LEGAL DRUG UNDER SCRUTINY

State Lawmakers Have An Eye On Salvia, The Hallucinogenic Herb Sold On
The Boardwalk

OCEAN CITY -- Huddled at the counter of a Boardwalk T-shirt shop,
three teenage boys pulled crumpled $10 and $20 bills from their
pockets on the first Friday night of Senior Week, pooling their cash
to buy a few ounces of the only legal hallucinogenic herb available in
Maryland. "Dude, how much you wanna get?" one asked
impatiently.

The scene repeated itself along the Boardwalk in many other stores
that sold the product, advertised by neon displays and hand-drawn
signs: We have Salvia.

Used for hundreds of years by indigenous Mexican tribesmen to induce
visions, the hallucinogenic herb Salvia divinorum has been banned as a
Schedule I drug in 10 states since 2005 -- including Delaware and
Virginia -- with a dozen other states mulling legislation that would
outlaw its use.

Long after its properties were isolated by researchers in the 1950s
and 60s, salvia's popularity skyrocketed since the late 1990s, when it
first became available from online retailers marketing a spiritual
high.

In Maryland, salvia is legal to buy, sell or use, whether in its
natural leaf form or sold as an extract, without age restrictions.
Through the product remains readily available on more Web sites than
ever, some state and local lawmakers have only very recently learned
about salvia. They say they hope to change its legal status.

Linda Busick, a Worcester County commissioner and former Baltimore
City police officer, said she's talked to other elected officials and
law enforcement agencies since February to drum up support on a bill
to ban salvia in Maryland.

"I absolutely feel that Maryland should pass legislation that would
make this a controlled dangerous substance," Busick said. "It's
certainly detrimental to anyone who uses it. I don't know of any
beneficial effects that it has. It's a psychedelic drug, and it's
dangerous, and I'm totally against anybody who sells it."

Busick said she first heard about salvia after seeing signs for it at
the Boardwalk. Later, it again came to her attention after speaking
with a concerned mother who had learned that her high-school child had
tried it.

"It's supposed to be inducing spiritual grow-th," Busick said,
incredulously. "I don't want people to think they're going to use
something soothing, and then die from it. Does anybody know how
hazardous it is? If these merchants were responsible, they wouldn't be
selling it at all."

Boardwalk retailer Isaac Algave, though, believes he is a responsible
salvia merchant. Algave, the owner of Dreamland Fashion, said his
store was the first to sell salvia in Ocean City, starting in 2003.

Algave's store has a clearly posted sign in back that explains salvia
and its effects. He also self-regulates the product, selling salvia
only to those at least 18 years old, just like tobacco. He is the only
salvia retailer on the Boardwalk to do so.

"If you ask me, I think, my opinion, we should sell it to over 21," he
said. "It's like alcohol. Eighteen is too young to try it. I can make
three times more money if I sell to kids under 18, but I don't want
them to lose control. They do something, you never know what's going
to happen."

He believes that it won't be long before local lawmakers decide they
don't want salvia being sold in Ocean City.

"People start learning what it is, we don't know how long it's going
to be on the market," he said. "Soon, I believe. I don't know."

Problematic potency claims

An estimated 1.8 million people age 12 or older have tried Salvia
divinorum in their lifetime, with 750,000 using it in the past year,
according to a February survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration. Those surveyed between ages 18 and 25
said they were three times more likely to try salvia than adults 26
and older, with boys far more likely to use than girls, the study said.

Online videos of people getting high on salvia also are multiplying.
There are now more than 4,700 videos on YouTube featuring hijinks of
young people on brief salvia trips.

Despite its popularity, local law enforcement agencies say they aren't
seeing salvia-related problems.

Sgt. Dave Sharp of the Maryland State Police said his lead narcotics
detective has had "no dealings with it whatsoever."

"This guy's the expert on club drugs, and it's not even come up on the
radar screen," Sharp said.

Daniel Siebert, a botanist who claims to have studied salvia and its
history among Mexican natives for more than 20 years, said there have
been no studies on salvia's toxicity, which could lead to an overdose.
Siebert sells salvia on his Web site, and offers information about its
healing and meditative power.

Still, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration considers salvia "an
illegal street drug alternative" and has warned several Internet
merchants that they could be subject to regulatory action, including
seizure and injunction, according to FDA spokesman Stephen R. King.

