Pubdate: Mon, 23 Jul 2012
Source: Roanoke Times (VA)
Copyright: 2012 Roanoke Times
Contact:  http://www.roanoke.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/368

SYNTHETIC DRUG MANUFACTURES CONCERN

The latest front in the war on drugs is found as near as a
neighborhood store.

If synthetic drugs are the latest battle in the war on drugs, the
front can be found at the neighborhood convenience store. There,
merchants stock a product deceptively marketed as something else.

The problem with synthetic drugs is that as quickly as lawmakers vote
to ban one particular substance, "chemists" concoct a slightly
different brew.

Then packets of stuff labeled as bath salts, plant food or some other
innocent-sounding concoction end up on store shelves. This isn't the
Epsom salts of Grandma's day or the fertilizer your philodendron soaks
up. And because it's sold in stores, naive kids mistakenly think, "If
it's legal, it mustn't be bad."

Officials from various government agencies last week held a pair of
seminars to help explain to the community just how pervasive and
dangerous these drugs are becoming in the Roanoke Valley.

Earlier this month, tweaks to state law banning some more of these
substances allowed local law enforcement to go shopping. They
collected more than $105,000 worth of the drugs from local stores.
Vendors voluntarily turned over the product.

Unfortunately, somewhere, a new product, a type that will escape the
letter of the law, will be marketed, and it will turn up in the stores
until lawmakers again convene and tweak the prohibition. And on it
goes.

There is one good way to stop this cycle: Vendors could stop turning
over shelf space to this junk. Customers, too, should familiarize
themselves with the look of these packets. If you spot them in a store
you frequent, suggest to the shopkeeper that you aren't returning
until they're gone.
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MAP posted-by: Matt