Zombie Apocalypse or Bath Salts Abuse...? Or, Perhaps a little of both...

[A-1 (imported)]

I debated myself on where I should place this thread.

Even though it has political dimensions of Health and Human Services cutbacks The Deep, Dark, Cellar won out. Usually, it is cooler here and so perhaps we can discuss this WITHOUT a political dimension.

A good police officer friend of mine told me a couple of days ago that this drug abuse epidemic has the potential to make Meth abuse as much of a non-concern to law enforcement as Marijuana use is now.

The psychosis of the recent "Zombiefied" bath salts abusers and the tendency of them to behave as if they were on an enhanced combination of PCP and LSD is a real concern to law enforcement and therefore should be a BIG concern to all of us. This is 'out there' and nobody is safe... Of course, we don't want to deserve neither and lose both, either.

So, read on, vote and then comment on what you think and away we go!

Video #1 (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... %3Fv%3DC0Q 4dRzECUs&ei=N9vMT8mfGobX0QGnv_SODQ&usg=AFQjCNFUzc05yIyzLx5VKNGVpyQeM1w-bQ&cad=rja)

Video #2 (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... %3Fv%3D9bd wesncIOk&ei=N9vMT8mfGobX0QGnv_SODQ&usg=AFQjCNH7Ex3serkKxAGO-0nd4s9VqoJiGQ&cad=rja)

Video #3 (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... %3Fv%3DEJT 9ZPyZFbI&ei=N9vMT8mfGobX0QGnv_SODQ&usg=AFQjCNEPVqWVM4efGXDF4mNxbcCofTFozg&cad=rja)

Are “Bath Salts” turning people into zombies?

In the last week, “Bath Salts” have become a hotly searched term across the internet after the cannibal attack in Miami.

Rudy Eugene, allegedly high on the substance, was shot and killed by Miami police after they discovered he was eating the face and brains of a 65-year-old homeless man.

LIST: The Walking Dead! 10 Drugs That Will Turn You Into A Zombie

In another case, a Maryland college student was arrested for killing his roommate after he told police he ate the victim's heart and part of his brain after he died.

LIST: Things To Know About The Face-Chewing Naked Man Case

In San Antonio, a mother beheaded her infant son on orders from the devil and reportedly ate a portion of his brain and three of his toes.

Police are still conducting their investigation in both cases and haven’t ruled out the possibility that drug use may have been involved. After all, to commit these heinous acts, wouldn’t you have to be on some sort of illegal medication?

Either way, it seems “Bath Salts” are becoming the drug to turn you into a brain-eating. But what exactly are “Bath Salts”?

What are they made of?

The Drug Enforcement Agency banned three chemicals commonly used to make bath salts: mephedrone, MDPV, and methylone and possession or sale of these synthetic stimulants could result in federal drug charges.

What is it like?

The drug is a mix between cocaine and Amphetamine and is referred to as Bath Salts because they resemble the household product. The two active ingredients are illegal in the US, but available online in Canada.

Is it like weed, will it be detected in my system?

No, there aren’t any medical tests to detect bath salts in a patient.

What are the dangers of Bath Salts?

High body temperature, paranoia, vivid hallucinations and yes, they can kill you. Overuse can lead to heart attacks.

How much do bath salts cost?

About $25 to $50 per packet.

Who makes Bath Salts?

As noted by the Daily Beast, bath salts are manufactured and imported from Europe and China, according Glen Hanson, a professor at the University of Utah who’s done research on the drug. It may be a matter of time before they’re made closer to home. “As it becomes profitable, either drug cartels or individuals will invest in making it,” Larson said.

Are “Bath Salts” known by another name?

They can go by other names, including White Rush, Cloud Nine, Ivory Wave, Ocean Snow, Charge Plus, White Lightning, Scarface, Hurricane Charlie, Red Dove, Blue Silk, Zoom, Bloom, and Sextasy.

Call it what you want, but this new form of chemically manufactured drug is causing havoc.

Read more: http://globalgrind.com/news/bath-salts- ... z1wqH1lPEr

SOURCE (http://globalgrind.com/news/bath-salts- ... ne-details)

"Zombie” cannibal attack exposes why ‘bath salts’ are dangerous

Posted on: 5:57 pm, June 1, 2012, by Marc Sternfield

(CNN) — On Saturday night in Miami, a naked “zombie-like” man attacked another man, biting off parts of his face. The attack was halted only when police shot and killed the attacker, identified as 31-year old Rudy Eugene.

