Claudia Casas Casas 2
Ms. Lizcano
English III
January 7, 2013
Bath Salts
Bath Salts, a recently new heard about designer drug have been on every Americans new headline for their latest abuse. “The drug has many street names such as Ivory Wave, Purple Wave, Red Dove, Blue Silk, Zoom, Cloud Nine, Ocean Snow, Lunar Wave, Vanilla Sky, Lightning, Scarface, and Hurricane Charlie.”(Volkow). Many people think that the drug is harmless with such a name as “bath salts”, and the fact that is used to be legal. Any person could pick them up for about ten to twenty dollars at a local smoke shop or gas station. This is not your regular Epsom salts and the drug has a labeling on it that reads “NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUPTION”. The drugs legal status has changing over the years and manufacturers keep slightly altering the chemicals so they can get away with it and make it legal again. “In 2010, poison control centers reported receiving 304 phone calls; in 2011 the number of calls soared to 6,138.”(The Economist 1). Bath Salts have been named a Schedule 1 drug which means that it has no medicinal value and can be abused. The drug can be smoked, shot up, or most commonly inhaled by snorting it.
Even though the drug became popular within the past recent years it was actually “first formulated in France in the 1920’s but disappeared until it was rediscovered from the obscurity
Casas 3
of academia by an underground chemist. He published the recipe on a website known as The Hive, which was shut down in 2004 for sharing way too much information about illegal
substances. But the word was out, and the drug became extremely popular all over Europe.” (Haiken 2). Bath salts were popular in the U.K. then soon spread to The United States. The ingredients in bath salts are all synthetic compounds. MDPV(Methylenedioxypyrovalerone), Mephedrone,...