The new synthetic drug being blamed for a horrific attack in Miami in which a naked man chewed the face off of a victim in broad daylight has become popular in parts of the Maritimes and has health officials warning of the drug’s violent consequences.
Rudy Eugene, 31, was shot dead by Miami police after he refused to stop chewing on the face of his victim, 65-year-old Ronald Poppo. Poppo remains in critical condition. Local reports said most of the man’s face was gone — his nose bitten, his eyes gouged, his skin ripped away. All that remains intact was the victim’s goatee, according to the Miami Herald.
U.S. health authorities say bath salts popularity was noted by doctors to rise significantly throughout late 2010 and into 2011.
“Bath salts” — as the drug is known by on the streets — are much more dangerous than than the impression that their innocuous-sounding name leaves. Made with the active agent of either Methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDVP), mephedrone or methylone, it can result in an aggressive, chaotic response in the user, combined with intense hallucinations and extreme euphoria. It has been compared to a mix of cocaine and amphetamine.
Greg Purvis, director of Addiction Services for the Pictou, Colchester East Hants and Cumberland county health authorities in northern Nova Scotia, called the drug the most dangerous new product he’s seen in his career.
“I’ve been working in addictions for 19 years . . . and this is the first drug which really has me concerned,” he said in a telephone interview.
Since April, he says emergency rooms in Nova Scotia have had at least three cases a week of patients on bath salts, usually brought there by police.
“We are concerned about bath salts because in an unusually short period of time, anywhere from one month to two months, folks are going from using this drug to having very severe, negative consequences.
“Negative side-effects that we are seeing; Hallucinations, delusions, psychosis, being awake for one to two weeks straight with very little rest. Kidney failure. Aggressiveness, combativeness and extreme paranoia.
“And the police and emergency physicians are having problems because this is a stimulant similar to speed and you are having that amped-up extra strength and aggression and these folks are experiencing psychosis, so they don’t really know what’s going on. Imagine that in the back of your squad car.”
Purvis says while the drug became an issue in Europe two years ago, it wasn’t until this spring that health and law authorities started noticing it becoming a problem in the Maritimes.
Dr. Nancy Murphy, medical director of the IWK Regional Poison Centre and an emergency physician in Halifax, was the first doctor to encounter the drug in the Maritime’s largest city.
She said what sets bath salts apart from other amphetamines is the “degree of the psychiatric effects.
“People get this profound distortion of reality and get very paranoid and this is leading sometimes to very aggressive behavior and even to physical violence,” she said.
‘Because this is a stimulant similar to speed you are having that amped-up extra strength and aggression’
Dr. Murphy said the main focus for emergency physicians to to try to calm down bath salts users but they sometimes have to resort to using restraints while sedating them.
“You want to avoid them harming police, health-care staff and themselves, and sometimes in order to do that you have to intervene quite quickly and aggressively,” she said.
She added that there’s a number of medical side-effects in bath salt patients, including elevated core body temperatures, heart problems and muscle deterioration.
Part of what makes the drug so dangerous is that is cheap to produce and highly addictive.
Purvis says a user told him while $150 could keep him high on cocaine for five hours, $150 could keep him high on bath salts for a day and a half.
Full article:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/05/30/highly-addictive-drug-blamed-for-cannibal-like-attack-a-growing-threat-in-maritime-canada/
UPDATE!!!!! Something more is going on, they are just using the whole "bath salts" thing as a diversion!!!
No bath salts detected: Causeway attacker Rudy Eugene had only pot in his system, medical examiner reports
An autopsy report says testing for a number of street drugs, including “bath salts,” came back negative, and that Rudy Eugene had only marijuana in his system.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/27/2871098/mes-report-eugene-had-no-drugs.html
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