Prior to scheduling, GHB was sold in health food stores as a muscle-stimulating growth hormone, sleep aid and aphrodisiac. While fairly new to Minnesota, Last year, large seizures of GBL-containing liquids, purchased over the Internet, were made in Washington, Dakota, and Stearns Counties. BD currently is uncontrolled, and therefore the sale of BD, even as a drug of abuse, is not a crime. This legislation would allow stricter control of GHB and GBL as Schedule I controlled substances. Sale of GBL and BD for industrial use would be unaffected.
Dealers believe that the drug they are selling is, in fact, methamphetamine.
Buyers believe the same thing, because the two drugs are sold for the same price, look alike, and have almost identical physiological effects. They also are equally dangerous to manufacture. The penalties for sale and possession of a given amount of amphetamine, however, are much less severe than the penalties for sale and possession of methamphetamine. At a recently drug case tried by the attorney general's office in Douglas County, a dealer sold over 10 grams of what he believed was methamphetamine. This legislation would place amphetamine in the same category as methamphetamine with respect to penalties and remedy the disportionality of the two nearly identical street drugs.