Thread: St. Charles County Bans Bath Salts, "Fake Cocaine"

St. Charles County bans bath salts, "fake cocaine"

Written by Ann Rubin

10:45 PM, Apr 11, 2011

St. Charles County, MO (KSDK) - They're sold legally in stores as bath salts but authorities say people have been using them to get high. And now the St. Charles County Council has taken action with an emergency ordinance to ban them.

Brandy Pedersen watched a friend's son get hooked.

"He was experimenting and all of a sudden he couldn't stop hearing these voices and hallucinating," Pedersen said.

The packets read "Starry Night" or "Ivory Wave," and while they're marketed as bath salts, they're apparently used as drugs, mimicking in some cases, the effect of cocaine, in others, meth or LSD.

"And there's no other use for this stuff but to get high," said County Council Chairman Joe Brazil. "Nobody's going to put bath salts at $40 an ounce in their bath. Ok. So we've got to deal with it."

So after testing to figure out exactly what substances are in these packets, the St. Charles County Council introduced an emergency bill to ban them all. And while the state legislature is working on something similar, the county didn't want to wait.

"We decided the time is now and we're not going to wait anymore because it could be another couple months, it could be another six months, we just don't know," Brazil said.

The county banned synthetic marijuana in the form of K2 a year ago. But they say, new compounds promptly replaced it. This bill also took steps to ban the new forms of fake pot. And the sheriff says there have been a growing number of incidents involving synthetic drugs, two in the last month.

"There's nothing you can do about it," said Sheriff Tom Neer. "You can find two or three packages of this on an 18 or 19 year old and there's no law against it. Yet. Check with us tomorrow."

With a unanimous vote, the synthetic drug bill did pass. That means the packets must be removed from store shelves and for that Brandy Pedersen is grateful.

"They're doing the right thing, they're getting ahead of this," Pedersen said.

While the ordinance takes effect immediately, there is a 30 day grace period before the penalties will be enforced.

http://www.ksdk.com/rss/article/254300/ ... ke-cocaine

Video link: http://www.ksdk.com/video/default.aspx? ... 0620878001

Bath Salts, "Fake Cocaine" and Pot America's New Drug War:

Virginia law against synthetic drugs went into effect March 23, 2011

They have banned it in South Florida as well.