With Eye on Spring Break, Florida Bans Bath Salts

Spring breakers will need to find another cheap, dangerous high
By Polly Davis Doig,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 8, 2011 9:56 AM CST
With Eye on Spring Break, Florida Bans Bath Salts
In this Jan. 18, 2011 photo, Itawamba County inmate Neil Brown describes at the jail in Fulton, Miss., self-induced injuries he incurred after ingesting a bath salt that's being sold at convenience stores.   (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

On the heels of reports that bath salts are as bad as meth, Florida's not messing around: The Sunshine State has joined Louisiana in banning the sale of little white packets of crystals that people around the Southeast are smoking or snorting, because, "For lack of a better term, (people) flipped out," a poison control official tells NPR. "It's almost like a psychotic break."

One man under the influence ripped a cop's radar unit off—with his teeth—while another woman went after her mother with a machete, convinced the elder woman was a monster. And in Florida in particular, the combination of bath salts with one annual ritual loomed ominously: "We were all, literally, just absolutely worried to death about what was going to happen in spring break," says a sheriff. "And we still may have issues, but it won't be because they're buying [the bath salts] in the local stores." (More bath salts stories.)

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