'SALVIA' PLANT SPARKS CONCERN

Authorities Lean Toward Ban on Mexican Leaf

MADISON, WIS. - The clerks at Knuckleheads Tobacco & Gifts, a Madison
smoking accessories shop, aren't allowed to say words such as
marijuana, weed or pot.

Although some customers undoubtedly smoke marijuana and are drawn to
the store's water pipes and rolling papers, any reference to illegal
drugs could get the clerks into trouble with their boss or the police,
who tend to keep a close eye on counterculture establishments.

So it's difficult for them to accurately describe what it's like to
smoke Salvia divinorum, a legal and increasingly popular Mexican plant
that some in Congress want banned.

"It's like coming down off of, you know, but without the really tired
feeling you would normally get," Mike Molkentin said from behind the
Knuckleheads counter. "I was able to relax and get into a different
mind state."

Mr. Molkentin, 20, is a music student at the Madison Media Institute.
He called Salvia divinorum "a positive alternative" to smoking that
illegal plant.

Drug enforcement authorities would like to stop the spread of Salvia
divinorum before it explodes in the United States the way Ecstasy did
before it was criminalized.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration considers it one of its
"drugs and chemicals of concern." And U.S. Rep Joe Baca, D-Calif.,
promises to reintroduce legislation in January that would make it an
illegal drug. Rep. Baca introduced similar legislation in October that
died in committee.

In Dane County, Wis., police officers have begun to see an increased
use of the dark green leaves among teenagers, who either smoke or eat
the leaves.

"The fact is, it's out there and kids are learning about it," said
Detective George Chavez of the Dane County Narcotics and Gang Task
Force.

But because the government does not classify Salvia divinorum as an
illegal substance, there is nothing the task force, or any other
government agency, can do to regulate its use. "There's not a whole
lot of enforcement we can take," Detective Chavez said. "We try to
talk to as many people as we can get to. As long as you've got the
information, we hope you'll make the good decisions."

A plant that grows wild in Oaxaca, a state in southern Mexico, Salvia
divinorum is legal everywhere in the world except for Australia, which
criminalized it in June.

For now, it can be purchased at shops such as Knuckleheads, which
charges $4.95 a gram, and, more prominently, from stores on the
Internet, where a quick Google search reveals dozens of sites
dedicated to providing information in hopes of keeping Salvia legal.

The Madison-based site Pure Land Ethnobotanicals sells the leaves -
$25 buys 14 grams - and the more potent extract, which costs $29 per
gram.

A small amount of Salvia, about half a gram, is enough to produce a
"clearheaded state" that is useful for meditation, said Daniel
Siebert, a California man who has studied the plant for 20 years and,
in the eyes of its devotees, is to Salvia divinorum what Timothy Leary
was to LSD in the 1960s.

Higher doses are said to produce more realistic visions in which one
sees dream-like scenery. Such visions can resemble those induced by
hallucinogens.