Ohio’s ban in October on so-called bath salts seems to be working – at least for now.
But law enforcement officers and those in the drug-rehabilitation and medical field who gathered Thursday in Akron to discuss the synthetic stimulants warned their popularity could resurface.
The abuse of bath salts — not the ones you use in your bathtub — was first discovered in the Akron area in early 2010 by police and paramedics who were handling calls from patients exhibiting bizarre behavior.
Health officials say the problem was not just limited to the young. One patient was a 69-year-old woman who tried the drug because she was depressed about her divorce. A friend told her bath salts would make her feel better, but she ended up in the psychiatric unit anxious and suicidal.
A Barberton police officer told those gathered at the forum of some of the calls he has encountered, including one woman who was having spasms and flopping around on the floor like a fish and one man who insisted monkeys were following him including into the police station.
Bath salt is a fine white powder that is snorted, ingested or injected. It was sold, in convenience stores and other outlets before the ban, under many different names, including Cloud 9, White Lightning, White Horse and Charge Plus.
Authorities say bath salts remind them of the drug PCP in the 1980s but more dangerous. Others likened it to a combination of LSD and cocaine.
They say bath salts keep users high from six to 12 hours and it takes as long as 48 hours to recover. The drugs became popular because they are easily accessible and sold at stores for $9 to $15.
Authorities say the problem is that no two bath salt products are the same. Packages can have the same label but can have different ingredients and in varying amounts.
They do not always contain the advertised active ingredient so no guidelines exist as to what is sold and in what purity.
“I like to say that bath salts are like a box of chocolates because you don’t know what you are going to get,” said Dr. Alan Shein, who heads the detox unit at St. Thomas Hospital. “You can take a risk with chocolates, but bath salts are disastrous because you really don’t know what you are using and at what concentration. It’s really a crapshoot. It’s extremely risky.’’
The Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board of Summit County sponsored the seminar at Summa Akron City Hospital to help professionals get a clear understanding of how bath salts are used as a drug and recognize the effects they have on those who abuse them.
“There have been so many questions about bath salts across the community and there are so many misperceptions about what bath salts are, we want to make sure people have accurate information about what they are dealing with both on a professional basis and also family members and members of the community because it has a wide impact on our community,” said Gerald A. Craig, executive director of ADM. “It’s difficult to diagnose and difficult to recognize. A lot of times they rely on self-disclosure before recognizing it’s a factor in treatment.”
Signs of intoxication
Officer Pat Willis, of the Lake County Narcotics Agency, said the physical signs of someone high on bath salts include: a dangerous increase in heart rate, headaches and insomnia, involuntary twitching, tightening of the jaw and teeth grinding.
He also said the person can appear confused, paranoid, anxious, suffer hallucinations, be aggressive, behave violently and have delusions of super-human strength and invincibility.
Willis said bath salts are still being sold over the Internet and on the street.
In some instances, Willis said, it is being repacked and sold as plant food, spot remover and insect repellent and marked as “for novelty use only, not for human consumption.”
“Most products are sold in 100 to 500 mg packets but since there are no instructions for dosage, people don’t know how much to take,” Willis said. “It only takes 5 mg to get high, so if someone uses the entire package it is even more dangerous.”
Barberton Police Chief Vince Morber and Fire Chief Kim Baldwin were instrumental in getting Barberton City Council to adopt legislation, the first in Ohio, to ban the sale of the product.
“We were seeing two to three different people a day with the same physical episodes,” Baldwin said. “It seemed like it happened overnight.”
Community safety
Morber said they had to figure out how to respond to what was a legal product and how to address it so that citizens and police officers were protected.
Safety of first responders is a real concern when it comes to bath salts, said Barberton police officer Paul Laurella.
“I think it’s definitely a dangerous, dangerous drug. I worry for their [the drug users] health but I also worry about the community they are affecting,” he said. “My fear is they are going to think that somebody is what they aren’t and hurt them, whether they are green people, monsters or monkeys.”

Marilyn Miller can be reached at 330-996-3098 or mmiller@thebeaconjournal.com.