Emergency officials call effects of bath salt use 'frightening'

Emergency officials across the country are battling a disturbing trend: more people behaving erratically after using bath salts. Doctors and police are calling the synthetic drug frightening because of what it does to the user.

Bath salts didn't take off until 2009, when users were just looking for a new, inexpensive high. But the designer drug has had devastating effects on users' brains, as we learned from one particularly gruesome case in Florida.
 

The story out of Miami shocked the world: a man attacked by a homeless person who began biting off his face.

"Seventy-five to 80 percent of his face was missing, and (the assailant) was actually swallowing pieces of the man's face," said Armando Aguilar, president of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police.
The injured man now needs a facial transplant. The unofficial cause for the depravity: bath salts, a synthetic cocktail that usually contains cocaine and speed.
A Utah man who asked not to be identified told KSL News bath salts are the worst illegal drug he's ever tried.
"I hallucinated, I was shaking," the man said. "I felt out of my body, felt sick to my stomach."