BREWER, Maine — State lawmakers have banned 21 different components used to make synthetic bath salts drugs and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is working to federally ban the three main components, but that is not enough, Brewer police Chief Perry Antone is saying.
“They can alter one molecule and it changes the name to skirt the law,” the police chief said of chemists who make the dangerous street drug, called “monkey dust” in and around Bangor. “We’re doing everything we can at the local level but we need legislation” that covers all the known components.
The federal DEA took emergency action in September to federally ban mephedrone, Methylone and methylenedioxypyrovalerone, known as MDPV, and designated the hallucinogenic stimulant a Schedule 1 drug, the same class as heroin and LSD.
The DEA is studying the lab-made drugs, which are called synthetic cathinones because they copy the effects of chewing the evergreen shrub Catha edulis, known as Khat, and the agency is considering banning others, Antone said.
“Currently, the federal DEA is looking to outlaw 14 of these known cathinones … when realistically there are really 30 to 35 more known cathinones out there that could be used to manufacture bath salts,” the police chief said.
Bath salts emerged on the streets of Bangor in February 2011 and by July — when it was banned — it had grown into a regional problem that has spread throughout the state.
The drug can be snorted, smoked, injected or swallowed, is addictive and causes users to act unpredictably, Bangor Police Chief Ron Gastia has said.
Bath salts have caused hallucinations, convulsions, psychotic episodes and thoughts of suicide in users, and has been linked to more than one death in Maine.
To get the message to lawmakers, Antone wrote a letter to U.S. Sen. Olympia, Senate President Kevin Raye, R-Perry, and the Maine Chiefs of Police Association stressing the need for stronger laws against bath salts.
Snowe, who along with fellow Republican Sen. Susan Collins both support the passage of the Combating Dangerous Synthetic Stimulants Act, proposed by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., which would ban methedrone and MDPV.
His letter states a three-prong approach is needed — education, enforcement and treatment — and says the DEA and state lawmakers need to take action now and should follow in the footsteps of legislation used to ban the chemicals used to make methamphetamines.
“It is our hope we’ll be able to convince Maine legislators and federal legislators that the best thing to do is outlaw all cathinones so we don’t keep seeing new drugs under different chemical names,” Antone said. “By changing one molecule, they could create another bath salts that could be sold over the counter in Maine” legally.
This would cause a major problem for law enforcement and for consumers who would think it was a safe drug alternative because it was not illegal, the Brewer police chief said.
Nothing could be further from the truth, Antone said.
All synthetic drugs need to be outlawed because if not there will just be a replacement marketed because every time one is banned there is one waiting. Sad these drug addicts are ingested such harmful substances because they are ingesting chemicals and the long time effects are unknown so even if you kick habits what have these done to you? Meth labs use drain cleaners, ammonia and other substances that you would never think of ingesting but those are being ingested. The young generation today of addicts are all possibly going to be brain dead in their older years and it is very sad. But the reality is even if outlawed people still find a way and laws are broken everyday.
I’d say anyone willing to ingest anything that isn’t for made for consumption is a bit touched. Wonder what is in the water today making our young brain dead enough to consume unedible items for a strange high. A high that makes you itch incredible, paranoid and strip. That can’t be fun.
If you outlaw “all synthetic drugs” what would you suggest that doctors use to treat you, when you need surgery or anything else?
Why don’t people realize that it doesn’t matter how many laws you make, the people who are doing the drugs, or buying guns and ammo illegally are going to keep doing it no matter what. I’m not saying do nothing, but if they are breaking one law, they’ll break them all to get what they want.
Many just get it free at our methadone clinics. Great places, just go pick up your tax payer provided, methadone. I would agree maybe with the clinics if you could only be a client one time and only for 1 year max. However, those that go can keep going and going. Never decreasing. That isn’t progress, that’s maintainance.
You wanna’ see maintenance….LOL Go to Hannaford and cruise the liquor aisle and the cold beer section, where most Mainers pick up their drug habit on the cheap. If only we’d make the booze illegal, along with the cigarettes, we could start on food, and everyone would be thin and healthy….LOL
I agree that alchohol is a drug. I would rather be around someone on pot any day then someone drinking hard stuff. Alchohol is liquid courage and pot mellows people out. I am just glad that taxpayers aren’t directly paying for alchohol for people to maintaine. I know alot of people that I wouldn’t want their bar bill for the week let alone the year! Yikes!! 18pk a day, more money then I could take out of my budget.
Hey,
Tzuriel….LOL Glad to see your comment.
After I
replied to your comment, I felt bad about it, only because I was worried that I
had been disrespectful. It seems that many people in America right now are very
angry, and although I love the Internet, our anonymous names we chose allow us
to say things to each other we might not say in a bar…LOL..without causing a
fight and getting a black eye or a police record. :) There I go with my sense
of humor, again.
I really
have no great ideas as to how to make life better. I really don’t.
I had a
neighbor in my apartment complex in New Jersey, 15 years ago, who was on
Methadone maintenance. At the time, I was on SSI and hadn’t worked since my two
tours of duty in Nam, although I had a two year Accounting Degree, but Dave made
$50,000 as a park maintenance supervisor in NJ, and had been shot in the knee
and medevacd during the beginning of a battle in Vietnam.
At least for him, his
drug addiction started (or maybe moved from alcohol, as his Dad was Irish and
used to beat him and his brothers?) when the medic put two morphine needles in
to his knee before they put him on the helicopter. At the time, we were both
wearing our Nam veteran hats, and I’d say we were angry, but he was more angry
than I, but still held a good job, but not much else.
As he
told me, his friends were all junkies/alcoholics, or former drug addicts, who he
couldn’t trust. And as had been reported, they sometimes sold their methadone
doses. I’m watching a Netflix FREE streaming documentary called METHADONIA,
which emphasizes that same point.
I
used psychiatric medication, but was never attracted to beer or drugs, although
I certainly have had a beer or two upon an occasion, or smoked pot
recreationally, back in the 1970s. In fact, I would say that I first started
smoking pot to deal with my post traumatic stress disorder after my first tour
in Vietnam, and I would say that if this country would legalize it and tax it
like cigarettes, it would make much more sense to me. For me, food has always
been my outlet (as is obviously the sheriff of Brewer in the picture in this
article). But back to my Nam comrade junkie
friend:
I got
Dave a book from the library about the battle he was wounded in, and he learned
that it went on for three days, and many who were shot, later died, because
helicopters couldn’t get in to airlift them out (although probably not someone
with a knee wound like Dave). He learned this, because once you are airlifted
out of a battle with a disabling wound, you get sent to a hospital in Japan, and
often don’t go back to your Marine unit in Vietnam, as during that time, us
military draftees/enlistees were treated like parts on one of Secretary of
Defense McNamara’s Ford assembly plants, and were not kept in their units as
today’s professional military are treated. After reading the book, he felt
lucky to have survived, and he was already getting a 30% disability payment for
his knee from the VA.
He was
already set up to go to court because a bridge policeman had summoned him for
smoking crack in a pipe as he was driving across the Ben Franklin Bridge in to
Philadelphia. His life was spiraling out of control. He put himself in-patient
at the VA hospital in Philadelphia to get help. And he retired from his job, as
he had reached the age for early retirement, back in the mid 1990s.
He
started attending Narcotics Anonymous groups, and got himself a sensible car,
instead of the old sports car he was driving. I recommended my PTSD treatment
group to him, and he came in for treatment, and although I didn’t see much of
him, I felt like his life was back on a good drift, away from his drug
addiction. He even connected with his sister and she invited him to move in to
the upstairs apartment at her house in Allentown, PA.
He did
get his 100% VA payment, plus his pension from Camden County, and his Social
Security Disability, and had an enormous income, plus getting a huge chunk of
cash from his VA disability back pay for two years. So he went out and bought
himself a new Corvette, and all of this was more than 15 years ago in the 1990s
Go-Go economy where a $50,000 salary for a parks maintenance supervisor was not
uncommon (maybe in Maine?).
