Gov. Cuomo finally signed legislation Thursday outlawing “bath salts” — the designer drug peddled to club kids as a supposedly pure form of ecstasy called Molly — after The Post revealed it caused overdose deaths at city raves this summer.
“Oh my God, oh, that’s so wonderful — you’re making me cry,” the grandmother of tragic reveler Matthew Rybarczyk, 20, said when told the bill was going forward after languishing in a Senate office for three months.
The bill was passed by the state Senate and Assembly in mid-June, as Rybarczyk lay dying at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital after OD’ing on bath salts at a June 15 rave on Governors Island.
“Now I hope they get them,” Peggy Rybarczyk said of the dealers who sold the bath salts to her grandson, who died in agony from internal bleeding over two weeks.
“I just hope this saves some lives now,” she said.
The law Cuomo signed makes the drug — also known as methylone — a controlled substance under the state penal code.
The measure sponsored by state Sen. Joseph Griffo (R-Rome) was buried in a piled of approved bills in the Senate Majority Office, sources said.
On Thursday, The Post reported that the drug was being ruthlessly marketed to city club kids and that it had been behind ODs at both the Governors Island rave and last month’s Electric Zoo music festival on Randall’s Island.
The governor demanded the bill be sent to his desk when he read about it in The Post, sources said.
“By closing a significant loophole and toughening penalties to curb the sale of these drugs, we can prevent more deaths and further tragedy,” Cuomo said after signing the bill.
“This law is the logical next step following the executive order I signed last year to crack down on these dangerous drugs.”
The law criminalizes possession of bath salts and similar party drugs, and make the sale to a minor or near a school a felony punishable by up to 25 years’ imprisonment.
The city Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed on Thursday that Syracuse University grad Jeffrey Russ, 23 — who overdosed at the Electric Zoo fest — had bath salts in his system when he died.
The drug, which got its name because in its crystalline form it looks like bath salts, was previously on the governor’s radar.
Last summer Cuomo ordered the state Health Department to crack down on the bath salts and other synthetic drugs.
He added them to a list of prohibited drugs, allowing anyone who sold them to be charged with possession of an illicit substance — a charge that carried penalties of only up to $500 in fines and 15 days in jail.
“I applaud The Post for their interest and their vigilance in dealing with this scourge upon our society,” said the bill’s Senate sponsor Griffo.
— additional reporting by Jamie Schram