’s not like the NHTSA and the federal government have a vested interest in GM, right?   As an extra incentive, perhaps the feds should throw in a fire extinguisher along with the $7,500 tax credit that buyers get when they purchase a Volt.  They could certainly afford a few fire extinguishers since it doesn’t look like GM will ever sell all of the 200,000 units for which the feds agreed to provide that tax credit.  But we digress.

All of this just goes to show, even if the lawsuits over a defective product don’t get you, the bad press might.  Then again, we’re pretty sure some sort of class-action lawsuit will follow shortly.  They always do, right? Stay tuned.