FINALLY, A CHANCE FOR A CHOICE

The federal government is moving towards banning the sale of salvia, a
mostly decorative plant that has hallucinogenic properties when it is
smoked in one big hit.

The public debate is focused on whether the government is taking too
much control over people's lives, whether the government is wasting
time and money on something that isn't as important as, say, health
care and deficits, and whether the government is turning what should
be a social concern into a legal problem.

But any debate about the non-medical use of drugs always carries a
perplexing twist because many of the people who join the debate, and
almost all the people who will be responsible for enforcing the ban on
salvia, may never have tried the drug themselves, although it's
ludicrous to claim that people who haven't tried a drug should not be
allowed to contribute to the debate.

Proponents of legalizing marijuana have always maintained that
politicians and bureaucrats ignore the comparatively more harmful
effects that alcohol has on society, while they continue to
criminalize marijuana and other drugs. Even marijuana addicts harm
mostly just themselves, while the domestic violence, economic loss
caused by hangovers and damage to the livers of the land associated
with alcoholism are far more costly, but the legal discrepancy continues.

Alcohol consumption is a privilege, not a right, and the non-medical
use of drugs is rarely a privilege under Canadian law. Nonetheless,
Canadians are now faced with the question of whether a drug that most
have never even heard of, let alone experienced, should be banned.

I have never been shy about admitting that I have tried pretty much
every drug at one time or another in my lifetime. It's just my nature.
I have reached a point where drugs, even alcohol, have become a thing
of the past, but I can comment on salvia, even though hallucinogens
are in my very distant past.

Some young friends of mine, knowing that I had experimented with drugs
such as LSD, mescaline and marijuana during my high school days,
introduced me to salvia about three years ago. They wanted to go
across the country and film people on salvia and needed an experienced
executive producer. I agreed with the notion I should be fully aware
of all content that would be going into this production (and
carelessly cocky, bragged on about how "this new crap can't compare to
the wild trips we used to go on in the '60s.")

Unfortunately, it had been so long since I coped with the powerful
hallucinogenic properties of psychedelic drugs that I had forgotten
coping mechanisms that most of us had developed to "bring ourselves
down" before we ended up on some window ledge.

I was completely at the mercy of this new, unknown drug. I had taken a
full dose, a concentrated hit -- all I could hold in my lungs from a
bong. Within 30 seconds, I had to sit down. And for about half an hour
(I was told later), my young friends disappeared from the room and I
was stripped of all reality.

I did not exist. My entire life had been just a dream that was now
over. One of my young friends became me when I was 10 years old. One
picture hanging on the wall became a row of 100 pictures in a gallery.
You get the picture.

Eventually, I came down, but I have never had a more powerful
psychedelic experience. And that includes acid trips lasting eight
hours ("peaking" for two) that I fought through as a teenager.

Salvia was a horrific, most unpleasant experience, which I have no
desire to repeat. This is how 90 per cent of the people who try salvia
feel, according to the scant statistics available.

Just like we found with LSD and peyote and other hallucinogens, there
is little use for these drugs except by shamans who somehow manage to
use them for visions. During the 1960s, they were supposed to provide
the benefits of "mind-expanding" experiences, but I can't connect my
own experiments with my present state of mind (open, closed or whatever).

But since we know we can get high on salvia, we want to ban it. The
question remains: Is this the right thing to do?

We have a rare opportunity, one that even the 1960s generation has
never had. Marijuana, LSD and heroin were either legal or illegal by
the time we had to make our choice about them.

Do we finally now get the chance to tell government it has no right to
tell us what we can or cannot put into our own bodies?

Some people claim we will encourage the use of salvia by making it
illegal (and somehow more mysterious and exciting). Will we take the
profits from the sale of salvia from taxpaying gardening and head
shops and turn control of it over to uncontrollable gangs?

The major debate is always about taking a social problem and turning
it into a criminal one. Do we really want to jail kids who are
experimenting, trying new challenges, finding out for themselves, like
all kids do?

I found out the hard way. But I won't try salvia again.

Just like I don't do acid or even marijuana.

There are no easy answers, but I hope I have helped the people who
have never experienced salvia understand the issue a bit better.