Violence-inducing bath salts may be common hidden ingredient in party drug

(credit: Leon Landmesser)

Peace, love, unity, respect… and anti-cannibalism. Such a revised credo for ravers may follow a new study that found many ecstasy users are inadvertently ingesting novel psychoactive substances, known as “bath salts,” which in some cases trigger violent behavior.

Of 48 party-going, life-time ecstasy users that provided hair samples, half tested positive for bath salts (synthetic cathinones), researchers reported. Of the 34 people who said on a survey that they believed they had never taken bath salts, 14 (about 41 percent) tested positive for the psychoactive substances.

“While we cannot completely rule out dishonest responses (e.g., underreporting “bath salt” use), our results suggest that many ecstasy users are unintentionally or unknowingly using synthetic cathinones and/or other [novel psychoactive substances],” the authors wrote in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

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