What would make someone attack another man like an animal? Armando Aguilar, president of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police, suspects that the attacker was under the influence of drugs known as “bath salts.”

These aren’t the same bath salts to make your tub water smell nice. “Bath salts” is just a fake name, but users know it’s not really for the bath.

Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse described bath salts as an “emerging and dangerous product” in February 2011, urging parents, teachers and the public to be aware of the potential dangers associated with these drugs, which had already been linked to numerous visits to the E.R. and calls to poison control centers in the U.S. In October 2011, these “bath salts” and its related products were put on schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act, which means that the drug has no legitimate use or safety in the U.S. and is highly addictive.

Bath salts contain amphetamine-like chemicals such as methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV), mephedrone, and pyrovalerone. They’re referred to as a “designer drug of the phenethylamine class” by the Drug Enforcement Administration. Other drugs in this class include amphetamines, mescaline, and ephedrine. MDPV comes in a powdered form that is inhaled, swallowed or shot into a vein. Bath Salts are sold as “cocaine substitutes” or “synthetic LSD”.

When MDPV gets to the brain, the effects include producing feelings of empathy, stimulation, alertness, euphoria, sensory awareness and hallucinations. Other reported effects include rapid heart rate, high blood pressure, and sweating. According to the DEA, MDPV has been reported to cause intense panic attacks, psychosis, and a strong desire to use the drug again.

“Addictive substances, whether they are bath salts, alcohol or other drugs, can have horrific and costly consequences. Sometimes these consequences can result from only one use; other times they are a result of the complex brain disease of addiction,” says Susan E. Foster, vice president and director of policy research and analysis at The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

“Together, risky use of addictive substances and addiction constitute our nation’s largest and most costly health problem. In the interest of health and public safety, Americans must begin to understand that substance use is a preventable public health problem and addiction is a treatable disease,” she added.

In 2009, reports began surfacing about teens and young adults abusing synthetic stimulant products sold as Bath Salts, “plant fertilizer,” energy-1, Ivory Wave, Red Dove, Purple Wave, Blue Silk, Zoom, Bloom, Cloud Nine, Ocean Snow, Lunar Wave, Vanilla Sky, White Lightning, Scarface, and Hurricane Charlie.

The Drug Enforcement Administration’s forensic monitoring system found two reports of MDPV in 2009. In 2010 that figure jumped to 338 cases. Between January through September 2011, the numbers skyrocketed to 911 MDPV cases, spanning 34 states. SOURCE (http://kdvr.com/2012/06/01/zombie-canni ... dangerous/)

OR, JUST "HYPE"?

Drug panics, bath salts, and face-eating zombies

By Jack Shafer

May 31, 2012

Last Saturday afternoon, a naked man gnawed off most of the face of a half-naked man on a Miami causeway. He continued chewing even after police shot him and did not stop until they shot him dead.

Things like that don’t happen everyday – not even in Miami – so quite naturally the horror story has been picked up by every flavor of media around the world. The most sensational – and I don’t mean that in a good way – coverage came from local TV station CBS4 (WFOR-TV). On the day Rudy Eugene attacked Ronald Poppo, CBS4 relied on the musings of the president of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police and an emergency room physician – neither of whom attested to having firsthand knowledge of the case – to speculate that the attack was caused by a new kind of LSD, by a mixture of drugs, or by “bath salts,” the street name given to the many quasi-legal, over-the-counter stimulant concoctions that are packaged and sold under such wacky brand names as “Ivory Wave,” “Vanilla Sky,” “White Cloud” and “Zoom.”

Before any criminal lab could determine that Rudy Eugene had drugs in his system, some outlets, including the Guardian, the New York Daily News and CNN were seizing on CBS4′s reporting to vilify a “new” drug and its users, exaggerate the peril it presents and launch a new drug panic. To believe the early press accounts about bath salts – recall last year’s story of a West Virginia man found in bra and panties next to his neighbor’s murdered goat – madness comes in a $20 package of powder, the product gives its users superhuman strength, and they may have turned a 31-year-old man into a flesh-eating zombie.

