Understanding bath salts

Dear editor, 

Your resident intellectual, Steven King, is at it again. In today's rant he asks the question: "Do you believe China let the over-the-counter products of spice (smoked) and bath salts (snorted) to be legally sold to its citizens?"

The bath salts King refers to are not the same bath salts as those sold over-the-counter at your local Walmart. Per NIH, these bath salts (Epsom salts) have no "mind altering ingredients."

The bath salts King is referring to is "synthetic cathinones, human-made stimulpts chemically related to cathinone, a substance found in the khat plant. Khat is a shrub grown id East Africa and southern Arabia, where some people chew its leaves for their mild stimulant effects. Humanmade versions of cathinone can be much stronger than the natural product and, in some cases, very dangerous." (National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Feb. 2018.) These bath salts are not sold over-the-counter at your local Walrnart; they are sold by your local "pusher."

Just thought you'd like to know . . .

What's your view? Write a letter to the editor.

PRESLEY HARPER

Pensacola

This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Understanding bath salts