The DEA has just instituted a temporary ban on a new designer drug called "bath salts." The name has no connection to what people put in their bath water. This is a stimulant drug that has been equated to knock-off versions of cocaine and ecstasy. The drug gets its name because it comes in a powder or crystal form, just like traditional bath water salts. The drug can be consumed by snorting, injecting or smoking it.
The salts contain the chemicals mephedrone and methylenedioxypyrovalerone. Both are related to khat, a leaf-like organic stimulant grown in Arab and East African countries that is illegal in the United States.
Increasing Popularity of Designer Drugs
The drug has gained popularity in the U.S. during the past year, and people experiencing adverse side effects have started turning up in hospitals for emergency treatment. Doctors say the drugs have extremely dangerous and long-lasting effects such as agitation, violence and psychotic behavior. Sedatives have a minimal calming effect when treating bath salt tweakers.
The increase in bath salt use during 2011 was enormous. From January to June of this year, U.S. poison control centers received 3,470 calls about bath salts. During the entire year of 2010, the center received only 303 calls. This represents a 1,000% increase during the first half of 2011 alone.
Bath Salt Drug Trends
Other names for bath salts are "plant food/fertilizer" and "toy cleaner." They're available for purchase in retail stores, head shops and online. Prices range from $25 to $50 for a 50-milligram packet.
The U.S. is actually a late adopter in the bath salt trend. Bath salts already had their run in Britain before the country banned the drug in 2010. The majority of the drug supply is coming from China and India, where chemical manufacturers run into less government interference. They are able to legally import the drug into the U.S. by labeling the packages "not for human consumption." Ironic...
The DEA Ban
The DEA's temporary ban will make it illegal to manufacture, distribute or sell bath salts anywhere in the U.S. Violators will be shut down, arrested and prosecuted according to the law. However, chemists and distributors seem indifferent by the new law as evidenced by the fact that bathsaltsdrug.com is still online and selling product. They even posted a review of their latest offering on September 7th.
It's likely that few sellers will be affected by the ban. The reason is simple: chemists can make a minor tweak to the drug, which gives it a whole new name and molecular structure. In order for the substance to be declared illegal, its exact make-up has to be outlawed. By making minor changes on a continuous basis, the drug makers can stay one step ahead of the law.
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Comments: 9
It is reported to be highly addictive and a really bad results to the user. It's a horrible drug and hopeful now being illegal, people will not be able to get it or try this once "legal" high.
The drug war has American undermined society. The best way to see this is to look at an example. Lets use California.
Before the drug war California had 4 prisons crime was statistically flat-lined from 1920 to 1980. From 1980 to 2011 that number went from 4 to 33 prisons and even with this unprecedented increase in facilities California penal institutions are operating at 175% of their design capacity. In fact the The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world.
So is it more difficult to buy drugs now then it was before 1980? No, in fact it is easier and the range of drugs that are accessible at any given time is far greater. This is nothing more then markets. ie, Where there is a demand markets will emerge to meant it.
What happened to all these kids from the 80's to the end of the 90's who went to jail?
A 2002 study survey showed that among nearly 275,000 prisoners released in 1994, 67.5% were rearrested within 3 years, and 51.8% were back in prison.
The effect of the growth in the prison industry on communities has been profound. Prison inculcates a criminal ideology and a life style of violence. In short prison is a school for social degeneration. Neighborhoods hit by the drug war were traditional low income working class minority's.
Wadges have flat lined for over 30 years and new manufacturing jobs were not created to absorbed these minority workers in the same ways that earlier populations had been.
This was the same effect that occurred in the 1920's with prohibition. Minority's entered into the illegal trade of alcohol. We don't tend to think about this now day's but at the time Italians and Irish were the minority immigrant groups. Prohibition funded the rise of the mafia. Just as the criminal cartels of today are financed by the drug triad.
These neighborhoods have been turned into gain lands, undermining standers of social integration and devaluing property value. No one wants to move their family into a gang war and those born in it know no other world then the one they see.
The rise of the mafia gave way to the rise of its opposition the enforcement arm of peace keeping. Prisons are a huge industry in America, bringing revenue in the form of jobs to the building industry, supply and maintenance in addition to security officers who tend to live were they work. Prisons also count their populations as residents in the communities in which they operate thus adding value in census appropriation.
In the end tax payers pay for the increase in policing, Jail, lawyers, Courts, monitoring and housing. While poor communities are economically pushed into deeper impoverishment.
Go into any city in America and look around at the effects of prohibition on our culture as a whole. Here we are a police state incarcerating more people then any country in the world. This is not to say drugs are good, but rather to say our approach is as criminal as our proclamations of prohibition.
Prisons have been filled to capacity. Violent criminals, murderers, rapists and child molesters are released early to create space for these so called drug offenders. Half of court trial time and also a huge chunk of police officers time is pointlessly wasted. Enormous untaxed profits from illegal drugs fund multi-national criminal empires which bribe law enforcement authorities and spread corruption faster than a raging bush fire. These laws take violent criminals and turn them into multi-billionaires whilst corrupting even entire countries such as Columbia, Panama, Mexico and Afghanistan. The extreme violence on and south of the border is drug gangs fighting for turf in this lucrative business. The drug laws are also funding the Taliban whose illegal opium profits allow it to buy weapons and pay it's fighters more than $300 a month, compared with the $14 paid to an Afghan policemen.
The definition of insanity is great folly, madness, extreme senselessness, lunacy. The present drug laws cause all of the above and may therefor be deemed insane.
There will be many of you who probably fear a theoretical free-for-all, but that overlooks one major point: That's exactly the situation we have at the moment. Sure, there are laws against the possession and sale of these drugs, but they have no impact on actually restricting either one. When we allow such drugs to remain in the criminal market, they finance the activities of street punks, violent gangs, drug lords and terrorists. That's why there is now such an urgent need to legalize, which will not only allow us to properly regulate these substances, but also strip the illegal cartels of their main income.
So please consider the following very carefully : It wasn't the alcohol that caused the surge in crime and homicide during alcohol prohibition, it was prohibition itself. That's why many of us find it hard to believe that the same thing is not happening now. We clearly have a prohibition fueled violent crime problem. A huge number of these violent crimes are perpetrated by criminal syndicates and gangs who use the proceeds form the sales of illegal substances to further even more of their criminal activities.
Prohibition is nothing less than a grotesque dystopian nightmare; if you support it you must be either ignorant, stupid, brainwashed, insane or corrupt.
or we dont want an easier access for our kids to have access to something much more deadly than imbibing a beer or a few shots of whiskey.