MDPV scare in Louisiana

Dangerous new drugs are being sold as fake bath salts, fake fertilizer or fake insect repellent -- and sending drug abusers to emergency rooms around the country after snorting or smoking them, poison center officials say.

At least 84 people around Louisiana have been hospitalized because of paranoia, fighting, hallucinations, suicidal thoughts and physical effects such as hypertension and rapid heartbeat -- most for a day or two but at least three of them for weeks, Mark Ryan, head of the Louisiana Poison Center, said Wednesday.

Although they're labeled as bath products or even poison, always including the warning "Not for human consumption," word on the street and the Internet is that they can be sniffed as "legal cocaine" or "legal speed," Henry A. Spiller, director of the Kentucky Regional Poison Center in Louisville, said Wednesday.

"These are experienced drug users... There's a lot of things they'll suffer for the drug high they're looking for," Spiller said. "Even these people are coming into the emergency room. Even they can't handle these fairly nasty effects."

Ryan said users describe the drugs as many times more potent than Ritalin or cocaine. Spiller said several people had tried to kill themselves, and others attacked friends or family.

Julie Sanders, an emergency room doctor in Covington, said her stepson, 21-year-old Dickie Sanders, shot and killed himself three days after sniffing "Cloud 9" -- one of the names under which MDPV, short for methylenedioxypyrovalerone (METH-uh-leen-di-OX-ee-PY-ro-VAL-uh-rone), is sold.

[Thanks Jon!]