And I
felt bad for him, because as soon as I saw that Corvette, and what it meant to
his former lifestyle with his former drug pals and addiction, I worried about
him, but he moved, and I lost touch with him. To this day, I wonder if he was
able to stay away from his drug/alcohol addiction, because I know that my food
addiction has raged out of control, especially after I made the mistake of
leaving the area I knew and moving to an isolated area of Maine.
So I
guess the joking comments I made in my reply to your post had to do with our
various addictions. A woman in my community in Maine lost her lifetime
job/pension at the US post office when she stole $5,000 out of petty cash over a
period of time to cover her gambling addiction, and some of the debt may have
occurred at the Indian bingo parlor in Canada?
She
rents out the adjoining home to my neighbor, who has illegal drug problems. I
would guess that some years ago, one of her live-in boyfriends was selling drugs
from next door. A few years later, he came up on my property to get some advice
about veteran’s benefits, and told me he had been in an adjoining community,
getting high with a friend, and the friend had committed suicide right in front
of him, while he was there, getting high.
Man!
What to do about peoples’ addictions? I don’t know. Really, I
don’t.
In some
sense, that’s why I was joking about the Brewer police chief’s idea of trying to
make all drugs illegal ahead of time, before they are invented, because it
doesn’t seem like you can arrest and jail your way out of drug problems. On the
other hand, we certainly want the police to arrest people who are stealing from
their jobs at the post office because of a gambling or drug addiction. Really,
I am at a loss, but here is one last point.
A
friendly acquaintance who works as a Maine jail guard sent me a photo of a
militarized boat the Texas Rangers have procured to patrol a border lake with
Mexico, the one where the tourist was killed a few years ago. It has a 50
caliber machine gun turret on it, and three, each, 300 cu inch Marine engines.
But one big reason they need it is because the Mexican border is where a lot of
our US drugs come in to this country, and most of the guns that are killing
thousands of Mexicans are smuggled out of the USA in to Mexico. One of the
reasons I like Maine is it is a very law and order place to live, as opposed to
the Texas-Mexico border. BUT, ONCE AGAIN, HOW ARE YOU GOING TO ARREST YOUR WAY
OUT OF AN ADDICTION PROBLEM.
Take
care, Tzuriel, and thanks for your comments on the BDN.
I think your my neighbor, I bet we know one another, small world after all. I’m the most liberal republican you will ever meet. I live with three vets. PTSD is something I am very familiar with.
I agree we aren’t going to arrest our way out of this mess. I’m uncertain that mandated counceling would help either. I am just so against taxpayer funded meth clinics because they keep giving it to them, there is no end in sight. When you taper someone off it should be like Dr. Drew says on television done and over in at least 3 months tops! Not over 3 years and still ongoing “treatment” That isn’t treatment that is funding an addiction. Then the government refuses to legalize medical pot for use for cancer when we know it has saved many peoples lives. They can turn that into pill form, take a pill and eat. Recently parents snuck it into their infant baby and saved their babies life, that was huge on television as now that their terminally ill baby has survived due to their parents heroic deed, its undecided if they will be prosecuted. What jury is going to convict. Wish I was on it, this die hard drug and alchohol hater, would let them walk free, their baby lived. I know I would give my baby pot if that is the only drug that would save my babies life. That was on CNN, Dr Drew last night, the mother is an RN nurse. I don’t smoke or ingest it, my job, we are randomly drug tested, if anyone was to say I was on it, I would have to submit to a test immediately. Its not my thing, but if someone is sick, I think its better then oxycodone and morphine, that is what they had that baby on before the parents took over.
I am with you and the rest of the politicians. We can’t legislate morality. God is out of schools. He will soon be off the currency. Morals are fading. This is what we have left…. Parents find it easier to turn on a television, computer or phone then talk to their children.
This is the first comprehensive effort that has been put forth thus far. Great job Chief Antone! Keep up the great work!
GIVE EM HELL PERRY……………….MARK
To get the message to lawmakers, Antone wrote a letter to U.S. Sen. Olympia, Senate President Kevin Raye, R-Perry, and the Maine Chiefs of Police Association stressing the need for stronger laws against bath salts.
