FULTON, Miss. – When Neil Brown got high on bath salts, he took his skinning knife and slit his face and stomach repeatedly. Brown survived, but authorities say others haven’t been so lucky after snorting, injecting or smoking powders sold legally with innocuous-sounding names such as Ivory Snow, Red Dove and Vanilla Sky.

Some say the effects of the powders are as powerful as abusing methamphetamine. Increasingly, law enforcement agents and poison control centers say the bath salts with complex chemical names are an emerging menace in several U.S. states where authorities talk of banning their sale.

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Mississippi Sen. Eric Powell asks a question about the chemicals that make up bath salts, which have been found to cause hallucinations, paranoia and suicidal thoughts, during a committee meeting at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss. The Associated Press

Mississippi jail inmate Neil Brown describes self-inflicted injuries he incurred while having hallucinations after ingesting a bath salt powder that is being sold at convenience stores and over the Internet. The Associated Press

From the Deep South to California, emergency calls are being reported over exposure to the stimulants the powders often contain: mephedrone and methylenedioxypyrovalerone, also known as MDPV.

Sold under names such as Ivory Wave, Bliss, White Lightning and Hurricane Charlie, the chemicals can cause hallucinations, paranoia, rapid heart rates and suicidal thoughts, authorities say.

The chemicals are in bath salts and even plant foods that are sold legally at convenience stores and on the Internet. However, they aren’t necessarily being used for the purposes on the label.

Mississippi lawmakers last week began considering a proposal to ban the sale of the powders, and a similar step is being sought in Kentucky. In Louisiana, the bath salts were outlawed by an emergency order after the state’s poison center received more than 125 calls in the last three months of 2010 involving exposure to the chemicals.

In Brown’s case, he said he had tried every drug from heroin to crack and was so shaken by terrifying hallucinations from the bath salts that he wrote to one Mississippi paper urging people to stay away from them.

“I couldn’t tell you why I did it,” Brown said, pointing to his scars. “The psychological effects are still there.”

• Sheriff’s authorities in one Mississippi county say they believe one woman overdosed on bath salts there. Authorities are investigating whether a man charged with capital murder in the December death of a Tippah County, Miss., sheriff’s deputy was under the influence of the bath salts.

• In southern Louisiana, the family of a 21-year-old man says he cut his throat and ended his life with a gunshot.

Dr. Mark Ryan, director of Louisiana’s poison control center, said he thinks state bans on the chemicals can be effective. He said calls about the salts have dropped sharply since Louisiana banned their sale in January.

Ryan said at least 25 states have received calls about exposure, including Nevada and California. He said Louisiana leads with the greatest number of cases at 165, or 48 percent of the U.S. total, followed by Florida with at least 38 calls to its poison center.

• Dr. Rick Gellar, medical director for the California Poison Control System, said the first call about the substances came in Oct. 5, and a handful of calls have followed since. But he warned: “The only way this won’t become a problem in California is if federal regulatory agencies get ahead of the curve. This is a brand new thing.”

• In the Midwest, the Missouri Poison Center at Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center received at least 12 calls in the first two weeks of January about teenagers and young adults abusing such chemicals, said Julie Weber, the center’s director. The center received eight calls about the powders all of last year.

Dr. Richard Sanders, a general practitioner working in Covington, La., said his son, Dickie, snorted some of the bath salts and endured three days of intermittent delirium. Dickie Sanders missed major arteries when he cut his throat. As he continued to have visions, his physician father tried to calm him. But the elder Sanders said that as he slept, his son went into another room and shot himself.

“If you could see the contortions on his face. It just made him crazy,” Sanders said. He added that the coroner’s office confirmed the chemicals were detected in his son’s blood and urine.

Sanders warns that the bath salts are far more dangerous than some of their names imply.

“I think everybody is taking this extremely lightly. As much as we outlawed it in Louisiana, all these kids cross over to Mississippi and buy whatever they want,” he said.

A small packet of the chemicals typically costs as little as $20.

In northern Mississippi’s Itawamba County, Sheriff Chris Dickinson said his office has handled about 30 encounters with bath salt users in the past two months alone. He said the problem grew last year in his rural area after a Mississippi law began restricting the sale of pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in making methamphetamine.

Dickinson said most of the bath salt users there have been meth addicts and can be dangerous when using them.

“We had a deputy injured a week ago. They were fighting with a guy who thought they were two devils. That’s what makes this drug so dangerous,” he said.

But Dickinson said the chemicals are legal for now, leaving him no choice but to slap users with a charge of disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor.

Kentucky state lawmaker John Tilley said he’s moving to block the drug’s sale there, preparing a bill for consideration when his legislature convenes shortly. Angry that the powders can be bought legally, he said: “If my 12-year-old can go in a store and buy it, that concerns me.”

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