To assist the press in its coverage I offer this brief bath-salts primer. I don’t want to overstate its worth – any skeptical journalist with access to the scientific literature could produce such a primer in an afternoon. That the press hasn’t bothered to produce such a primer speaks volumes about how serious they are in covering the drug beat.

Reporting on bath salts is complicated by the fact that bath salts aren’t one thing: They’re whatever a drug entrepreneur dumps into colorful bags and sells through head shops, convenience stores, and over the Internet as “bath salts,” plant food” or “air freshener.” Promoted by word-of-mouth, bath salts are supposed to deliver a high similar to that of methamphetamine, cocaine and even the “entactogen” MDMA. Bath-salts marketers make certain to label their products “not for human consumption” because, as this July 2011 Department of Justice “situation report” (pdf) explains, the Food and Drug Administration can prosecute anyone who introduces into interstate commerce a compound that’s marketed as a substitute for either a licit or illicit drug, no matter what the compound is composed of.

What’s inside a typical bath-salts packet? Sometimes it contains nothing more psychoactive than caffeine and local anesthetics, as a 2011 Journal of Medical Toxicology article reported (abstract). Commonly it contains one or more synthetic cathinones – derivatives of the organic compound cathinone, which occurs naturally in the Catha edulis (khat) plant. Two synthetic cathinones frequently marketed in bath salts are 3,4-methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV) and mephedrone, although the Department of Justice claims that at least 10 other clandestine synthetic cathinones have been collected and identified. Sometimes methamphetamines are mixed with the synthetic cathinone; synthetic cathinones have also been marketed to unsuspecting users as MDMA.

As the Department of Justice admits in its situation report, users are drawn to bath salts when they desire the effects of a powerful stimulant. The ever-changing formulas, the fluctuations in purity and potency, and user tendency to consume other drugs while on bath salts makes it difficult for researchers to study bath-salts users compared with, say, whiskey drinkers or potheads. Medical scientists concede that research on bath salts is sketchy.

“Little has been written in the United States about the chemistry, physiological effects, and pattern of consumption of these agents given the relative novelty of their usage compared with the stimulants whose effects they are known to mimic,” wrote the authors of the 2012 article “Are ‘Bath Salts’ the Next Generation of Stimulant Abuse?” in the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment (paid). The Department of Justice surmises a diverse population of synthetic cathinones users, but none of the standard drug surveys have asked users about it yet.

Bath salts first gained popularity in Europe in 2007, but as far back as 1993 the popularity of a synthetic cathinone (methcathinone) in Michigan’s upper peninsula and elsewhere in the Midwest was documented (abstract). U.S. Customs seized shipments of synthetic cathinones in July 2009, according to the Department of Justice, and the U.S. press started covering bath salts around that time, with cautionary articles appearing in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the New York Times, the Palm Beach Post, the Associated Press, Time (paid), and elsewhere. According to the press, users were swallowing, snorting, smoking, and injecting bath salts, and often the outcome was ugly: Soaring body temperatures, psychotic outbursts, paranoid delusions, violence, and suicidal thoughts were among the noted unpleasant side effects. Numerous deaths related to bath salts have been reported in both the popular and the medical press. One measure of the rise of interest in bath salts can be found in the number of calls made to U.S. poison control centers (pdf) regarding it. Zero calls were made in 2009; 304 were placed in 2010; and 6,138 were made in 2011. As of the end of April 2012, only 1,007 calls have been made. (Perhaps bath salts have already peaked? Or is it a statistical false bottom?)

Standard drug tests fail to detect synthetic cathinones, something that delights users, especially those who must submit to mandatory drug screenings or worry about being tested at traffic stops, according to the Department of Justice. Complicating the job of the drug prohibitionists is the ease with which illicit chemists can shift to other synthetic cathinones to supply users whenever the federal government places new legal proscriptions on the cathinones they’re producing. Three of the most popular synthetic cathinones weren’t scheduled until late last year, making them an appealing “legal high” for some drug aficionados. (State laws also apply, but I haven’t got time to go there.)

Even the Department of Justice understands this game of whac-a-mole ends up pushing newer and potentially more dangerous compounds into the illicit market. (Anecdotal evidence exists to suggest that bath salts can become popular in places methamphetamine enforcement has succeeded.) That’s why the Justice situation report states that the government has hunkered down for a “long-term” battle against this class of drugs.