It's been reported that some of salvia's effects include intense
dreamlike experiences, reliving past memories and sensations of
motion. Other effects include a loss of motor coordination, dizziness,
loss of consciousness, uncontrolled laughter and profuse sweating.
Some people have overly-intense experiences that come with terror and
panic.

Attempts To Regulate

The Boardwalk store Beach Styles was charging $30 for the least potent
20x; the price escalates incrementally with increased potency --
though the clerk, who did not give her name, said their price also
fluctuates with demand. Lately, she said, demand is high.

Each product comes in one-gram packages. Albert, an 18-year-old
visiting the resort with friends from Pittsburgh, said it's "more than
enough to last us through the night."

Albert and his friends decided to buy a 40x package of salvia for
$50.

"You trip for like, 10 minutes," said Albert, who declined to give his
last name. "It's such an intense trip that you know, like, everything
isn't real. Too much of it really isn't good for you, but there really
isn't a way you can (overdose) on it."

Brett Chidester, 17, of Wilmington tried salvia after buying it
online. According to a CNN report, he chronicled his experiences in a
journal, writing: "Salvia allows us to give up our sense and wander in
the interdimensional time and space ... Also, and this is probably
hard for most to accept, our existence in general is pointless."

It's unclear how much time passed between his last salvia trip and his
suicide. It's also not clear how much salvia he used or what the
dosage was. But on Jan. 23, 2006, he put a charcoal grill inside a
tent in his father's garage, lit the grill and crawled inside the
tent, according to an April 2006 story in USA Today. The boy's mother
lobbied state legislators to ban it, and was successful: Three months
after his death, Delaware made Salvia divinorum a Schedule I substance.

Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Oklahoma already
have added Salvia divinorum to their list of Schedule I substances,
making it illegal to have or sell. Similar bans in Florida, Kansas and
Virginia began July 1.

Three other states have different regulations: Tennessee makes it a
misdemeanor to produce, manufacture or distribute salvia, but it's
fine to grow it for landscaping; Louisiana, the first state to pass a
salvia ban, makes the herb "illegal for human consumption;" In Maine,
salvia is regulated like tobacco -- illegal to buy for those under age
18.

On the federal level, Congressman Joe Baca, D-California, introduced
legislation in 2002 that would have added salvia to the Schedule I
list of federally banned substances. His bill, the Hallucinogen
Control Act of 2002, did not make it to the floor for a vote.

The U.S. Drug Enforce-ment Agency has not listed salvia or its active
ingredient, salvinorin A, under the federal Controlled Substances Act,
though the DEA says salvia can "evoke hallucinogenic effects, which,
in general, are similar to those of other scheduled hallucinogenic
substances."

Attorney General Takes Notice

Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler said after hearing about
salvia for the first time during a very recent trip to Ocean City, he
plans to work on legislation for the upcoming session to address its
legal status.

"I was on the Boardwalk in one of these stores, and I asked the lady
what that was on the counter," he said. "She told me it was salvia and
what it was. And I'm, of course, in my T-shirt and shorts, so I look
just like anybody else. She said, 'If anybody with any power found out
that they were selling this stuff, they would stop letting them sell
it.' So I thought that was interesting. I'd never heard of it before,
and I just found it remarkable that the saleswoman would say that.

"I went back and asked some more questions about it, and found out, as
a matter of fact, a number of states were doing exactly that, putting
restrictions on its sale, either as a controlled dangerous substance
general, or certainly to the minors, in particular. So, it's something
that we're looking into," he said.

Delegate Jim Mathias, D-38B-Worcester, said he believes local health
departments should begin looking into the issue.

"Right now, the best thing to do is to start and do our fact-finding,"
he said. "Have the health departments look at it, have the police
departments look at other states. If there is medicinal value in this,
being able to document what that medicinal value is. We'll take a
rational approach to this."

Jayne Dickerson, owner of Ocean Plaza Tees on the Boardwalk,
appreciates that her fellow retailers are making big profits from
salvia, but said she feels that salvia remains "detrimental to the
community."

"It definitely needs to be outlawed," she said. "We don't need
anything else to hype up the young people on this Boardwalk. I know
they say it's harmless, but I wouldn't want somebody driving a car
under the influence of it. These kids get in fights at the drop of a
hat. We don't need anything else to encourage bad behavior. This
salvia stuff is just bad news."