Comm Centers Handling New Substance Abuse Calls

Public safety dispatchers in some parts of the country are struggling to handle 911 calls from users of a new designer drug labeled as “bath salts,” which can cause hallucinations that may sound like legitimate emergencies. In fact, the substance is not ordinary bath salts, which add fragrance or cleaning features to bath water, but is a manufactured drug marketed to avoid federal drug labeling and sales laws. Besides hallucinations, the drug can cause serious medical symptoms such as high body temperature, rapid heart rate and elevated blood pressure. A news story from Sullivan County (Tenn.) says dispatchers there have received at least 100 calls from bath salt users, some saying spiders are crawling on them or people are chasing them, and describing strange surroundings. Because the callers are hallucinating, they frequently cannot describe their surroundings clearly enough to obtain a location for a response. Law enforcement agencies in other parts of the country have encountered bath salt users after they have become extremely violent, much like PCP users. The agencies say a proper response is both a law enforcement and EMS agency to handle the violence and medical symptoms respectively.