by Tiffany Craig / 11 News

khou.com

Posted on January 30, 2011 at 11:04 AM

Updated today at 1:16 PM

GALVESTON COUNTY, Texas—A Galveston man hopes to get a legal cocaine substitute banned after it reportedly led to his son’s suicide.

Joey Baldwin, of Santa Fe, killed himself and blamed a synthetic substance called "bath salts" in his suicide note. He was found by his father after experimenting with the legal product, which is being compared to cocaine.

His father, James Baldwin, still fights back tears as he shares the pain of losing his son.

"If you’re doing the stuff, stop it," said Baldwin. "If you haven’t done it, don’t. That’s all I can say about that bath salts. It’s bad. It killed my boy."

Baldwin says his 31-year old son became paranoid, began hallucinating and eventually killed himself.

"I had signs that I didn’t take advantage of," admits Baldwin. "I could have maybe stopped it. I don’t know."

Joey Baldwin’s older sister, Dana Gassaway, hopes other families are paying attention.

"Just because its legal at this minute does not mean it’s safe," said Gassaway. "It’s not regulated. You don’t know what you’re buying. You don’t know what you’re taking."

11 News first reported about bath salts earlier this month, and Texas State Representative Garnet Coleman was watching.

"I heard about it through your newscast and it disturbed me," said Coleman. 　

Coleman said there’s already been a bill introduced to ban synthetic marijuana, or K2. Coleman is working to get bath salts added to that legislation.

"So that means treating it as an illegal substance, an illegal drug or a street drug," explained Coleman.

Louisiana and Florida have already banned the fake cocaine. If the new bill becomes law, bath salts could be illegal in Texas by May.

Waste of time and money. It'd be more practical to just ban stupid people.

i almost agree... and these types of advertisements for it don't help either...

Cocaine and meth are still illegal and my step brother died from a meth overdose when he was 18.

you can make anything illegal and people will still do it.

never knew about inhaling bath salts to get high until they showed up in the "headline news" of course now they are all the rage and everyone is going to do it...especially if you are campaigning against them...as soon as you publicly say DONT everyone WILL...

the makers of it has a contract with the news agencys... sometimes it seems like it

In that case STOP AREESTING ILLEGALS!!!