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Once called "emerging and dangerous products," bath salts have been topping the headlines in recent months.

Bath salts are synthetic stimulants that have become increasingly popular among recreational drug users in recent years and have nothing to do with the crystals you might sprinkle in a bathtub.

While the effects of the drugs are unknown, health experts call them "dangerous" and can cause rapid heartbeat, high blood pressure, chest pains, agitation, hallucinations, extreme paranoia and delusions.

Now, new research is out that has concluded that bath salts have a similar effect in the brain as cocaine and carry the same risk for abuse and addiction.

 Researchers from the University of North Carolina conducted the study in mice and found that the effects of the bath salt mephedrone on the brain's reward circuits are comparable to similar doses of cocaine.

The study was released online and will be published in the journal Behavioural Brain Research.

Study leader C.J. Malanga said the findings support the idea that mephedrone and other bath salts may have a significant addiction

"The effects of mephedrone on the brain's reward circuits are comparable to similar doses of cocaine," Malanga said. "As expected our research shows that mephedrone likely has significant abuse liability."

On July 9, President Barack Obama signed a law banning bath salts containing mephedrone or another stimulant, MDPV, in the United States.

In an interview with WebMd, Zane Horowitz, an emergency room physician and medical director of the Oregon Poison Center, said ultimately several of the chemicals used to produce bath salts will end up permanently banned.
"But it's easy to say, 'We've banned them.'," Horowitz said. "It's something else to police them and make them go away. Cocaine, heroin, [and] marijuana are illegal, but they are all still out there. Designer drugs like bath salts never really go away. How people make them and how they sell them are the only things that change. People will abuse them until there's a crisis that brings attention to them, then they will disappear and a new drug will come along to fill the void."