Monday, January 24, 2011

America's Newest Drug Problem, Bath Salts?

ABC News - Increasingly, law enforcement agents and poison control centers say the advertised bath salts with complex chemical names are an emerging menace in several U.S. states where authorities talk of banning their sale...Sold under such names as Ivory Wave, Bliss, White Lightning and Hurricane Charlie, the chemicals can cause hallucinations, paranoia, rapid heart rates and suicidal thoughts, authorities say. The chemicals are in products sold legally at convenience stores and on the Internet as bath salts and even plant foods. However, they aren't necessarily being used for the purposes on the label...

Bath Salts? How the hell was this stumbled upon?  I always wonder how normal drugs and addictions take hold, like who first came up with whatever process transforms the coca plant to cocaine, or who the genius was that decided standing around the fire wasn't enough, they had to physically inhale the flame through wrapped paper. But this? This just takes it a step further.

What kind of warped decision making process is going on with the guy that decides huffing the contents of his Grandma's Bath and Body Works Gift Basket sounds like a fun Saturday night?  It's things like this that give me hope and despair for our country all at the same time.

On the one hand we have the kind of visionary minds that can transform every day bathroom products into a marketable item that are adopted at an epidemic like pace.  Obviously the downside being that we're allowing these luminaries of our generation to waste their time, methodically working their way through convenience stores, sniffing, smoking and injecting each product on the shelves.  

I believe its high time (see what I did there) that we give this special subset of gifted minds the funding and tools they need to put these skills to work...I'm sure we can earmark a portion of whatever number stimulus package we're up to these days for this.