Don't snort the bath salt

[Renew Deal]

Sale of bath salt hallucinogenics growing in Missouri

St. Louis, MO (KSDK) - Use of a hallucinogenic drug sold legally as bath salt appears to be growing in Missouri.
Just weeks into the new year, the Missouri Poison Control Center at SSM Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center is seeing more and more cases of bath salt abuse.

Officials say they've seen at least one case a day since the year began. They only saw 12 in 2010.

The drug causes a dramatic increase in heart rate and blood pressure when snorted, swallowed or injected. The dangers of taking it are still greatly unknown.

"Some of these compounds stimulate receptors in the brain that cause psychotic symptoms, would that person have developed some kind of psychosis in the future?" said Dr. Anthony Scalzo, Missouri Poison Control Center. "Perhaps, but these compounds are eliciting it more rapidly, inducing it, and they are doing things that they would not have normally done, so there are behavioral as well as physical effects, and we're concerned about both of those."
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http://www.ksdk.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=239377&catid=3

[Taverner]

1. This sounds like a hoax, much like "mellow yellow"

[piratefish08]

3. not a hoax, but not "bath salts" either....

probably mephedrone or a similar drug, still legal at the moment.....

popular in the UK party scene the past few years.

[Taverner]

7. Yes I know its real, but it definitely *sounded* like a hoax

Kind of like the hoax that you can make cocaine from a gallon of oragel

[Sherman A1]

2. The level of stupid continues to amaze

and one simply cannot fix stupid........

[LunaSea]

4. Mephedrone

For those who found this story curiously devoid of information-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mephedrone

I'm wondering about this statement too-
"Some of these compounds stimulate receptors in the brain that cause psychotic symptoms, would that person have developed some kind of psychosis in the future?" said Dr. Anthony Scalzo, Missouri Poison Control Center.

In light of this Wiki entry.

Effects

There have been no formal published studies into the effects of mephedrone psychological and behavioural effects of mephedrone on humans, nor on animals from which the potential effects could be extrapolated. As a result the only information available comes from users themselves and clinical reports of acute mephedrone toxicity.<1>:12 Psychologists at Liverpool John Moores University were to conduct research into the effects of mephedrone on up to 50 students already using the drug, when it was still legal in the UK.<61> At the time the study was proposed, Les Iversen, the chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs called the experiments "pretty unethical".<62> The study was discontinued in August 2010, following the change in the legal status of the drug.<63>

[DCKit]

5. Geez, and all this time I've been injecting bleach and detergent.

Who knew the really good shit was in the tub?

[Romulox]

6. How do we know what substances are safe, and which deadly?

It's legal to snort these "bath salts" off the hood of a police cruiser, but marijuana remains a Schedule 1 substance. :shrug: