Bath Salts

[Ali Gator]

We are very lucky this nasty stuff was intercepted before it reached the Okanagan. I can`t understand why anyone in their right mind would want to bring this here. Business women of West Kelowna!
http://www.castanet.net/edition/news-st ... htm#101229

We already have some major drug issues here and this would of been a disaster. I remember hearing about the guy in the states who was killed by the police because he was eating the face of a homeless person (WTH!)

There is a video attached to this story that shows just how messed up a person is who takes this drug.
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jul/11 ... e-20130710

Again very happy this drug did not make it to the Okanagan area!

[Queen K]

Are any drug dealers in their "right' mind?

Charges? I am wondering if they themselves even knew what the package contained and if a person acting as an interceptor was meant to pick it up from them.

Don't dog pile on me if you don't like the idea. Innocent people being used as expendable mules is an age old drug trade game.
That's why people in foreign countries are told to "pack your luggage" and "dont' accept packages from anybody." I'm wondering if this is a new form of drug trafficking, as in, using an address of legitimate people but having a person on the outside waiting to come in.

This may be a case of a mailing address being hi-jacked. I'm not so quick as to judge these two women as some may be. I wonder if there is any back up evidence on their computers to prove they knew the package was coming and what was in it.

[Ali Gator]

Queen K you bring up a very valid point. Perhaps these women don't know anything about this drug deal! Could be why we haven't heard what business this is. Guess time will tell.

[Queen K]

Thank you. For some people it's been, "hang them high".

On the one hand the bath salts are out of the criminals hands. But I would have given anything to see what would have happened to them had they reached the destination. Could not the border peeps have inserted a GPS chip into the package and tracked it with a back up crew ready to pounce once the package got to it's destination, whereever that may have been if the first mailing address had been a mule address?

GPS chips aren't expensive are they?

[JLives]

I wonder if it had been labelled bath salts instead of table salt it would have not been tested by authorities. It definitely doesn't look like table salt.

[Bsuds]

Queen K you bring up a very valid point. Perhaps these women don't know anything about this drug deal! Could be why we haven't heard what business this is. Guess time will tell.

It would be slanderous to say which business this was if it was proven that it had nothing to do with it. For instance the 2 women could just be employees or as stated knew nothing about the shipment.

If the business turns out to be involved then I'm sure we will hear about it.

[Fancy]

We'll find out more when/if the women are formally charged.

[underscore]

GPS chips aren't expensive are they?

Accurate ones are. And if it goes into a parkade or apartment building, you're hooped.

[Queen K]

Sure, but the area would have been narrowed down.

Say the package had gone from their business, unopened, to say, parkade A on the Kelowna side of things. Then the residents in that building could have been combed through and narrowed down again. No one is going to tell me good police work could not have done that type of job.

I feel that stopping the package immediately was short sighted.

If they really wanted to know who it was going to, the package could have been picked up by someone and then the police could have swooped in on that vehicle and who's ever in it.

[Amarow121]

At least it's not Krokodil....

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/16/health/krokodil-zombie-drug/

If you've got a strong stomach, search youtube and you can watch some russian videos showing some incredible cases of people who've used Krokodil and are suffering the effects.

Blerg.

[KTownMillenial]

This is a problem created by the way we try to control substances.

As I understand it from a Drugs Inc. episode on TV, bath salts were designed by people specifically trying to avoid breaking drug trafficking laws. A familiar chemical drug is altered very slightly at the molecular level, which makes it a new substance that falls outside of existing laws. Canada recently banned MDPV, which is commonly used in "bath salts", but the drug designer just has to modify the molecular structure slightly and it suddenly becomes legal, not because it is safe, but because the legal system can't keep up. Then it's packaged and sold as bath salts not meant for human consumption, but the name of the product gives away the drug it is trying to mimic. It seems that many people consider bath salts a single type of drug, but they're designed to mimic the effects of a variety of drugs. The danger here is these slight variations are far less commonly used, so the exact short and long term effects are not fully understood.

This is one reason why banning substances doesn't work. When a government bans a substance, those that profit from the distribution of that substance can make a new variation, at least as one strategy. With more traditional drugs, demand for a substance doesn't cease to exist simply because it is made illegal. What changes is who profits from the sale of it. Those willing to break the law take over the distribution and rake in the untaxed cash, using the income for whatever they please. Using marijuana as the example, the two strongest groups opposing full legalization are those with a misunderstanding of the plant, and those who profit from selling it illegally. People who take bath salts are in a whole new world of danger because of the lack of "testing" the new substance variations have. At least if a person is going to take a drug like MDMA they know what to expect because millions have done it before them. That is, of course, presuming what they're buying off the street is pure MDMA. Since MDMA is illegal, it falls into the hands of criminal organizations to make and distribute. Yet one of BC's health officials, Dr. Kendall, is on record as saying pure MDMA is safe for adults to use.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-c ... -1.1229517

We've had a few scenarios recently in our region where people who thought they were taking MDMA have died because it turned out to be impure or something else entirely. Would they still be alive if they could buy pure MDMA? Or would more people die from using MDMA irresponsibly? It's obvious what the general sentiment of this forum will be on that question. I suppose the transition period could be dangerous, but if you grew up in that world, who knows? In our world today we have no faith in a person's ability to be responsible so we create this false idea that making something illegal makes the problem go away.

I believe we're actually adding new dangers into the world of drugs by the failing attempt to ban and control substances. I care JUST enough to write this post, because at the end of the day, if you want to risk your life that's your choice. But people are going to make that choice no matter what the laws are - people will overdose and people will die because every time they take a drug sold on "the street" they're not entirely sure about what they're getting into. If banning a substance doesn't work, which we know doesn't simply based off the number of Castanet headlines about drug busts, then how else do we handle the situation? I don't believe there is enough thought going into that part of the conversation. I'd rather tax the sale of it to help pay for the associated health care costs while limiting the government's legal costs associated with charging and incarcerating all these "criminals", as opposed to putting that money into the hands of organized crime. BUT then again, I'm not sure who's more corrupt these days, governments or "criminals".