Despite a crackdown through legislation and law enforcement, synthetic drugs continue to pose a danger to Iowans, especially teen-agers. That’s because cynical manufacturers regularly change one chemical component and often label the products “not intended for human consumption” to evade prosecution under current law. In fact, everyone knows the drugs are indeed intended for human consumption. The drugs are meant to be smoked or otherwise consumed, sending teen-agers to the emergency room and sometimes to their tragic death.
With a bipartisan group of senators, I’ve reintroduced legislation to make it easier to prosecute the sale and distribution of new synthetic drugs that are “analogues,”or substantially similar to current illegal drugs. Current law makes it difficult to prosecute new synthetic drugs as analogues in part because of the “not intended for human consumption” label. The label gives the manufacturers some legal cover, despite the well-known consumption of their products as recreational drugs with dangerous effects.
The Synthetic Abuse and Labeling of Toxic Substances (SALTS) Act would make it easier to prove that synthetic drugs are not intended for human consumption and thus easier to prosecute. This bill amends the Controlled Substances Act to require consideration of a number of factors when determining whether a controlled substance analogue was intended for human consumption, including the marketing, advertising, and labeling of a substance, and its known use. The bill also says that the existence of evidence that a substance was not marketed, advertised, or labeled for human consumption, should not stop prosecutors from being able to establish based on all the evidence that the substance was in fact intended for human consumption.
This bill would help make clear that a label intended to mislead isn’t fooling anybody in the eyes of the law. Those who market poisonous products that harm consumers including teen-agers ought to be held accountable for it.