The nation’s emergency rooms are seeing more and more patients needing urgent care after getting high on legal, over the counter bath salts. The poison control centers across the U.S. are also reporting a rise in calls about people in distress after using these bath salts to get high.
The salts are advertised as a bathing product, but are sold in head shops and convenience stores, which are places you would not normally find bathing products. People are snorting, smoking and injecting this product to get high. The bath salts have prevalent side effects of rendering the user psychotic and violent, which makes them a danger to themselves or others when this type of behavior emerges.
One of the problems for the ER doctors is they are not sure how to treat these patients when they arrive for urgent care, according to The American Journal of Medicine. The negative effects from ingesting the salts can last for a long time and may not show up on drug screening tests. This substance is extremely dangerous, warn doctors.
The New York Times reports that the poison control centers across the nation reported 3,470 calls between January and June of 2011. The center only received 303 calls last year about this substance. This is a drastic change, evidencing exploding use of the bath salts.
This substance can react differently each time the product is used, even if the user is using the same brand and the same amount of the substance as they had previously. A case in the American Journal of Medicine outlines how an ER patient accomplished the “legal high” snorting bath salts on two separate occasions without negative side effects. The third time he used the substance, he was taken to the ER in distress. He reports he used the same product, and he used the same amount of the product each time. This third time caused lightheadedness, syncope and sinus tachycardia. When the patient was brought into the ER he was very confused and combative.
The AJM reports that a study done in the U.K. found 1308 different bath salt products for this substance in the form pills, smoking materials and single plant extracts. The salts are called “Cristalius” and Internet sites list the ingredients as: creatine, caffeine, “herbal blends,” hoodia, and sodium sesquicarbonate (the bath salt component). The product, which has many brand names is advertised to the public as an additive to a bath that is soothing and good for the skin. The salts are under many names in the stores, including “Ivory Wave,” “Vanilla Sky,” “Snow,” and “Hurricane Charlie.”
The bath salts are referred to as “legal highs” and a number of U.S states are working on legislation to stop the sale of these products. The product cannot be sold legally in some parts of Europe.
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Tags: Bath Salts, High