Perry County's New Substance Abuse Nightmare: Bath Salts
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[The unbridled over-the-counter sale of bath salts with names like Ivory Snow, Red Dove and Vanilla Sky is sending experimenting Perry County residents into local hospital ERs with their paranoia and demons in tow.
"We've seen about a dozen cases so far since the first of the year," said Perry County Sheriff Keith Kellerman.
"Yes -- we have had some cases. I'm sorry -- we can't say much more than that, " commented Marshall Browning Hospital spokeswoman Pam Logan. Hospitals are bound by patient privacy rules.
Yet, across Southern Illinois there are growing stories of demon-stricken experimenters showing up on clinic and hospital doorsteps.
Patients under the influence of bath salts are combative--literally out of their mind.
Perry County communities are all passing ordinances making the possession of bath salts illegal, but the ordinances aren't going far enough. There is a new Illinois law, as well, but it only addresses possession, not the sale of the aromatic salts.
Likewise, hospitals are not now required to call law enforcement agencies when they suspect bath salt cases coming into their ERs.
Illinois' four new laws regulate certain ingredients in bath salts, expand the definition of drug-induced homicide, and add additional compounds and synthetic substances to the Illinois Controlled Substances Act.
The bath salts, with their complex chemical names--like LSD years ago and methamphetamine in recent years-- are an emerging menace.
Studies are already showing their effects can be as powerful as those of methamphetamine.
Emergency 911 operators are starting to get calls that report over exposure to the stimulant the powders often contain: mephedrone and methylenedioxypyrovalerone, also known as MDPV.
Sold under such names as Ivory Wave, Bliss, White Lightning and Hurricane Charlie, the chemicals can cause hallucinations, paranoia, a rapid heart rate and suicidal thoughts, authorities say.
The Illinois Poison Control hotline has gotten several calls. Southern Illinois hospital ERs are having to call law enforcement personnel to help restrain patients.
In southern Louisiana, the family of a 21-year-old man says he cut his throat and ended his life with a gunshot.
The stimulants are not regulated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, but are facing federal scrutiny. Cathinone, the parent substance of the drugs, comes from a plant grown in Africa and is regulated. He said that MDPV and mephedrone are made in a lab and they are not regulated because they are not marketed for human consumption. The stimulants affect neurotransmitters in the brain.
Agitation, paranoia, hallucinations, chest pain, suicidality. It's a very scary stimulant that is out there. ER staff members get high blood pressure and increased pulse, but there's something more, something different that's causing these other extreme effects.
Hospital personnel say right now, there's no test to pick up this drug. The only way doctors and nurses know if someone has taken them is if they tell you they have.
Are bath salts addictive? How are they taken?
The jury is still out on the first question. There haven't been enough studies done.
Acute toxicity is the main problem. But many stimulants do cause a craving. The people who take them are very creative. They snort it, shoot it or mix it with food and drink.