Senator wants action after bath salts report

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - An I-Team 8 hidden camera investigation has a state senator calling for immediate action.

Synthesized chemicals – easily bought at stores around Indiana - come in small packages with street names like bath salts and spice. Lawmakers banned the compounds in July in Indiana, but an I-Team 8 hidden camera investigation found the packages still available, as well as store clerks talking in code about them .

Medical experts said bath salts – crystallized stimulant chemicals – produce effects similar to crack cocaine and meth and push users into paranoid hallucinations.

State Sen. Jim Merritt said he was outraged as he watched the I-Team 8 investigation of retailers skirting the new state law. Experts said the chemists producing the subtances just tweak the formulas to stay above the law, and many stores continue to sell them, claiming they are not responsible for what customers choose to do with the compounds, often labeled “not for human consumption.”

Merritt is now calling on oil marketers – whose products are sold at convenience stores, truck stops and gas stations that often sell the dangerous chemicals – to put pressure on the stores to stop selling the compounds.

"I was angry. We need to do something about this,” Merritt said. “We need to educate Indiana, educate kids. We need to protect kids. I expect them all to come forward and say this is evil and we need change and we are not going to sell this. We need to get angry about it."

One CFO of a northern Indiana retailer told I-Team 8 earlier: "If I can make money and stay above the law, then so be it."

In response to that, Merritt told 24-Hour News 8: "That is not acceptable, not acceptable especially when it comes to our kids. Your footage last night of the effect of these drugs - and we will call them drugs - on kids is reprehensible. We need to stop."

Merritt contacted the Indiana Oil Petroleum Marketers, calling on them to stop stores from selling the chemicals and join in the education.

The executive director of the Indiana Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association, Scott Imus, did not return 24-Hour News 8’s calls seeking comment.

"We need to get into schools, we need to talk to Hoosiers. We need to educate them on the need to protect our children and inform our children,” Merritt said. “This is not a good thing. This is a very bad thing, and it's just that simple. It’s black and white. It's bad."

When asked about the law the legislature passed, he said, "I think people thought as of July 1 people just expected this to stop because it is state law. With this being such an important issue and about public health, we need to re-double our efforts to Hoosiers and talk about it."

Merritt called it a scary issue that needs to be stopped,

"Bottom line is we have to start at square one and talk to our retailers and talk to our children," he said.

But police and prosecutors are getting pressure coming from the side, too, from attorneys for retailers selling the substances. I-Team 8 has obtained a warning letter sent Sept. 22 from an Indianapolis law firm to local police departments, criticizing "inappropriate law enforcement activity" and calling the products "legal".