Police warn of bathing salts drug craze
More and more teenagers are consuming bathing salts to get high, police officials have warned.Hermann Feldbacher, a drug expert at the Upper Austrian police department, said today (Fri): “There is a trend for an increasing number of very young addicts to buy bathing salts, incense sticks and other cheap products.”Speaking to Viennese newspaper Heute, Feldbacher stressed that those substances could be addictive due to the many chemicals they contained. He also warned of the psychical long-term effects of the sniffing and eating of bathing salts and other products available in every supermarket.Feldbacher revealed some addicts to these new kind of drugs were kids aged as young as 13.Upper Austrian crime department chief Alois Lißl, meanwhile, identified the cities of Linz, Wels and Steyr and the district of Vöcklabruck as the “hotspots” of the provinces drug scene.Only on Sunday, a pedestrian found the body of a young man lying in a snow-covered pasture in Wels who police may have died from a drug overdose.The number of drug-related deaths in Austria rose from 169 in 2008 to 187 the next year, but officials have warned that the figure might be much higher.