More on "Bath Salts"...
Fuck this. Recreational drug my ass.
Police have not officially connected Eugene's behavior to "bath salts," but experts say he was exhibiting the classic signs of someone high on the drug.
Armando Aguilar, president of the Miami Fraternal Order of police, who has been in contact with the officer who killed Eugene, says the similarities between this and other recent cases involving "bath salts" are striking.
"The cases are similar minus a man eating another. People taking off their clothes. People suddenly have super human strength," says Aguilar. "They become violent and they are burning up for the inside. Their organs are reaching a level that most would die. By the time police approach them they are a walking dead person."
According to Aguilar one of the recent cases in Miami involving "bath salts," which is becoming increasingly popular in the party scene, involved someone trying to bite another, but police were able to get there in time. Most have involved individuals behaving incredibly irrationally and nearly impossible to control.
"There was another incident after the popular Ultra Festival where a guy was walking around naked, and was hit by a taxi. He jumped on top of the taxi, beat the people inside. It took 15 officers to stop him, and as he was being tasered, he was begging them to shoot and kill him," says Aguilar. "But because we had that many officers we were able to subdue him and take him to the hospital where they basically froze him."
Dr. Paul Adams, an emergency physician at the Jackson Memorial Rider Trauma Center in Miami where the cannibal victim is being treated, says instances of virtually uncontrollable patients being brought in exhibiting signs of psychosis due to this new drug have spiked during the last year.
"You can call it the new LSD. It's a recreational drug," says Adams. "They [patients] seem to be unaware of their surroundings. They are not rational, very aggressive and are stronger than they usually are. In the emergency room it usually takes four to five people to control them, and we have had a couple of people breaking out of restraints."
Adams says he believes there have been at least several hundred South Florida cases alone in the last year of people coming in usually in their twenties and thirties on the drug.
Citing an "imminent threat to public safety" the U.S Drug Enforcement Agency banned in 2011 for a year the possession and sale of three chemicals used to make the drug as they determine how best to combat the growing problem.
Although they resemble the types of salts people put in their bathtubs, the chemical make-up is different and has allowed peddlers to skirt the authorities. It can be either inhaled or snorted. It is less expensive than cocaine or ecstasy and is made in kitchens and is not that expensive.
Patients on the drug can experience high body temperatures that induce hypothermia, paranoia, hallucinations, and agitation. There is no test available yet for the substance, and because the drug is so new it's unclear if it is addictive.