Snowe, who along with fellow Republican Sen. Susan Collins both support the passage of the Combating Dangerous Synthetic Stimulants Act, proposed by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., which would ban methedrone and MDPV.?? Hope this get’s a bit of editing before it goes to print.
Right, because the “war on drugs” has been such a great success.
What will it take for these idiots to realize that prohibition DOES NOT WORK?
That Bath Salts is the most sketchy horrible drug on the street today. it’s ruining peoples lives. I’m glad there is more being done to stop this epidemic.
Bath salts contributed to my friends suicide on Friday.. It’s a sad world we live in today. On one hand, Marijuana is illegal and on the other Bath salts(that kill) you can pick up at your local market… somethings not right here.
I have had so many adult children say to me that they learned about drugs and their effects from the DARE police officer. DARE has been in operation since 1980 and since their intervention the drug market has soared. The DARE policeman, who believes that he or she is doing the right thing of which I have no doubt, brings a firearm into school and dares children to use drugs under penalty of law. The message received by the children is disturbing. Ask the prisoners in jail, they are yesterday’s children.
Today children wear DARE bracelets and what do you think they mean?
The war on drugs is a total fraud. It is a welfare program that sucks endless money from the taxpayers each year. There is an american marketing strategy here to stimulate growth and provide revenue for courts, cops and corrections.
Criminal lawyers would lose half their income if the war ended. Correction would be cut in half if the war ended. It is a forty year war that is destroying our country. Can no one seee this after forty years?
War is not the answer as war has caused the drugs to become stronger and more lethal as is the case with “bath salts”.
Can no one think of anything else but war? Wake up people!
Making more laws will NOT stop deviant behavior and will only add to America’s current jail population of 2.3 million people – the highest rate per capita of any country in the world.
I agree with the first part of your statement, making more laws for something that is already illegal is a waste of time, effort, and money. However I have no problem putting away people who cause others to suffer because of their bad judgement.
The only reason I made a comment was to suggest that members of our government continue to suggest the passage of yet another law to fix a social problem. There have been as many as 2200 bills (new laws or changes proposed) in several Maine legislative sessions. There are so many laws, ordinances, rules and regulations now that most young people don’t even know what they are until they meet a law enforcement officer.
A link to a presentation from the Down East Emergency Medicine institute on
Bath Salts. History, Effects, Clinical Presentation and Treatment. For Police,
Fire, EMS, Physicians and nurses. Informational and free to share with
others
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAc6j0df4pE
Doc Bowie
I really
have no great ideas as to how to make life better. I really don’t.
I had a
neighbor in my apartment complex in New Jersey, 15 years ago, who was on
Methadone maintenance. At the time, I was on SSI and hadn’t worked since my two
tours of duty in Nam, although I had a two year Accounting Degree, but Dave made
$50,000 as a park maintenance supervisor in NJ, and had been shot in the knee
and medevacd during the beginning of a 3 day battle in Vietnam.
At least for Dave, his
drug addiction started (or maybe moved from alcohol, as his Dad was Irish and
used to beat him and his brothers?) when the medic put two morphine needles in
to his knee before they put him on the helicopter. At the time, we were both
wearing our Nam veteran hats, and I’d say we were angry, but he was more angry
than I, but still held a good job, but not much else.
As Dave
told me, his friends were all junkies/alcoholics, or former drug addicts, who he
couldn’t trust. And as had been reported, they sometimes sold their methadone
doses. I’m watching a Netflix FREE streaming documentary on the computer called, “METHADONIA,”
which emphasizes that same point.
I
use psychiatric medication, but was never attracted to beer or drugs, although
I certainly have had a beer or two upon an occasion, or smoked pot
recreationally, back in the 1970s. In fact, I would say that I first started
smoking pot to deal with my post traumatic stress disorder after my first tour
in Vietnam, and I would say that if this country would legalize it and tax it
like cigarettes, it would make much more sense to me. For me, food has always
been my outlet (as is obviously the sheriff of Brewer in the picture in this
article). But back to my Nam comrade junkie
friend:
I got
Dave a book from the library about the battle he was wounded in, and he learned
that it went on for three days, and many who were shot, later died, because
helicopters couldn’t get in to airlift them out (although probably not someone
with a knee wound like Dave).
