WIDENING USE OF SYNTHETIC MARIJUANA AND BATH SALTS CONCERNS LOCAL AUTHORITIES

One of the first calls Mazzitti & Sullivan Counseling Services
handled Tuesday was from a distraught mother.

Her son had spent the Memorial Day weekend getting high on bath
salts, a legal, readily available and worrisome intoxicant often
described as "synthetic cocaine."

"He was having a paranoid break with reality," said Andrew Sullivan,
the Harrisburg-based counseling firm's president.

That's just one episode in an epidemic of synthetic drug use that's
growing with frightening speed locally and nationally, Sullivan said
Friday at a public forum hosted by Dauphin County Drug and Alcohol Services.

Mavis Nimoh, agency administrator, said the forum aimed to "ratchet
up" awareness of the peril of rising use, especially among children,
of bath salts with names like "Snow Leopard" and "Zoom" and synthetic
marijuana known as "K2" and "Spice."

"Obviously, this is an extremely serious issue, one that's been
sensationalized, but it's also real," county Commissioner George
Hartwick III said.

Bath salts and other synthetic drugs that are sparking fears aren't
regulated by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, nor are they
detectable with standard drug tests.

Many come from questionable Asian sources and are sold at head shops,
some gas stations and via the Internet, Sullivan told the crowd of about 40.

He said they might be ruining the minds of the kids, and sometimes
even middle-aged adults, who use them.

Bath salts are suspected in several deaths nationally and reportedly
can trigger suicidal thoughts, chest pains, jumps in heart rate and
blood pressure and hallucinations.

"If this was an FDA-approved drug and it was having these effects ...
it would be pulled off the market," Sullivan said.

Recent midstate police incidents involving synthetic drugs include:

* In April, a 38-year-old Lebanon woman was charged with being high
on bath salts while driving with an 18-month-old child in the back
seat of her car. Police said witnesses reported the woman drove
erratically, ran a red light and was banging her head on the steering wheel.

* In March, police said a 31-year-old man intoxicated by bath salts
broke into a home in East Hanover Twp., Lebanon County, and damaged
two cars, including a marked state police cruiser, because he thought
he was being chased by electricity.

The state House has passed a bill to ban the sale of bath salts, K2
and several other synthetics. That measure is before the Senate.

Several district attorneys, some of them local, are eyeing stop-gap
regional prohibitions. Sullivan said a ban imposed in northeastern
Pennsylvania prompted a major drop in emergency room visits linked to
unregulated synthetic drugs.

Still, he said the problem can't be legislated away, that only
parental and community vigilance can curb it.

Medical marijuana advocates Ava Berg and Libby Belgrave said bans won't work.

"If you make them illegal, that adds to the thrill," Berg said.
"You're talking about prohibition. Prohibition didn't work before."

Belgrave said that if the current synthetics are banned, suppliers
will simply devise new ones to skirt the law.

Robert Canidate of the New Beginnings youth programs, said the
epidemic must be tackled as a "behavior modification problem.

"We know it's affecting our children's minds," he said. "We should
continue to pull together as a community."

Harrisburg Area Community College student Jonathan Branch, a member
of the county's Youth Advisory Board, suggested that an appeal be
made to the consciences of the sellers.

"What if we educate the head shops?" he asked. "Maybe they'd be less
willing to sell it."

Nimoh said community outreach is key. "We're watching and waiting to
see where this goes, but we want to be proactive," she said.