It’s pretty safe to say that taking bath salts won’t drive you crazy and burn down your house with your kids inside. These kinds of media stories taking over the nation are huge cash opportunities for news agencies because people love to see blood on paper. If you are going to go out and kill all the cats and dogs in town with bath salts, then you already have major problems and probably many other substance abuse problems on top of that. With that being said … bath salts are not to be taken lightly or casually thrown at a high school boy who is asleep and trying to do his homework.
With all the media attention bath salts have been getting, this product is almost certainly going nowhere. By causing panic about it, they turned a relatively small but regular business into a huge boom from the big business industry and chemical experts who make packages in their garage. Of course, MDPV will eventually be a fully programmed illegal substance in all 50 states, but there are HUNDREDS of research chemicals that can be cut with harmless power and put in a bag for sale.
It takes months for state and federal legislation to catch up with what’s available, and often years to ban new substances. There is a demand for this product (mainly created by all the media hype) and when there is demand, a way will be found to supply it. Designer drugs are not a passing fad, they are a reality that people must deal with and not lose their minds. We can chemically engineer anything, and the government regulation and legislation process takes long enough to make it worth selling.
When it comes to the topic of research chemicals and their designer drug counterpart “bath salts,” there are myths, truths, and lies that are marketed to everyone who has come in contact with this topic. The media in general has once again taken a real problem to an almost ridiculous extreme. There are currently research chemicals on the market that are consumed as a legal high. These research chemicals are consumed under the guise of “bath salts”, “plant food”, “collection items”, “water softeners” and other means that clearly suggest that these products are not for human consumption. As parents, citizens, or (God forbid) consumers, we must dedicate ourselves to unbiased information about these products to educate, inform and share knowledge about these products.
Although the general media and the government have almost made this topic a joke because of the extreme reaction to substances that have been around for decades, it is important to remember that these substances are above all else … drugs. Recently, they are also sometimes programmed controlled substances. Being an educated parent, citizen, and (if you choose to be) a consumer is far better than being the uneducated alternative. The most popular active ingredient is a research chemical called MDPV. MDPV is a basic “non-programmed” stimulant whose effects and side effects are very similar to those of cocaine. The chemical compound MDPV (which stands for methylenedioxypyrovalerone) serves as the main stimulant used to make a mixture of bath salts. If you were to theoretically buy a 500mg packet of bath salt, perhaps less than 5 percent of that pack would actually contain the active drug. This is why many bath salt consumers have complained about “botched” packages in which the contents appear normal but offer none of the desired side effects (apart from perhaps some placebo effect). However, the reverse can also be true and taking a half a pack could be enough to kill the consumer, their dog, and half their neighborhood. This is why caution, regulation, and hopefully elimination are needed.
It is also important to note that there is no such thing as a “bath salt drug”. There are who-knows-what mixtures with small amounts of psychoactive research chemicals placed in tiny jars that are marketed as “bath salts, not for human consumption” under this huge umbrella term. There is no reason to flee in terror from this bath salt “epidemic” because it is going nowhere.
When it comes to researching chemicals … be prudent, rational, and for Pete’s sake, keep your kids out of it.