He learned this, because once you are airlifted
out of a Vietnam battle with a disabling wound, you often get sent to a hospital in Japan, and
often don’t go back to your Marine unit in Vietnam, as during that time, us
military draftees/enlistees were treated like parts on one of Secretary of
Defense McNamara’s Ford assembly plants, and were not kept in their units as
today’s professional military are treated. After reading the book, he felt
lucky to have survived, and he was already getting a 30% disability payment for
his knee from the VA.
He was
already set up to go to court because a bridge policeman had summoned him for
smoking crack in a pipe as he was driving across the Ben Franklin Bridge in to
Philadelphia. His life was spiraling out of control. He put himself in-patient
at the VA hospital in Philadelphia to get help. And he retired from his job, as
he had reached the age for early retirement, back in the mid 1990s.
He
started attending Narcotics Anonymous groups, and got himself a sensible car,
instead of the old sports car he was driving. I recommended my PTSD treatment
group to him, and he came in for treatment, and although I didn’t see much of
him, I felt like his life was back on a good drift, away from his drug
addiction. He even connected with his sister and she invited him to move in to
the upstairs apartment at her house in Allentown, PA.
He did
get his 100% VA payment, plus his pension from Camden County, NJ,, and his Social
Security Disability, and had an enormous income, plus getting a huge chunk of
cash from his VA disability back pay for two years. So he went out and bought
himself a new Corvette, and all of this was more than 15 years ago in the 1990s
Go-Go economy where a $50,000 salary for a parks maintenance supervisor was not
uncommon (maybe in Maine?).
And I
felt bad for him, because as soon as I saw that Corvette, and what it meant to
his former lifestyle with his former drug pals and addiction, I worried about
him. But he moved, and I lost touch with him. To this day, I wonder if he was
able to stay away from his drug/alcohol addiction, because I know that my food
addiction has raged out of control, especially after I made the mistake of
leaving the area and friends I knew and moved to an isolated area of Maine.
So I
guess this comment has to do with our
various addictions.
A woman in my community in Maine lost her lifetime
job/pension at the US post office when she stole $5,000 out of petty cash over a
period of time to cover her gambling addiction, and some of the debt may have
occurred at the Indian bingo parlor in Canada, so a rumor goes? But her story and conviction was reported in the Bangor Daily News, which is how I found out about it, as I don’t know anbody in this tiny hamlet where I moved to.
She
rents out the adjoining home to my neighbor, who has told me she smokes pot. I
would guess that six years ago, one of her live-in boyfriends was most likely selling drugs
from next door, at least from all the constant traffic on the road that serves both of our properties.
A few years later, this ex-boyfriend came up on my property to get some advice
about veteran’s benefits, and he told me he had been in an adjoining community,
getting high with a friend, and the friend had committed suicide right in front
of him, while he was there, getting high.
Man!
What to do about peoples’ addictions? I don’t know. Really, I
don’t.
I was wondering about the Brewer police chief’s idea of trying to
make all drugs illegal ahead of time, before they are invented, because it
doesn’t seem like you can arrest and jail your way out of drug problems. On the
other hand, we certainly want the police to arrest people who are stealing from
their jobs at the post office because of a gambling or drug addiction, and driving down the left hand lane of the highway, out of control, and a danger to themselves and others. Really,
I am at a loss, but here is one last point.
A
friendly acquaintance who works as a Maine jail guard sent me a photo of a
militarized boat the Texas Rangers have procured to patrol a border lake with
Mexico, the one where the tourist was killed a few years ago. It has a 50
caliber machine gun turret on it, and three, each, 300 cu inch Marine engines.
But one big reason they need it is because the Mexican border is where a lot of
our US drugs come in to this country, and most of the guns that are killing
thousands of Mexicans are smuggled out of the USA in to Mexico.
One of the
reasons I like Maine is it is a very law and order place to live, as opposed to
the Texas-Mexico border.
BUT, ONCE AGAIN, HOW ARE YOU GOING TO ARREST YOUR WAY
OUT OF AN ADDICTION PROBLEM?