TALLAHASSEE -- The face-eating attack on a homeless man in Miami last month has brought renewed attention to the state’s and law enforcement’s increasingly difficult efforts to stay one step ahead of an industry that is ready to profit from sales of legal but harmful synthetic drugs.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has worked to outlaw manmade narcotic “bath salts” since shortly after she took office, said she is ready to add more chemicals to the list of banned substances, including “Spice” and other synthetic drugs sold at gas stations and specialty shops. Her spokeswoman said Bondi is trying to “remain vigilant.”

But law enforcement officials, who are seeing a spike in uncharacteristically violent behavior associated with users of synthetic drugs, worry that with every banned chemical added to the list, manufacturers of the compounds concoct a new combination that gets around the ban.

They are calling for Bondi, state legislators and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to make it harder for manufacturers to circumvent existing bans and keep new variations of the dangerous drugs from store shelves. Currently, every new compound has to be identified before it is outlawed, and law enforcement officials say it’s time for a new system.

“We could have 10,000 different substances banned before long, as the chemists in China or wherever they are keep modifying them,” said Tommy Ford, a major in the Bay County Sheriff’s Office who first brought the bath salts issue to Bondi’s attention in 2011.

(Toxicology reports are not yet available to show whether Rudy Eugene, the MacArthur Causeway attacker shot dead by police May 26, used so-called bath salts or any other drugs, though some police officers have speculated that he may have been under their influence when he attacked Ronald Poppo, a 65-year-old homeless man who is still clinging to life.)

Ford said if new laws address the chemistry of compounds or the process in which they are created, that could make it harder for manufacturers to create new, legal substances.

Cynthia Lewis-Younger, medical director of the Florida Poison Information Center in Tampa, said manufacturers are finding ways to keep synthetic drugs on shelves by replacing banned compounds with ones that aren’t illegal.

“They try and get around the law,” she said.

Bath salts and other synthetic drugs are sold under non-threatening brand names like Ivory Wave, Vanilla Sky or Pixie Dust, often in packages marked “not for human consumption.” Side affects can include violent hallucinations, combativeness, physical altercations and suicide attempts.

The synthetic drug market also includes substances created to mimic the effects of marijuana, often in products labeled as incense. Last week, the family of a Pasco County teenager who was hospitalized after smoking Spice, a synthetic marijuana product, protested outside the gas station where he bought it.

Bay County began looking into “bath salts” last year and found shops were legally selling the substance that caused them so much concern.

Anticipating an influx of 100,000 spring breakers with a lot of cash and few inhibitions, Sheriff Frank McKeithen wrote a letter to Bondi asking for help.

“Everybody was starting to see the problem,” Ford said.