Stranger Than Fiction: Modern Designer Drugs and the Federal Controlled Substances Analogue Act

Kathryn E. Brown.

Dylan McNabb was 19 years old when he murdered his grandmother. On the day of the murder, Dylan smoked a drug commonly known as “bath salts” and returned home to 78-year-old Imogene McNabb. Believing that she was possessed, Dylan picked up a shotgun and shot Imogene in the head, killing her. In an interview after the incident, Dylan reported that he believed she was the Antichrist and she intended to kill him. As of the time of this writing, he is in jail, awaiting trial for one count of first-degree murder.

The stories stemming from bath salts use are truly stranger than fiction. After using bath salts, a 24-year-old Tennessee man jumped out of a third floor window to prove he was a god, and then got up and jumped off the second floor balcony on which he had landed. A Mississippi man attempted to skin himself alive; and a 19-year-old West Virginia man stabbed his neighbor’s pygmy goat while wearing women’s underwear. As Dr. Mark Ryan, director of the Louisiana Poison Control explained, “[w]ith LSD, you might see pink elephants, but with [bath salts], you see demons, aliens, [or experience] extreme paranoia, heart attacks, and superhuman strength like Superman . . . [i]f you had a reaction, it was a bad reaction.”

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