MEET THE MOST POTENT NATURAL HALLUCINOGEN - AND IT'S LEGAL

Boule: Effects of drug can be all over the board

It was bad enough when Sharon's 17-year-old son was arrested for
possession of dexadrine. Sharon was devastated. "I have zero - zero -
tolerance for drugs," she says.

It was worse when she went on a drug hunt soon after and found a clear
plastic bag with dried leaves inside, in her son's car.

"My first thought was, this is dope. But it didn't smell like
marijuana and didn't look like marijuana." Then Sharon saw the label
on the front of the bag. Since when were drugs being sold with fancy
packaging, she wondered?

Since now. In the bag was Salvia divinorum, an herb native to Mexico
that contains the most powerful natural hallucinogen known on Earth.

(Sharon, who lives in Milwaukie, has asked that her last name not be
used. "My son has enough problems right now," she says.)

After she found the bag of herbs, Sharon spent days online researching
the drug and could not believe what she learned: Salvia divinorum is
growing in popularity among young people, who are spreading the word
through e-mail chains and buying it in head shops and on the Web.
(Last week three plants were for sale on eBay.) Users smoke or chew
the leaves and go on trips that are even more intense than LSD
experiences.

But the worst was when Sharon got to the Drug Enforcement
Administration Web site. "Not listed in the Controlled Substances
Act," it said.

The drug is legal.

"I'd never even heard of it," Sharon says. She called her son's high
school counselor, "and he didn't know about it. He said they'd just
had a drug seminar class, and this did not come up. The principal
didn't know about it, either.

"My concern is people need to be aware of this drug, how easily
accessible it is, how cheap it is. It was $30 for a half-ounce, which
is a full bag. And my son bought it at a store in downtown Portland."

Salvia divinorum is not a new drug to the Mazatec Indians who live in
the mountains of northern Oaxaca, Mexico. For centuries their shamans
have used hallucinogens in religious and healing ceremonies. Outsiders
heard rumors of the powerful effects in the 1960s, and soon mescaline
and psilocybin mushrooms were being used around the world.

But Salvia divinorum is a wild ride. This is not a drug that simply
makes people play Beatles' records backward. It induces powerful
hallucinations that sometimes are terrifying. Use too much, says
Daniel Siebert, a California ethnobotanist who grows and sells the
drug, and the effect can be close to general anesthesia. Users can
have out-of-body experiences, or fits of wild laughter, or nausea.

The unpredictable, sometimes extreme effects of the drug may have kept
it from becoming popular when other hallucinogens burst on the scene
in the 1960s. But now it's catching on.

Teen Web sites are full of chatter about what the kids call "salvia."
Music magazines have run articles.

As an herb that can be smoked or chewed, the law says it can't be sold
to anyone under 18. But Internet sale sites can't check ID. One site
even offers "free cute cigarette lighters" with purchase.

"Trust me," says Sharon, "most high school kids know about
it."

But it's still under the radar of the mainstream adult
world.

And it's not just local school counselors, principals and parents who
are clueless. The state Office of Drug and Alcohol Abuse hadn't heard
of it last week. The Office of Mental Health and Addiction Services
had heard of it but had little information. The Helpline, a 24-hour
confidential drug-and-alcohol information and treatment referral hot
line based in Portland, had not fielded any calls on Salvia divinorum.
The Portland Partnership has no data on its use. Even the Partnership
for a Drugfree America has no mention of the drug on its Web site.

"Kids are always four steps ahead, when a new drug comes along," says
Wendy Hausotter, with the Office of Mental Health and Addiction
Services in Salem. "Then as they develop problems with it, they show
up in treatment centers, emergency rooms, doctors' offices. The police
also are early detectors. Eventually it percolates up so we in the
helping professions start to notice it."

"Typically the way we find out something is a problem," says David
Westbrook, who runs the Helpline, "is when they figure out how many
people per thousand in treatment, are in treatment for that particular
drug."

But they know about Salvia divinorum on the street. "The same thing
was true a year ago with Oxycontin," says Chris Curtis, of the Oregon
Partnership. "It was a new thing; they called it 'Hillbilly Heroin.' A
couple pharmacies got held up so people could get the meds. . . .
There's a buzz around it. Young people are curious about it, and bad
people want to begin trafficking in it."

If the drug is so unsafe that even its promoters advise users always
to have a sober companion with them, why is it legal? Some would say
it's because there have been no reported deaths or addiction problems
to date.

In fact, it hasn't been scientifically established whether the drug is
addictive or not.

But there are known dangers. Users could pass out driving or walk
through windows. "And it apparently can trigger toxic psychosis in
people," says David Westbrook, "especially in people with a
pre-existing disorder," or a family disposition toward
schizophrenia.

The truth is, scientists have no idea how Salvinorin A, the chemical
compound that triggers the hallucinations, works. Unlike other
controlled drugs, it doesn't attach itself to known neurotransmitters
like seratonin or dopamine. So it doesn't fall into the category of
anything outlawed in the Controlled Substances Act.

Australia outlawed its use this year. It's the first country in the
world to do so. Here in the United States, a DEA spokeswoman recently
said the agency was "looking at" Salvia divinorum; the FDA has no
studies under way.

Sharon doesn't need any scientific studies. "I'm old enough to
remember when LSD was legal, because there was not enough info and it
was a brand new drug," she says. "Just because it's not illegal
doesn't mean it's not destructive or wrong. It's a mind-altering drug."

Sharon says kids who are on probation for drug use, who are given
urinalysis tests, "are getting loaded on salvia, because there's no
marker for it on the tests. It doesn't show up."

Sharon wants parents to know if their children are smoking or chewing
something that looks like an herb, it could be Salvia divinorum.
"Somebody needs to get this out to adults. They need to know about
this now," she says. "Trust me -- most of the high school kids know
about it.

"Their parents need to know there's a new drug in town."