LAWMAKERS SEEK TO BAN PLANT CALLED A HALLUCINOGEN

Perfectly legal to sell and use, salvia divinorum is a mystery to
most adults but, according to legislators and others seeking to ban
it, a danger youths know too well.

At a public hearing Tuesday, Suffolk Legis. Lynne Nowick (R-St.
James) played videos she'd found on the Internet of teenagers
ostensibly stoned from salvia, a plant native to Mexico. She called
the effects "dangerous" and called for the county to ban the plant.

Representatives from the Smithtown Central School District, Suffolk
Police and local anti-drug groups implored legislators to outlaw
salvia because, they said, people believe it is safe because it is legal.

"It has a chemical hallucination so powerful that the person using
it may have an amnestic episode," said Krista Whitman of the Quality
Consortium of Suffolk County, which represents drug treatment centers.

But Brian Del Rey, who runs Club 13, a Florida company that sells
salvia online and to retailers on Long Island, said the plant is
neither addictive nor harmful.

"It's a meditational aid," he said. "It's an existential process,
it's not for everybody."

The worst that can happen, he said, is "people seem to giggle a lot."

Eight states and 15 countries have banned salvia, said Daniel
Siebert, who runs the Salvia Divinorum Research and Information
Center from his Malibu, Calif., home. New York's state Senate has
passed bills to ban salvia four straight years, though companion
legislation never made it out of the Assembly.

"I look at this as a gateway drug," said state Sen. John Flanagan
(R-Northport), who sponsored the bill that would impose a $500 fine
for anyone who sold salvia. Nowick's measure would make possessing
or selling salvia a misdemeanor punishable by a $1,000 fine.

Assemb. Daniel O'Donnell (D-Manhattan), who sponsored the Assembly
bill to outlaw salvia, said the plant has no proven medicinal use.

At the Gotham Smoke Shop in Huntington Station, a small purple
container of "Purple Sticky Salvia" sells for $25. Though a clerk
initially said salvia is best smoked, the store manager then told a
reporter it is only to be burned as incense. Neither would give their names.

Del Rey's company used to sell salvia to the Utopia shops in
Hicksville and Centereach. Utopia's owner, Mark Levine, said he
pulled the stuff from his shelves two years ago after a woman called
him to complain that her son swallowed salvia leaves.

Levine said he sold salvia as an incense to customers interested in
Wicca, a type of witchcraft with nature-oriented practices derived
from pre-Christian religions. But in recent years, he said, salvia
became more popular with young people he believed were misusing it.
Still, he said efforts to ban salvia only serve to make it more popular.

"Once they're reading up on it and finding out the legislature is
trying to outlaw it, that immediately increases the lure," Levine said.

Del Rey said there is little reason for local lawmakers to ban
salvia, since it can easily be purchased online.

"To ban it, to take away people's pursuit of happiness, is an
error," he said. "If they want to get a hold of it, they will."