When a man in Miami chewed off a homeless man’s face in 2012 a little-known drug was blamed. This report investigates how ‘bath salts’ are wreaking havoc across the USA as the number of addicts grows.
“It’s robbed him of a life. It’s taken his soul.” Tiffany Russell watches footage of her 24-year-old son Skyler, a bath salts addict. Unable to help her son herself, Tiffany feels the Government have failed him by pondering for too long over what to do about the drug. “When they finally did something, it’s too late for the thousands who have been affected.” But it’s a battle that’s far more complex, explains Drug Enforcement officer Jim Burns. “New York State passed a bath salts law a year ago. No sooner had they passed it, some enterprising chemist somewhere tweaked the chemical formula. Now it’s no longer the substance that was banned in the state law. So we’re back to square one.”
