Growing Use of Bath Salts Concerns Corps
Jun 06, 2012
While the Corps continues to wrestle with Spice use among Marines, a new, dangerous designer drug is gaining popularity—and it has health officials concerned: Bath Salts. This drug, a powdery substance madewith synthetic chemicals, can be snorted, smoked, inhaled, consumed or injected. Like Spice, Bath Salts are touted as offering a “legal high” undetectable by urine tests. Users can suffer from anxiety, depression, hallucinations, delusions, poor concentration, tremors, seizures, nausea, and sweats.
While the words “Bath Salts” may not appear in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, mephedrone and MDPV (Bath Salts’ active ingredients) are Schedule I controlled substances and carry the same penalty as heroin, ecstasy, and LSD for possession or use. Like Spice, next generationBath Salts could pose an even bigger threat. To skirt the new laws, Bath Salts varieties are growing in number and becoming more potent. Since the mephedrone ban, Bath Salts have included chemicals such as naphyrone, “a really scary substance” which is ten times more potent than cocaine, according to Naval Medical Center chief psychiatry resident George Loffler. The rise of more potent versions of Bath Salts is “one of the scariest things about this,” he said.
Learn More: Bath Salts or Designer Cathinones (Synthetic Stimulants)
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Marine Corps Times