SALVIA TAKES A STARRING ROLE

SEVERAL weeks after Miley Cyrus turned 18 in November, a video
surfaced showing the pop singer and actor celebrating her adulthood
with uncontrollable laughter, garbled speech and a shapely bong. It
was neither marijuana nor hashish in the pipe, she explained in the
face of public furor, but Salvia divinorum, a powerful hallucinogenic
that adults can legally use in California.

The controversy involving Ms. Cyrus, the former child star from
"Hannah Montana," has led to new interest in this psychoactive
Mexican herb. Google searches for "salvia" in the United States
spiked 600 percent in the days that followed, Twitter went aflutter,
and "Saturday Night Live" spoofed the incident last weekend.

However inadvertent, salvia now has a celebrity endorsement. Since
the video was leaked, Black Myst Smoke Shop, a store in Los Angeles
that sells the drug by the gram for $10 to $60, has seen a surge in business.

"We used to sell one or two a day," said Steve Kinsman, an employee
of the shop. "Now it's 10 or 15. We'll get a bunch of young people
coming in, then a creepy 40-year-old who's obviously a Miley fan."

Once the domain of Mazatec shamans in Oaxaca, Mexico, Salvia
divinorum -- a name that means "divining sage" -- has spent the last
decade crawling from stoner novelty to the fringes of the mainstream.
Evidence of its popularity is online: a YouTube search for "salvia"
reveals thousands of clips showing young people cackling, moaning and
tripping out of their gourds under the herb's influence.

"After two or three hits, I spat everywhere and was coughing and
laughing and drooling," said Lee, a 22-year-old from Brooklyn who
tried the drug while attending a university in upstate New York, and
who requested that only his first name be used for anonymity. "I
started yelling random words, then my legs gave out, and I dropped to
the floor."

While the intense, 15-minute highs are often described as
otherworldly, it's not an experience that everyone is eager to
repeat, or try. Several states have banned the herb because of its
psychoactive effects; several more have set limits on possession or
consumption. Meanwhile, the Drug Enforcement Administration deems it
a "drug of concern" rather than a controlled substance.

"Just because something is not controlled under federal law doesn't
mean it's wise to ingest or smoke," said Rusty Payne, a spokesman for
the drug administration. "It does have hallucinogenic effects, and
that's never good."

The attention given to salvia has provided ammunition for those who
insist salvia is a public menace.

"In a weird way, the Miley Cyrus thing has helped to highlight some
of the issues," said State Senator John J. Flanagan, Republican of
Long Island. He plans to reintroduce a bill next year to render
salvia illegal in New York State.

Although salvia has been sold in places like head shops for years,
levels of salvia use appear static. A recent Monitoring the Future
survey by the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported a slight dip
to 5.5 percent in usage from 2009 to this year among high school
seniors. "It doesn't appear to be a problem," said Dr. Lloyd D.
Johnston, a professor at the University of Michigan who worked on the study.

A rush to regulate may also stifle medical opportunity, some
researchers say. The herb's active component, a complex molecule
called salvinorin A that affects the brain's Kappa receptors, could
be useful in understanding Alzheimer's disease, cocaine addiction and
chronic pain. "We stumbled across a gem," said Dr. Matthew W.
Johnson, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine who has studied salvia. He believes it is nonaddictive and
free of neurotoxicity. "It could be that this is our first glimpse
into a whole therapeutic pathway."

Whether salvia is characterized as a medical wonder or a vicious
hell-weed that will transform the nation's youth into chortling
zombies, it seems unlikely Ms. Cyrus will be a catalyst for nuanced
conversation.

Despite the hype, salvia's new popularity may be as short-lived as a
puff of smoke. Shortly after the scandal erupted, one Web site began
offering T-shirts with a picture of Ms. Cyrus and the phrase,
"Salvia: all the cool kids are doing it!" According to the site's
owner, at press time the company had yet to sell a single shirt.