By U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud
(D-Maine)
Many times certain things don’t get too high on our personal priority lists until they begin to impact our lives directly. When it comes to bath salts, let’s not wait until it affects us personally, because if we do it’s already too late. And according to Mainers on the front lines, the bath salts crisis is only getting worse for many of our neighbors.
“The cases we’re seeing require so many resources to deal with. If we don’t get ahead of it, it has the potential to get a lot worse,” says Jamie Comstock, the health promotion program manager for the city of Bangor.
“Don’t think this isn’t going to affect you, when you show up at the ER and the ER is full because of bath salts, or if you need a cop and they’re tied up with a bath salts incident, it will affect you,” says Bangor Police Chief Ron Gastia.
Take their word for it, because if we don’t act as a nation to combat the spread of bath salts, other areas of Maine and the U.S. will deal firsthand with what Bangor has over the past year.
Although largely unknown a year ago, bath salts have quickly become one of the preeminent issues for law enforcement and health care institutions in Maine. State poison control centers reported only 1 bath salts related incident during all of 2010. By contrast, the Bangor Police Department alone has responded to more than 300 such incidents since January, and the drain on Maine police and health resources has already been substantial. This drug can be addictive and produce severe paranoia, violent or self-destructive behavior, suicidal thoughts, high blood pressure and rapid heartbeat.
We can’t afford to push off solutions to another day. We need to be working together, and we need to share experiences across town, county, and state lines. Bath salts don’t know borders and, as Bangor has found out, can take communities by surprise.
Earlier this month, I convened a meeting in Portland with local, county, state and federal law enforcement officers to discuss what proactive solutions can be enacted to stop this growing epidemic from spreading any further. During this meeting, Chief Gastia called bath salts “the worst drug he has seen in nearly 30 years of law enforcement experience.” The consensus from all law enforcement at the meeting was clear – the federal government must respond more quickly to synthetic drug epidemics when they arise.
I came away from that meeting convinced that action needs to be taken at the federal level to enhance the good work already being done in Maine on this issue. I believe that the passage of the Synthetic Drug Control Act, a bipartisan bill that I am a cosponsor of, is an important and necessary step towards this goal.
The Synthetic Drug Control Act would ban the chemical compounds that can be used to make bath salts in all 50 states, making it harder to traffic and purchase these drugs across state lines. It would also make a number of other compounds that have been identified as possible future ingredients in bath salts, and have no other medicinal purpose, illegal so that law enforcement will have the tools necessary to deal with them proactively. This will help to avoid the gap in time between these substances being identified and being made illegal. It is important that we learn the hard lessons of the last year as we look to proactively deal with this problem moving forward. This bill helps us as a country do just that.
I’m pleased to report that the Synthetic Drug Control Act has been passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee and, as I write this, is being considered by the House Judiciary Committee. The next step in the process is to pass it in the full House and get it over to the Senate for a vote.
We have a chance to get out in front of the bath salts epidemic, but we can’t wait to act. Families in communities across America need help now. We must pass this bill as soon as possible in order to get synthetic drugs like bath salts out of the stores and off of our streets.
To that end, I sent a letter on Oct. 27th to Speaker of the House John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor urging them to bring this important bill to the floor for a vote as soon as possible. Members of Congress from both sides of the political aisle have recognized the severity of the problem and are ready to make this bill law.
The Synthetic Drug Control Act has the support of the Drug Enforcement Agency and the White House. The severity of the problem is clear, and it will not get better without swift and comprehensive action at all levels of government. The time for this action is now.
