Toxic drugs, legal or not - don’t take them

Who would expect bath salts to be a dangerous drug?

That’s apparently exactly what drug dealers thought when they began selling a new designer drug in stores.

Small packets labeled bath salts and marked “Not for human consumption” began showing up legally in convenience stores and other outlets.  Because the chemicals they contained were not banned substances, the packets could be sold legally.

That situation might have continued but for the fact people who consumed these bath salts became agitated, erratic, paranoid and violent.

Deaths attributed to bath salts have been reported across the country for the past year, but the problems in Delaware seemed to erupt over the summer, perhaps because bath salts remained legal in Delaware after New Jersey issued a ban in April and Pennsylvania banned them in June.

The problem became more widely recognized in Delaware when use of bath salts was linked to the stabbing death of a New Castle County police lieutenant as he tried to subdue a violent suspect.

For now, state officials have invoked emergency powers to ban the use of three chemicals used to make bath salts. The measure gives the Legislature time to craft a permanent ban.
That’s an essential step that should make the drug harder to find. At the same time, one has to wonder how long it will take drug dealers to come up with a new chemical formula for the next designer drug. By not selling drugs as drugs, dealers have a pathway to legally distribute their dangerous products until the danger eventually comes to national attention.

The next new designer drug could already be available in stores, marketed as plant food, powder or some other common household product.

Enough people have already died to make it clear that if a product is labeled “Not for human consumption,” it should not be on store shelves in small, one-dose containers.

Most of all, if a product is labeled not for human consumption, it should not be consumed.