WHAT ARE THE FEDS SMOKING?

Powerful Drug Still Legal Here

Hunter knows how to mellow out on marijuana. It's something he does
all the time. But the first time he smoked the leaves of a plant
dubbed the "magic mint," he felt as if he'd been slammed into another
dimension.

As drug trips go, this was more terror than pleasure.

"The first time I did it was with a lot of people," recalls Hunter, a
Toronto university student who asked that his real name not be used.
"That was probably a bad idea because I did it and before I even knew
what was happening, I was just like transported into another world.

"Then someone ... tapped my shoulder ... it felt like spikes going
into my body. I felt like I was being stabbed but obviously it was the
salvia."

Salvia divinorum, that is -- a member of the sage family that has been
used for hundreds of years by the Mazatec people of southern Mexico as
a medicinal herb and means of divination.

Today it continues to be used in shamanistic rituals. But it has also
become popular among the university and college crowd in Canada and
the United States.

What may be surprising, given its powerful hallucinogenic effects, is
that cultivating, selling or using Salvia divinorum are all perfectly
legal in Canada and most of the United States.