Everyone knows bath salts. But if addiction specialists are worried, it is not because of the alleged relaxing virtues of traditional bath salts. Those who make the news today are rather exciting. They look like crystals, they have completely harmless names, like Ivory Wave or Vanilla Sky. Except that it is indeed a drug that you can snort, smoke or inject. In fact, these bath salts contain mephedrone, which is a derivative of Khat, these leaves that are chewed mainly in Africa.
According to a recent New York Times article, bath salts are starting to wreak havoc in the United States. For the past six months, poison control centers have been overwhelmed with calls related to the drug. People who consume it arrive at the emergency room in a very agitated state, bordering on hysteria. To calm them, doctors are sometimes forced to resort to real local anesthesia, sedatives are not sufficient. It must be said that these famous bath salts are available over the counter in supermarkets, in particular in the form of fertilizers.
For once, the trend has turned in the opposite direction. Since 2007, mephedrone has been very popular in Europe. In Britain, there were outright home delivery businesses that had sprung up all over the place. In France, this drug was officially spotted in 2009. A year later, mephedrone was classified as a narcotic throughout Europe. In other words, it can no longer be sold freely.
Unfortunately, this is not enough to stop its traffic because these crystals are also sold on the Internet. And at a low price. However, the danger is real. First, because since the hallucinogenic effect lasts barely 45 minutes, consumers take it back very often and they quickly get hooked. Then because mephedrone can cause anxiety attacks, paranoia but also heart attacks. The united nations have just revealed that synthetic drugs are exploding. They are now more widely used than heroin and cocaine.
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