By Scott Mitchell Johnson
Staff Writer
PRESQUE ISLE — To help learn more about the dangers of bath salts, nearly 100 residents attended a Community Awareness Night last Thursday in Presque Isle that was sponsored by the Presque Isle Kiwanis Club, The Aroostook Medical Center and WAGM-TV.
Seven panelists spoke about the hallucinogenic drug. Panelists included Peter McCorison, AMHC; Matthew Irwin, Presque Isle police chief; Mike Gahagan, Caribou police chief; Clare Desrosiers, Aroostook Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition (ASAP); Dr. Peter Goth of TAMC, Donna Lisnik, principal of Presque Isle High School; and Kathy Mazzuchelli, chair of the Community Alcohol and Drug Education Team (CADET).
“Really intense paranoia and hallucinations are a dangerous combination,” said McCorison. “It’s not fun to be paranoid, but then at the same time you have these hallucinations — both auditory and visual — that can really drive people to behaviors that are dangerous for themselves and for others.”
The people who use bath salts are typically in their mid-20s, 30s and even 40s.
Goff said the medical effects of bath salts are like adrenaline, or “way too much coffee.”
“What’s different about these drugs is that it goes beyond that and there’s this psychological effect that we don’t know that much about,” he said. “What we’re seeing is this hallucinating and paranoia all at the same time. When I see these people in the ER for medical screening, they’re just like wild animals. We sedate them, keep them confined, and sometimes we have to put them in restraints. In Bangor, they’ve had to use tasers on them.”
“There’s also an effect where you don’t feel pain. One officer told me about a case in Bangor where the person was so paranoid that she pulled out her fingernails thinking that they were ticks. This gives ‘bad trip’ a bad name,” said Goff. “There are some really bad things that can happen by taking these drugs, and they’re unpredictable to the person taking them. One of the more common things that I see in the kids in the ER is they’re scared to death, and if they could delete one six-hour period in their life, they would just delete the last six hours since they took this stuff.”
Goff explained that most medicines are really poisons.
“The only difference is the dose,” he said. “With bath salts, the dose is completely uncertain. Some of this is coming from Third World countries and it’s labeled, ‘Not for human consumption,’” he said. “Can you see the trail of unaccountability? These doses are getting into poisonous zones, and nobody’s there to regulate that because they’re ‘bath salts.’”
Irwin said in Presque Isle, officers “have seen the outward behavior that comes from taking these drugs.”
“People have come through our office that were arrested for OUIs, but there was no alcohol involved. We’re starting to see the dilated pupils and other things that are not normal symptoms. I think we’re starting to attribute a lot of these things to the bath salts although we haven’t confirmed them,” he said. “We had a case where several citizens called in to report an erratic driver. One of the officers got behind him and the guy fled. We eventually caught him and he had a bag full of powder that looked like cocaine, tested positive for cocaine, but it turned out it wasn’t cocaine. We believe now that it was probably bath salts.”
“There are also the odd cases where behavior is just erratic and unexplainable,” said Irwin. “You don’t know why they’re agitated, why they’re acting the way they are, and that’s likely a result of taking bath salts.”
The drugs often contain a note declaring “not for human consumption.” The list of ingredients often gives no indication of the presence of psychoactive substances.
Gahagan, who has talked with representatives from the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, said bath salts are a County-wide problem.
“This drug goes throughout The County … from Hodgdon to Madawaska,” he said. “A person taking bath salts can be described as a combination of a longtime methamphetamine and a PCP user. We had an individual in Caribou that for 12 hours walked up and down the street. He actually turned himself into the department and said that he could see lions chasing him and that the police were after him. That was his delusion. What they perceive as real is where it becomes such a dangerous aspect for law enforcement and the public.”
In talking to the Bangor police chief, Gahagan was told that Bangor officers handle three to four calls a day regarding bath salts.
“Their chief believes it’s an epidemic in that area,” said Gahagan. “One of his main concerns is that one of his officers, or that individual, is going to get seriously hurt. They’re approaching this as a mental health crisis. The officers are trying not to be confrontational. You don’t want to press any buttons.”
While several states have banned the sale of bath salts, it will have to be a federal law that labels them as a schedule 1 drug, which means they have no medicinal value but a high potential for abuse, and declare them illegal.
“Right now these crimes are civil; we can’t even arrest somebody for having bath salts,” said Irwin. “We can’t even get these drugs analyzed at the lab because it’s a civil offense and it costs more money to test the drugs than the fine would be for the person that we charged. The current legislation is incredibly weak in my mind. Even trafficking offenses are misdemeanors right now. There is a movement going on right now to tighten up this legislation which would be good because this is going to get worse before it gets better. If we don’t get ahead of it in terms of legislation and how we can respond to it, it’s going to be a tough run.
“In my research, bath salts are derived from a chemical called cathinone which is a naturally-occurring chemical in a plant that’s referred to as khat which is grown in East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. What’s happening is these designer drugs are manipulating some of those chemicals. In this legislation, only eight of the 57 cathinones are illegal. Any derivation in this chemical that doesn’t include those eight is still legal,” he said. “If I catch somebody with a bag full of bath salts, we still can’t charge them because we don’t know whether the chemicals in there are actually the illegal chemicals or not. We would have to send that chemical off, confirm that it’s one of the eight cathinones, and then we can charge someone.”
Desrosiers and Mazzuchelli both said parent involvement can help curb the use of bath salts.
“Parents and community members can prevent the people they care about from getting involved in something like this by knowing the signs and having a strong relationships with the youth in their lives,” Desrosiers said. “Spend time with your teenagers, spend time at home knowing them and what they like and dislike. In the end, knowing the youth in your life, you’ll be able to spot the warning signs much more easily and you’ll be able to protect them from making decisions that will negatively impact them for the rest of their lives.”
“This [the Community Awareness Night] is the key that turns the engine on, but you are the engine,” said Mazzuchelli. “Unfortunately for parents, you’re battling the social media, and if you don’t know what’s going on in your child’s life, you’re in trouble. Know your kids, know who their friends are, and take an active role in their lives. It will help make a difference.”
For more information about bath salts, call AMHC at 1-800-244-6431.
Lisnik said PIHS has a three-prong approach to dealing with illegal substances — education, awareness and prevention.
Prevention efforts include having law enforcement personnel come into the schools with drug dogs searching lockers and the parking lots.
“We have cameras located throughout the school that we can check periodically if we have a suspicion of illegal activity, and we also have drug dogs come in,” said Lisnik, noting that there have been no incidences of bath salts at PIHS. “Probably the most important part of prevention is our contact with parents. We do not shy away from calling a parent and saying, ‘You need to check your child’s room and personal belongings because we think your child is at risk of such and such.’ We want parents to know that we want to keep their children safe and healthy. What we may be seeing sometimes is not what the parents may be seeing and vice versa, so it’s very important that we keep that communication open.”