Drug panics like the current one centered on bath salts conform to a predictable pattern revealed by scholar Alasdair J.M. Forsyth in his recent paper in the International Journal of Drug Policy: “Virtually a Drug Scare: Mephedrone and the Impact of the Internet On Drug News Transmission” (abstract), which I will attempt to summarize:

First, a new drug is newsworthy because it’s of novel interest to specialty publications, such as the music press. A high-profile case or increased prevalence of the drug leads the press to construct the drugs as a problem and to campaign against it with the aid of moral entrepreneurs (politicians, researchers, etc.), with disproportionate coverage of the harm done to teenagers or females (often portrayed as first-time users), even though older males who partake of multiple drugs account for most drug-related deaths.

“Drug scares tend to focus on the ‘moral dimension’ or ‘human interest angle’ of individual tragedies rather than the proportionate threat which the substance concerned may actually present in public health terms,” Forsyth wrote. “Drug scares also tend to involve the same harms being reported, regardless of the pharmacology of the substance concerned.”

The more stereotypical, false, scary or familiar the press accounts – the drug causes sudden death, it causes violence, it causes self-harm, it causes brain damage, it causes blindness, it causes impotence, it causes cognitive deficits – the greater the willingness of the public to believe the worst, no matter what the empirical data says. If it turns out that Rudy Eugene had any form of bath salts aboard during his rampage, you can only imagine how giddy with tabloid delight even the “respectable” will become.

Tragically, the media-inspired drug-scare cycle tends to raise the awareness of a “new” drug at the expense of the drugs that have a greater impact on public health (alcohol, tobacco). Even worse, scare stories end up promoting the new drug better than any Madison Avenue campaign ever could, creating a “boomerang effect.” How many drug “fiends” are eager to get their hands on some of what they think Rudy Eugene was taking?

The failure of the press to think clearly and report soberly about illicit drugs and illicit drug users probably goes back to the invention of movable type. Perhaps the press does such a shoddy job because it doesn’t have to worry about any organized, militant constituency of drug users keeping them honest. Stoners are like that: I’ve never met one who was a good press critic.

******

I’ve been on drugs for decades. See this piece about “Designer Drugs,” which appeared in Science 85. Don’t send drugs to Shafer.Reuters@gmail.com and don’t expect my Twitter feed to produce a contact high. Sign up for email notifications of new Shafer columns (and other occasional announcements). Subscribe to this RSS feed for new Shafer columns and subscribe to this hand-built RSS feed for corrections to my column. SOURCE (http://blogs.reuters.com/jackshafer/201 ... g-zombies/)

COMMENTS?

[A-1 (imported)]

SENATE PASSES BATH SALTS BAN FOR U.S. (http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/ ... us-senate/)

Zombie Apocalypse Averted? Bath Salts Ban Passes U.S. Senate

May 31st, 2012 5:12 PM by Free Britney

In the wake of reports that bath salts may have played a role in Saturday's Miami zombie apocalypse attack, the U.S. Senate passed a bill to ban the substances.

Federal legislation criminalizing synthetic marijuana and some bath salts passed the Senate today and is now on its way to the House of Representatives.

The law was not passed as a result of the zombie apocalypse, but as part of the FDA Safety and Innovation Act, championed by Sen. Charles Schumer.

Read more celebrity gossip at: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/ ... z1wqOXkoqP

...but are we SAFE?

[Riverwind (imported)]

I don't know if banning the substance is the right idea, they have not ban Cars yet and they kill people every day.

My neighbor is over using my PC/internet she is a charge nurse in ER, Yes its a problem she says.

River

[Sweetpickle (imported)]

The complaint of police here is that they CANNOT stop the sale because it is not a controlled substance.

The state legislature must handle each individual chemical as a seperate item to be banned.

[A-1 (imported)]

The complaint of police here is that they CANNOT stop the sale because it is not a controlled substance.

The state legislature must handle each individual chemical as a seperate item to be banned.

The Federal government can ban it outright by passing a law. I think that has happened now. The President may also do it by proclamation. That probably will not or hasn't happened. The FDA and the DEA work hand in hand on things such as this.

It IS a big problem because medicine does not know exactly the mechanisms that are causing the hallucinations and the paranoia.

When the chemical actions are better understood then bath salts can be regulated. Right now it is best just to ban them to keep people from abusing them.