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Former chemistry professor arrested for leaking "bath salts" drug recipe

Xinhua, May 19, 2015 Adjust font size:

Police in northwest China's Shaanxi Province have arrested 17 people for producing a psychoactive drug that has been linked to cannibalism, the local public security bureau announced Tuesday.

Police in Sanyuan County arrested a man surnamed Lu for helping provide the recipe for methcathinone, the drug nicknamed "bath salts" which drove a man to eat another's flesh in the U.S..

Lu was a former chemistry professor at a university in Xi'an.

They also seized 128 kilograms of the drug, 2,000 liters of semi-finished product and more than five million yuan (806,000 U.S. dollars).

The psychoactive drug is quite cheap and highly addictive, and has been known to cause users to turn violent.

According to an investigation, Lu provided the recipe for methcathinone in May 2013.

A suspect surnamed Chen, who was in charge of drug production, was the head of a chemical plant in east China's Jiangsu Province.

Chen was once imprisoned for more than one year for producing a different drug, police added.

The drug lab was busted in May 2014 with three suspects arrested at the scene. The rest of the gang was seized within six months, police said. Endi