The latest 'trendy' way to get high

This is sad to hear. What a world.

We now cannot buy Sudafed without signing for it, so bath salts will be added to the list. When will it end? Maybe not till the Lord comes. When will that be? HOPEFULLY SOON!

If you go down that road too far, you are basically saying all kids (and it sounds like visiting kids not your own as well) have to be supervised at every moment with everything they find in the house. My kids could easily get to the gas cans to cause arson, almost all the household chemicals, all of which might have uses that they weren't intended for, etc., etc.

I think the solution is to teach the kids well, and hold them responsible for their own actions, not to have stiffer penalties for parents who do not supervise, or not allowing parents to buy things like bath salts. If a kid decides to take a loose 2x4 and kill someone with it, the parent might be responsible for being a poor teacher of his kids, but not, in my opinion, for leaving a stray 2x4 in reach of the kids. The child will have to bear his own punishment.

This is exactly why, in my view, control of substances as having dangerous properties will never work, at least not beyond a short period of time, and trying to control particular uses will be even harder. Sure, kids can't easily buy drugs, alcohol, guns, etc., but they could easily get into the parents' medical or household chemical cabinets and do all sorts of things with what's in there. Making a particular set of drugs illegal in this country has just caused people to find alternatives, and they will keep doing so, even after we can no longer buy bath salts or Sudafed.

Well, I might have misread it a bit, but it's not illegal for adults to have alcohol, so unless they keep it in a safe, the kids have access to it. And what I was referring to was the generic "illegal substances" you mentioned -- if bath salts are made illegal to buy, does that mean the remaining stock needs to be locked up too, or the parents are responsible? This is the kind of thing that worries me. It wouldn't be that hard for the law to go through most peoples' homes and find *something* that they haven't controlled access to and then hold them responsible for a kid getting hold of it. Sleeping pills, leftover Vicodin or other opioid-type drugs, narcotic cough syrup, bottles of model glue, cars, gasoline, power tools, hammers, I could go on and on -- the typical household will have plenty of things like this around. They can't be all locked up, and as I was trying to say, the things that aren't currently controlled can be at least as dangerous as those that are.

But of course, kids could use those things to cause as much or more damage than they can with bath salts. My point is that anything can be abused, and if done enough, some people would start to think it should be illegal or strictly controlled. The only reason bath salts are taking the blame now is that there was a discovery that they are easy to use and abuse in place of something harder to get, and word is getting around. But kids have done a lot of stupid things and gotten themselves injured or killed before. This one is just the current news fad. As soon as they are impossible to get, something else will pop up in its place.

As long as simply having something dangerous around the house (that isn't secured like Fort Knox) isn't considered "negligence," then I would generally agree. However, if a parent actually encourages their kids to drink or misuse bath salts that's a big difference from having those substances around the house.

There is (or should be) a qualitative difference between parents buying alcohol for their underage kids and having it in a cabinet where the kids can find it. Kids do a lot of stupid stuff, and if they really want to, they can find a way to keep doing so, even if you take a lot of precautions. Holding parents responsible only makes sense with gross, intentional negligence, and before I would be in favor of more laws holding parents responsible, there would have to be many safeguards in place to distinguish between encouragement of wrongdoing, and simply having something available that can be used for wrongdoing.

I don't have any good solutions to this problem other than proper child training, which of course, many parents will not do, but making more and more substances illegal will not make even a noticeable dent in preventing kids from harming selves by abusing something.

I generally agree with you here, again as long as it can truly be shown that the parents encouraged that behavior.

Those are abused any time they are ingested in any fashion, or maybe I should say that if we use them we are abusing ourselves, but that's just my point of view. My wife and kids love them. I guess they got an addiction to them at some point, and my 12-step program is not helping. "Hi, I'm a Barnhart and I like Brussels sprouts ..." I think those were the first plant Adam encountered after being thrown out of the garden -- they probably didn't even exist until after the fall.

And on this, I couldn't agree more.