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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.