Anyone who has gone to school in the United States knows that the high school and college campuses have been rampant with drug dealers for decades who have been profiting off of cheap shot deals which seriously undermine the health of the nations youth. The depth of corruption which is apparently involved in allowing illegal drugs to permeate the nations schools in such manners implies the best approach to protect the health of our kids is to help convince them these drugs are simply dangerous since the drug runners it appears refuse to go away. Recently an alarming report has surfaced that two new types of dangerous illicit drugs which have become very popular in the country are synthetic marijuana and synthetic hallucinogens known as "bath salts".
Naseem S. Miller has reported for Family Practice News "Rise in Use of Bath Salts, Synthetic Marijuana Concerns Officials." Officials have warned the nation is at "the front-end of a potential epidemic" as these drugs gain in popularity, especially among youth. R. Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, has said "There has been a shocking increase in the number of people having adverse events to these synthetic drugs. We simply cannot afford to wait when it comes to safety of young people." U.S. officials and health care providers have seen that synthetic drugs when ingested or smoked, can cause a variety of severe and sometimes long-last effects, including hallucinations, paranoia, and seizures.
Mark Ryan, director of the Louisiana Poison Center, has said so far there have been at least 30 deaths nationwide , including suicides, related to these drugs. And there have been reportes of users having attacked paramedics and emergency department staff. Deborah Anne Carr, executive director of the American Association of Poison Control Centers, has said "The calls we get have been among the worst. People are desperate for help." And Ryan has pointed out unlike other drugs, synthetic drugs usually have an immediate and severe effect. A serious complication in dealing with adverse reactions to these synthetic drugs is that they come in a wide range of formulations.
According to the American Association of Poison Control Centers poison control centers have reported sharp increases in the number of calls which are related to synthetic drugs. Last year alone , there were 6,959 calls related to synthetic marijuana and 6,138 calls related to "bath salts," compared with 2,906 and 304 calls respectively in 2010. Although the Synthetic Drug Control Act (H.R. 1254), a bill to add a wide variety of synthetic cannabinoid and hallucinogenic drugs to the Controlled Substances Act, was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives at the end of last year and has been sent to the Senate, this is not the only answer to this problem.
Law enforcement in dealing with illicit drugs has always failed to solve the problem. And so aggressive initiatives must be taken to educate people, with a priority on our youth, about the horrible side effects from these drugs and how their lives can be catastrophically cut short from using them. If the youth in the nation for a start simply learn to hate the drug dealers because they are trying to push poison on them, than the drug dealers will starve and the illicit drug problem would be on its way to being solved. The bottom line is we must educate our kids to value health and these drugs certainly are not a part of a picture of enjoying good health.
