The horrible drug terror of bath salt
It’s pretty safe to say that taking bath salts won’t drive you crazy and burn down your house with your kids in it. These kinds of media stories taking over the nation are big money opportunities for news agencies because people love to see blood on paper. If you’re going to kill every cat and dog in town with bath salts, then you already have major problems and probably a lot of other substance abuse problems on top of that. Having said that…bath salts are not to be taken lightly or casually thrown at a sleepy high school boy trying to do his homework.
With all the media attention bath salts have been receiving, this product is almost certainly going nowhere. By creating a panic about it, they turned a relatively small but regular business into a huge booming industry of big business and knowledgeable chemical heads making packages out of their garage. Of course, MDPV will eventually be a fully scheduled illegal substance in all 50 states, but there are HUNDREDS of research chemicals that can be cut to harmless potency and bagged for sale.
State and federal legislation take months to catch up with what is available and often years to ban new substances. There is a demand for this product (mostly created by all the media hype) and when there is a demand, a way will be found to supply it. Designer drugs are not a fad, they are a reality that people must deal with and not lose their minds. We can chemically engineer anything, and the process of government regulation and legislation is so time-consuming that it’s worth selling.
When discussing the subject of research chemicals and their designer drug counterparts, “bath salts,” there are myths, truths, and lies being marketed to all who have come into contact with this topic. The media in general have once again taken a real problem to an almost laughable extreme. There are currently research chemicals on the market that are taken as a legal high. These research chemicals are consumed under the guise of “bath salts,” “plant foods,” “collectibles,” “water softeners,” and other means that strongly suggest these products are not for human consumption. As parents, citizens, or (heaven forbid) consumers, we must dedicate ourselves to unbiased information about these products to educate, inform, and share knowledge about these products.
Although the mainstream media and government have almost made a joke of this subject because of the extreme reaction to substances that have been around for decades, it is important to remember that these substances refer to everything else…drugs. Recently, they are also sometimes scheduled controlled substances. Being an educated parent, a citizen, and (if you choose to do so) a consumer is far better than being the uneducated alternative. The most popular active ingredient is a research chemical called MDPV. MDPV is an “unscheduled” basic stimulant whose effects and side effects are very similar to cocaine. The chemical compound MDPV (which stands for methylenedioxypyrovalerone) serves as the main stimulant used to prepare a mixture of bath salts. If you were to theoretically buy a 500-mg packet of bath salt, perhaps less than 5 percent of that packet would actually contain the active drug. That’s why many bath salt consumers have complained about “fake” packages where the contents look normal but don’t offer any of the desired side effects (other than perhaps some placebo effect). However, the reverse can also be true, and taking half a pack could be enough to kill the user, their dog, and half their neighborhood. This is why caution, regulation, and hopefully elimination is needed.
It’s also important to note that there is no such thing as a “bath salt drug.” There are mixtures of who knows what with small amounts of psychoactive research chemicals placed inside small vials that are marketed as “bath salts, not for human consumption” under this huge umbrella term. There’s no reason to run in fear from this bath salt “epidemic” because it’s going nowhere.
When it comes to researching chemicals…be wise, be rational, and for Pete’s sake, keep your kids away.
