Greenville County Sheriff's Office: More than 2,000 Units of Bath Salts Seized

The Greenville County Sheriff's Office's Community Services Division swept through more than 100 stores throughout the county on Wednesday to begin immediate enforcement of the countywide ban on cathinones, also known as bath salts.

Public Information Officer Zach Hinton said the department was able to make a significant dent in the presence of the now illegal substance within the county after just 24 hours.

"During this process, over 2,400 individual packets of these synthetic drugs were seized. The majority of the seizures were voluntary forfeitures by individuals who contacted the Sheriff’s Office in an attempt to comply with the ordinance. No civil tickets were issued yesterday," Hinton said. "Within 24 hours of the ordinance going into effect to ban 'bath salts,' the Sheriff’s Office was able to make a significant impact on the effort to remove these substances from circulation. The vast majority of the businesses visited by deputies had already complied with the ordinance."

Greenville is one of . The use of bath salts as well as synthetic marijuana have been blamed on multiple incidents, including the death of an Anderson University basketball player.

South Carolina law does not address bath salts or synthetic marijuana, and the state's Department of Health and Environmental Control isn't permitted to unilaterally ban synthetic marijuana until the federal Drug Enforcement Agency passes a ban on the newest batch of herbal product, the ingredients of which differ from the substances previously banned by the Feds.