TRIPPIN' WITH 'SALLY D'

When people first started asking Ivan Harris if he stocked Salvia
divinorum at his Squirrel Hill smoke shop, he had no idea what they
wanted.

"I hadn't heard of it," said the owner of the Continental Smoke Shop
Ltd. on Murray Avenue. "But I did some research, and this stuff looks
pretty bad."

Salvia divinorum (pronounced SAL-vee-ah div-en-OR-um) is a
recreational drug that people can obtain legally in Pennsylvania and
most other states -- at least for now.

The botanist who sells it on the Internet says it's a harmless way to
meditate and clear the mind, but others say the drug is dangerous and
gives users a potent hallucinogenic high comparable to LSD. The
parents of a 17-year-old Delaware teen are blaming Salvia for their
son's January suicide.

The drug, a perennial herb in the mint family native to parts of the
Sierra Mazateca region of Oaxaca, Mexico, is legal. It can be
purchased on the Internet, and in some states it's found at pharmacies
and grocery stores.

But three states have banned its use and sale, and similar legislation
is pending in five other states. Countries, including Australia and
Denmark, also have banned it, and legislators in Pennsylvania are
reviewing it. The federal Drug Enforcement Administration added it to
its "drugs of concern" list two years ago.

Mike Piecuch, chief counsel to the Pennsylvania House Judiciary
Committee, said several legislators have questioned what should be
done about Salvia.

"It's a psychoactive drug and it's being marketed as a recreational
drug," Piecuch said. "It's very troubling and we are concerned."

Dr. Neil Capretto, medical director of Gateway Rehabilitation Centers
in Pittsburgh, said a few people who sought treatment during the past
year mentioned using Salvia, but none called the herb a "drug of choice."

"It definitely worries me," Capretto said. "People portray it as a
wonderful thing to heighten your awareness and get in touch with your
spiritual senses, but people have had terrifying, nightmarish
experiences with it. It's too unpredictable. It's like playing Russian
roulette."

Though Capretto and local law enforcement officials said they've heard
little about people using Salvia -- sometimes called "Sally D" or
"Maria Pastora" in this area -- its popularity has grown nationwide.

"We have heard more about it in the past few years," said Dave
Ausiello, spokesman for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration in
Washington, D.C. "Any drug marketed heavily on the Internet will gain
in popularity. But just because it's legal and you can buy it online
doesn't mean it's safe. Parents should be very concerned and aware."

The drug has been used for centuries by Mazateca Indians and shamanic
healers as a meditative and healing tool, but was only discovered by
outsiders in the 1960s. It remained relatively obscure until it hit
the Internet in the 1990s.

Thomas Prisinzano, a medical researcher at the University of Iowa who
has studied Salvia, said typing "Salvia" into an Internet search
engine can yield 10,000 hits, most of which are for head shops --
places that sell pipes and tobacco.

"That many hits means that people will start to abuse it," Prisinzano
said.

The drug does have legitimate research purposes. Prisinzano is
studying whether the active ingredient in Salvia -- Salvinorin A --
could be used to create a nonaddictive painkiller. Researchers are
trying to understand how Salvia produces hallucinations in the brain
as a path to better understand Alzheimer's disease and other mental
illnesses, Prisinzano said.

Dr. Bryan Roth, professor of biochemistry, psychiatry and
neurosciences at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, discovered
in 2002 how Salvinorin A travels through the brain. Roth said the drug
has become "a hot area of research right now" and said scientists,
including himself, are studying whether it can be used to combat
depression, chronic pain and kidney problems.

Even so, Roth supports regulation of the sale and use, similar to
restrictions on the purchase of alcohol and tobacco products.

"Some people have incredibly damaging, frightening experiences because
this stuff is just so incapacitating," Roth said. "They take it and
they have no idea where they are or what they're doing, so they could
wander into the street, fall off a building or try to drive a car and
hurt someone. It's troubling."

Roth said one user told him that in her hallucination, she found
herself in a room with several doors and an alternate future behind
each one. She chose a door and saw the death of her child, he said.

Daniel Siebert, a botanist in Malibu, Calif., who has smoked Salvia on
and off for two decades and was the first to identify the Salvinorin A
ingredient, said when he smokes the herb he retreats into a deep
meditative state and replays scenes from his childhood.

Siebert, 45, said he has "visions and images, and things similar to a
natural dreamlike state. It's very comfortable and familiar."

Siebert sells the drug online and runs a clearinghouse information Web
site on Salvia, but said he doesn't want to see "children and
teenagers" using it.

The herb costs as little as $4 a gram for a whole leaf. For crushed
leaves or extract of the herb, prices range from $20 to $60 depending
on the potency.

Users chew the leaf or roll the crushed leaves and smoke them or use a
water pipe, Prisinzano said. One "hit" from a water pipe can yield
hallucinations that last up to an hour, he said, but most users
experience effects for 15 to 30 minutes.

The drug is not addictive, Siebert maintains, but Ausiello said DEA
scientists are studying the herb to see if the evidence supports his
claim. Studies on animals have linked the drug to depression, Ausiello
said, but experts don't know the long-term effects of using Salvia.

"If anything, it has the opposite effect of addiction," Siebert said.
"Many people try it and they hate it and say there's no way they're
doing that again. It is incredibly intense and it's not pleasant to
many people. But I think, overall, that Salvia has been
misrepresented."