Lincoln County emergency personnel don’t know when the bath salts epidemic might reach Lincoln County, but when it does, they’ll be ready, thanks to Mark Bridgham.
Lincoln County Sheriff’s Deputy Bridgham, the school resource officer at Lincoln Academy, is also a drug recognition expert.
Almost 200 emergency workers have attended his bath salts awareness briefings.
He has briefed the faculty and staff of Boothbay Region High School, Lincoln Academy and Medomak Valley High School and will add Wiscasset High School to the list next week.
Bridgham has also scheduled his first briefing outside Lincoln County, at Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta.
Bath salts, a relatively new synthetic drug linked to violent episodes across the state, has yet to have a significant impact in Lincoln County, despite isolated incidents in Boothbay Harbor and Waldoboro.
The term “bath salts” refers to several chemical compounds, such as methylenedioxymethcathinone, with similar effects. Retailers in Maine and elsewhere used to sell versions of the drug in packets bearing innocuous names like “bath salts” or “plant food.” The drug is now illegal, but the misleading moniker stuck.
Bath salts abuse has reached epidemic levels in Bangor, where police average six contacts with users per day, as well as Knox County, Lincoln County’s neighbor to the east.
“They’re under siege,” Bridgham said.
“It’s like someone put a little bowl over Lincoln County,” Bridgham said, but “it’s only a matter of time” before local agencies will have to confront the problem.
“We’re going to feel its effects eventually and getting these people ready as best we can by getting them to understand the basics of what bath salts are all about will at least give us some foothold in dealing with bath salts issues,” Bridgham said.
Bridgham teaches emergency personnel the symptoms of bath salts use. The long list includes anxiety, delirium, dilated pupils, emotional cycles, euphoria, exaggerated reflexes, fits, general restlessness, hyperthermia, memory issues, nasal redness, paranoia, rage, severe agitation, talkativeness and tremors, as well as the presence of hypodermic needles and the marks they leave on users’ arms.
Bridgham said most bath salts users were already intravenous drug users before the introduction of the drug. Bath salts cost less than heroin and the high lasts longer, explaining the appeal to heroin users. A half-gram, at $40-$50, lasts as long as 48-72 hours.
“The average user is a veteran IV user between the ages of about 29-35,” Bridgham said. “Are we seeing 14-15-year-olds running around with needles hanging out of their arms? No.”
Bridgham didn’t rule out the possibility of the drug, which users also smoke or snort, eventually finding its way into high schools.
Whenever the drug arrives, and whoever the user, Bridgham wants to prepare the people on the front line, including himself, for what he sees as the inevitable.
“For most of us in law enforcement, it’s usually a hands-on event,” Bridgham said. “It may be necessary for us to restrain them – to protect themselves and to protect others.”
The episodes of extreme violence and other unpredictable behavior by people under the influence of bath salts are well documented.
Last July, a naked, crying 24-year-old Clinton woman apparently under the influence of the drug climbed down a sheer cliff high above the Kennebec River in Waterville and into a sewer pipe. Waterville Fire Department rescue personnel rappelled down the cliff to rescue her.
In late October, a 19-year-old Rockland man and bath salts user caused over $30,000 of damage to a special care unit at Pen Bay Medical Center during an unaccountable violent rage at least two days after last using the drug.
A month ago, a law enforcement officer tasered a 21-year-old Washington man six times, pepper-sprayed him twice and kneed him in the gut before finally arresting him with the assistance of additional officers.
The Washington man also allegedly used his infant child as a shield before the officer and the man’s father managed to subdue the man, diffuse the situation and release the child.
Users who become violent “have exceptional strength and they don’t get fatigued,” Bridgham said.
Bridgham coaches the people who attend his 45-minute briefings to take a “calm, slow and low” approach and to avoid threats of arrest and instead offer to transport subjects to “a safe place.”
Bridgham, 54, of Jefferson, started his law enforcement career in the U.S. Air Force. After a 20-year military career, he worked for the Augusta Police Dept. as a patrol officer and detective in the department’s juvenile division.
Bridgham left Augusta for the Lincoln Academy/LCSO job in July 2004.
Four years later, Bridgham trained for and received his certification as a drug recognition expert from the Maine Criminal Justice Academy.
“I have a passion for impaired driving,” Bridgham said, explaining his motivation for training as a drug recognition expert. “I want those people off the road. Impaired driving costs lives.”
Local law enforcement officers often call on Bridgham when a driver shows signs of obvious impairment but passes a breath test, which measures blood alcohol content.
Bridgham evaluates the subject, measuring heart rate and temperature and running the individual through a series of tests. He determines what drug category the individual is under the influence of and collects a urine sample. For the last 34 tests he’s conducted, the results of the urinalysis have backed his determination.
Bridgham is also a certified hostage negotiator and a member of the county’s crisis intervention team. He prides himself on his communication skills. “I firmly believe that communication is the most powerful tool a police officer has,” he said.
He teaches Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) to fifth graders at Jefferson Village School and works with the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
Away from law enforcement, Bridgham coaches junior varsity baseball at Lincoln Academy and officiates NCAA Division III basketball games.
His latest challenge, the bath salts education campaign, is just another effort to protect the people he works with – those in uniform as well as the community at large.
“I felt it was extremely important that they get an idea of what it is we’re going to be facing when it arrives,” Bridgham said. “It’s really powerful stuff.”
