Community Health Needs Assessment southwest Virginia.84 Roanoke Police officers describe the drugs’ effects as “a hurricane that took this area by storm.”85 Synthetic drugs began appearing in tobacco shops in March 2012 and were sold under various names including Amped, White Water Rapids, Go Fast, and Snowman. Synthetic drugs’ violent effects on users overwhelmed police officers and emergency personnel. The southeast neighborhoods of Roanoke were hardest hit due to a tobacco shop in the area that began offering the drugs at a discount when they initially appeared on the market. The impact soon spread throughout the city and into surrounding counties. In May of 2012, Roanoke City Police officers responded to 34 bath salts-related calls and city police chief Chris Perkins called the problem a spreading “epidemic.” 86 Some chemical compounds in synthetic drugs have already been banned in Virginia (beginning on July 1, 2012). Police officers across the Roanoke Valley sponsored two community awareness seminars about synthetic drugs on July 19, 2012 to help keep these substances out of schools and the community.87 Despite this ban, there is concern that modifications to the drugs will continue to show up legally on the market.88 The president of the Southeast Action Forum, a neighborhood alliance in southeast Roanoke that advocates and works to create safe, crime-free neighborhoods for its residents, recently remarked that bath salts “were and are a widespread problem” in the area.89 In the Roanoke MSA, unintentional injury deaths were higher than the state averages for Botetourt, Craig, and Franklin counties and the city of Roanoke.90 Drug use was second only to motor vehicle accidents as the common cause of accidental death in Virginia in 2010.91
84
WDBJ-7, Bath Salts: Deadly High, May 2012, http://www.wdbj7.com/news/wdbj7-bath-salts-deadly-high20120521,0,1478571. Story accessed 8/16/12 85 WDBJ-7, Roanoke warns people about the dangers of bath salts, July 19,2012 http://www.wdbj7.com/news/wdbj7-roanoke-warns-people-about-the-dangers-of-bath-salts20120719,0,1024122 Story accessed 8/17/12 86 Rob Fischer “Bath salts in the Wound” Vice Magazine. www.vice.com August 13, 2012 87 WDBJ-7, Roanoke warns people about the dangers of bath salts, July 19,2012 http://www.wdbj7.com/news/wdbj7-roanoke-warns-people-about-the-dangers-of-bath-salts20120719,0,1024122.story accessed 8/17/12 88 The Roanoke Times, Editorial- Bath salts controversy, Glenn Garvin June 24, 2012 89 Southeast Action Forum, email correspondence, August 16, 2012 90 Virginia Department of Health, Division of Health Statistics, 2008-2010 91 Virginia Department of Health, Office of the Chief Medical Examiner’s Annual Report 2010, released December 2011 (www.vdh.state.va.us/medExam/documents)
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