A new street drug is setting off alarm bells across North America. It's called "bath salts" and is can cause erratic behaviour, often resulting in violence.
Dr. Nancy Murphy, of Halifax, says user-reporter effects of the drug include delusions, panic attacks, and violence. "A deep -seeded paranoia. And sometimes the violent behavior can be inflicted upon others, or even on themselves."
So far, use of bath salts in Canada has been mostly limited to the Maritimes. But, health officials in Prince Albert say they have treated people who were high on the unpredictable drug.
Although the drug only recently gained wide-spread media attention, officials at the Prince Albert Parkland Health Region say it first came to their attention late last year, with two outpatient cases cropping up.
So far, use of the drug in Prince Albert hasn't been known to cause any violent outbursts, but medical specialists say when dealing with a 100 per cent synthetic drug like bath salts one batch can be very different from the next.
Dr Khami Chokani, a medical health officer, says you can never know what will happen with each batch of the drug. "It is a very dangerous drug. It is unpredictable. And I think people need to be aware of these dangers they do face. It is not a drug to experiment with."
Chuck McCann, the director of addictions services with the health region, says at this point little is known about the long term effects bath salts can have on a person's mind and body.
"Based on what we've been able to read, the limited information that we have, bath salts appear to be something that is going to be a fairly toxic highly addictive substance. And we would like to see folks stay away from it," says McCann.
Because bath salts is so new it has law-makers playing catch up as well. The federal government hopes to have the key ingredients for the drug made illegal by later this year.
