Bills proposed to stop illegal drugs
by Mike Hasten - The Town Talk (excerpt)

BATON ROUGE — Synthetic drugs disguised as common household products are popping up on store shelves or on the Internet faster than the Legislature can make them illegal and order their removal, says Sen. Fred Mills, who has legislation to address the problem.

Mills, who owns and runs a pharmacy in Parks, is the author of SB61, which authorizes the secretary of the state Department of Health and Hospitals to investigate any suspected product and if warranted, declare it hazardous and issue a stop order on sales. "The need for this is there are so many designer drugs being developed so quickly," he said.

"If there's a new drug on the shelves and it's causing problems, the secretary has to have strict criteria" to issue a stop order, Mills said. If it proves to be hazardous, the product can be pulled off the shelves of wherever it's being sold and held as contraband.