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ADELANTO FIRST LOCAL CITY TO BAN SYNTHETIC DRUGS

ADELANTO - When the mayor of Adelanto first learned about the dangers of synthetic drugs known popularly as "bath salts" and "spice," she knew she had to act quickly to ban the drugs from the city she holds close to her heart.

"I just couldn't sit idly by and let the DA or the Sheriff deal with it - not in my city," Mayor Cari Thomas said.  "We're not going to be this drug-infested area that people think we are."

The City Council of Adelanto on Wednesday night voted to pass the ordinance unanimously, becoming the first city in the High Desert to prohibit the sale and distribution of certain intoxicating chemical compounds, which can be purchased by children as there is no age limit for the sale of the drugs.

Marketed to youth in brightly colored packaging, the synthetic drugs are labeled with names like "bath salts," "incense" and "spice," potentially leading consumers to think the drugs are harmless.  Although California state law banned the recreational drugs in January, they are still widely available in smoke shops and in some liquor and adult stores.

"This ordinance takes things one step farther by insuring that the laws are maintained and enforced," Adelanto City Manager Jim Hart said.  "This prohibits any type of synthetic compound in any store in the city."

Most recently, synthetic drugs made headlines when they spawned the so-called "zombie-apocalypse," after their amphetamine-like qualities were responsible for causing several extremely gruesome attacks in different locations across the country.  The drug causes users to frequently exhibit violent and paranoid tendencies that have long-term, if not deadly, consequences that health care professionals are not quite sure how to treat.

"Because this is a whole new area, we don't know the full extent of the damage it does to the brain and the body.  The effects haven't been fully investigated because of the lack of studies," said Regina Bell, a community member from the High Desert Community Coalition.

A grassroots community organization, HDCC has hosted workshops educating parents and youth about the dangers of the drug, which is still so new to the scene that it does not even show up on drug tests.  Aggressive campaigns led by the HDCC and local law enforcement agencies have aimed to raise awareness of the dangers of the drug, having recently gone to 34 shops in the High Desert to ask that the shop owners stop selling it.

Bell says that the synthetic drugs have managed to stay on store shelves after they were banned by adopting the label "not for human consumption," allowing them to circumvent the laws that render them illegal.  She adds that the sophisticated chemical make-up of the drugs also makes them technically legal, as new ones are created and sold before laws are enacted to ban their specific compositions.

"The proposed ordinance takes an approach that we believe will help make enforcement stronger, easier and more manageable in comparison to California's current ban on spice and bath salt sales," said Corie Lopez from the Institute for Public Strategies in Victorville.

Wednesday night's meeting coincided with President Barack Obama signing the Synthetic Drug Abuse Prevention Act of 2012 into law on Tuesday.  This new piece of legislature, which was read aloud in its entirety by Thomas at the Adelanto council meeting, aims to bans the compounds commonly found in synthetic marijuana, synthetic stimulants and hallucinogens by placing them under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act.  The Drug Enforcement Administration classifies Schedule 1 drugs as those that have a high potential for abuse and have no currently accepted medical use in the United States.  Marijuana, methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin are examples of Schedule 1 drugs.

"For the betterment of our residents and the betterment of our youth, this is a step in the right direction," Thomas said.

To learn more about synthetic drugs, the HDCC is holding an informational meeting open to the public at 7:30 a.m.  on Tuesday at the Hook Community Center, 14973 Joshua St.  in Victorville.