While Snurf pills may sound innocently and even fun, the pills have attracted major heat from parents, cops and the media recently.

Snurf pills are a legal high much in the same way as herbal ecstasy is. People take herbal ecstasy because its legal and the effects are usually very mild, perhaps creating brief feelings of euphoria or else giving users a bit of a buzz.

Snurf pills were thought to do much the same, but there is now some concern about what the pills may contain after four Pennsylvania school children were taken to hospital having consumed the pills.

Parents were left baffled as to what the pills even were and even experts have been unable to say decisively what is in them. Some experts have speculated, after looking at the effects users experience when taking the pills, that they could contain a substance called dextromethorphan (DMX), which is the cough suppressant ingredient found in some medicines.

With one in 10 kids from grades 7 to 12 having tried DMX in one form or another, parents have been trying to put a halt to the availability of products such as Snurf pills. The problem is that these products, often touted as herbal highs, are available legally and there are countless numbers of websites selling them.

Other legal highs sold over the Internet and also in stores, such as smoking shops, include salvia, a potent hallucinogenic that gives users an intense out-of-body experience that can either be wholly inspiring or else utterly terrifying.

Salvia, however, has never given parents much cause for concern and it’s never attracted much media attention. Like salvia, other herbal highs have generally been ignored and passed off as harmless. Indeed, most of them, including salvia, don’t do much more than making users feel a bit hot under the collar or else slightly agitated.