Debate: Bath Salts

By Jake and Glenn

Ever since the case of the “Miami Zombie,” bath salts, a drug which is generally inhaled, has been making national news.  Do bath salts cause zombism?  Was the lightning bolt that struck the tombstone in “Night of the Living Dead” made of bath salts?  This debate will attempt to answer these questions.



Jake:  I have yet to try bath salts, but I will very soon.  It really does sound like a lot of fun.  I have also never chewed off the face of an acquaintance, but not for lack of trying.  My teeth are very dull from the time Glenn dared me to chew gravel for three minutes.  It is starting to come out that the “Miami Zombie” was neither a zombie, on bath salts or even from Miami!  He was from Tampa and he didn’t swallow any of that fellow’s face.  He is no more a cannibal than--to randomly pluck a name from the ether -- Jeffrey Dahmer.  The only thing you are going to do when on bath salts is have a great time.  So let’s get together and inhale some soon.


Glenn:  Certainly the worst thing to happen in the wake of these bath salts attacks is the trend of people smirkingly yelling “zombie apocalypse” in the way they yell “real apocalypse” about December 2012.   These are both examples of a defeated society, grasping ways to accept its decline and eventual destruction.  A great way to speed up this destruction would be putting bath salts into the drinking water, as my opponent wishes but will not say. There is already such a huge problem with drugs in our society, why make it worse?  The recent and tragic example of Len Bias’s cocaine overdose would certainly have been exacerbated with a “drug” like bath salts.  Perhaps he would have killed fellow draftee Dennis Rodman and eaten his multi colored hair.  We need Len Bias back and bath salts gone.


Jake: The only water I want to put bath salts in is my bath water, but those are a different kind of bath salts.  The designer drug bath salts is not the same as the home spa product, but they both seem very therapeutic.  Here is a very shocking statistic: crime has been on a decline since bath salts have made their way to the United States.  Sure, I just made that statistic up, but it very well may be true.  There is really no way to find out whether it is.  Drugs are not a problem in this society.  The real problem is, as J.J. Fad declared on their classic album “Supersonic,” nosy people.  People want to stick their noses into everybody’s business and tell them what they can or cannot do.  I say, let us stick our noses into some bath salts and have a moment of relief from our living nightmare of reruns of “Yes, Dear” and Salisbury steak TV Dinners.


Glenn:  You say bath salts are a respite from the living nightmare of “Yes, Dear” but I say they are simply that nightmare in a different, waking form.  Who among us hasn’t dreamt about eating someone’s face, jumping off a tall building or showing up to school in a pair of assless chaps?  These are dreams that become waking nightmares when on bath salts.  I have only ingested them once, in 1988.  Dukakis had just conceded to George Bush Sr. and I was sad.  When I woke up, I was on the roof of the Toronto Skydome and Joe Carter had just hit his infamous Game 6 home run in the 1993 World Series.  In between I committed several crimes including the bombing of the World Trade Center and shoplifting from a Toys R Us.  For whatever reason bath salts, unlike marijuana or meth, make people lose all control of their realities and kill those they love with acts of horrific violence.  Why not kill the ones we love the old fashioned way: by withholding emotional affection?

Jake:  Designer drugs are not a problem in America--no drugs are a problem.  The only reason people are against drugs is because they make you momentarily feel good, which enrages the Christian right.  If they are not allowed to feel the joy of toking on some K2 or getting a late term abortion, then nobody can.  There are too many people in this country who want to tell you what you can put into your body.  If you live in New York and you drink a soda, you go to prison for five years.  In most states you are not even allowed to get married to your same sex because these “people” want to keep you from putting a penis in your body.  Bath Salts are the drug equivalent to a penis.  It feels great inside of you, you keep coming back for more and you may or may not want to bite somebody’s face off after taking it.  If you are against bath salts, then you are against gay marriage.  End of story.


Glenn:  You want a story?  Here’s one: mentally ill homeless man may or may not take bath salts, then eats other homeless man’s face, kills him, jumps off the top of a parking garage, then casts a vote for Ron Paul in the GOP presidential primary.  Popularize bath salts and extrapolate that nightmare scenario all across this great land.  I sympathize with my opponent’s drug position and drug addiction.  I actually think marijuana should be legalized and given as an option to all children struggling with anxiety over state-mandated standardized tests.  But we must beware the bath salts.  Alone among god’s beautiful drugs, it makes you kill for sport or lust or greed or insanity.  It will make you murder your brother to possess your brother’s face.  Let people not ingest it in great numbers, for they will turn your urban utopia into a desert.  Shun bath salts, drive them back into hell for they are the harbinger of death.