Pubdate: Thu, 30 Aug 2012
Source: Southern Illinoisan (Carbondale, IL)
Copyright: 2012 Southern Illinoisan
Contact:  http://www.TheSouthern.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1430

SYNTHETIC DRUGS MUST BE BATTLED

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and her team have done the 
correct and innovative thing in using the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act 
to stop those who would sell synthetic drugs under the guise of bath 
salts and other misnomers.

As The Southern Illinoisan's Codell Rodriguez recently reported, the 
act engages exact manufacturer and content labeling rules to address 
the sale of these dangerous yet too-commonplace substances.

Retailers selling the synthetic drugs can now face a Class 2 felony 
that can come with a $125,000 fine for a first conviction and 
$250,000 for a second conviction.

"These are drugs, and as drugs they have to contain certain 
information and if they don't they are misbranded," said Cara Smith, 
the attorney general's deputy chief of staff.

Laws were amended to penalize those who possess the drugs with the 
intent to distribute them.

Smith traveled the state, meeting with retailers, and she said every 
single one relinquished inventory and signed agreements to not sell 
the products. So far, the office has gathered up a $700,000 worth of 
these poisons

"There's no state whose approach has become as effective as getting 
these drugs out of the community," Smith said. The effort closes many 
loopholes and escape plans for the makers and sellers of synthetic 
drugs, many of which were giving local enforcement fits.

The attorney general's office tipped its hat to Tom McNamara, special 
projects coordinator for the Southern Illinois Enforcement Group, for 
calling the severity of the problem to the attention of the attorney 
general. McNamara, who spent years undercover, gives the attorney 
general's office all the credit.

McNamara is not shy about describing the effects of these drugs, once 
so easily available at a gas station or smoke shop.

The pseudo-marijuana products, he points out, "have nothing to do 
with cannabis. They were artificially created cannabinoids that were 
used for research purposes under biological and medical scenarios in 
very small amounts."

But someone figured out they could be put to Use B, and now such 
drugs are out in innumerable measures and of unknown potencies.

"There are hundreds and hundreds of variants out there," McNamara 
said. And the effects, he said, are very unlike that of cannabis.

"It overloads your nervous system," he said. Symptoms can include 
anything from extreme anxiety to paranoia to catatonic states, he said.

The so-called bath salts, which much of the media has mistaken for 
pseudo-cocaine, are even more frightening.

Ingredients, adulterants and strengths swing wildly.

Worse, the products are usually "an extremely strong stimulant very 
similar to methamphetamine, but with a hallucinogenic hook," McNamara said.

Users are sent into an agitated fight-or-flight state combined with 
hallucinations, a nightmare for not only those who took the drug but 
whomever might happen to encounter them.

"This stuff is pure poison," McNamara said of the synthetics.

With luck and diligence, less of this poison will be available to the 
public and especially to our youth.

It's amazing what happens when sharp, well-meaning people act as a team.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom