legal in Colorado.
all the head shops are selling it. even the head shops that pretend they aren't head shops. and just sell Ugg boots and Reef sandals.
http://coloradodaily.com/articles/2008/03/13/news/c_u_and_boulder/news1.txt
Meet the ‘new dope'
By EVAN SANDSMARK Colorado Daily Staff
Thursday, March 13, 2008 10:39 PM MDT
A lot of people in Boulder like to smoke marijuana. More precisely, 10.3 percent of Boulder's population over the age of 12 admitted to using marijuana in the last month, according to a report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in August of 2005. That places Boulder second on the list of areas with the highest rates of past-month marijuana use in the nation.
Unfortunately for this sizable portion of smokers, marijuana is illegal. However, Salvia divinorum, a hallucinogenic herb colloquially known as the “Magic Mint” and “Sally-D,” is legal, despite the overwhelmingly intense effects of the drug.
“It was the most intense trip I've ever had, definitely, by far, like more intense than acid,” said one CU student who declined to provide his name because of the stigma attached to drug use.
“You're not in the same place - your eyesight is not what you're actually seeing. It's all like a fantasy. I felt like I was in the rainbow road level on Mario Cart, and that I was being tied down by zippers to basically the world,” the student said. “It will take you anywhere.”
Native to Mexico and still grown there, Salvia divinorum is a hallucinogen that gives users the sensation of merging with inanimate objects, induces out-of-body experiences of traveling through space and time, and inhibits motor skills, among other strange reported effects.
“About 30 seconds after smoking it - when I blew out the smoke - I completely lost touch with reality. I was sitting on the couch and it just kind of felt like my head fell back. For some reason I was laughing uncontrollably. I don't know, everything seemed completely funny. I found random conundrums with humans in my head and I was just laughing,” explained John, a high school student who plans to attend CU-Boulder next fall.
Salvia divinorum is generally smoked using water pipes because the smoke is “harsh,” but it can also be chewed or made into a tea. Unlike other hallucinogens such as LSD and psilocybin mushrooms, the effects of salvia do not last long, with the strong hallucinogenic effects wearing off after only 5-15 minutes, and the lingering high lasting another 15-20 minutes, roughly.
According to Bonnie Dahl, owner of the popular head shop The Fitter, salvia sales are some what inconsistent.
“It's popular Š but it seems to go in spurts,” she said. “A few years ago, once it hit national news, we were getting so many requests. And then we finally got it, and it was huge.”
In fact, it was so popular that a whole range of people came and bought salvia when it first garnered attention, not all of which were the usual suspects.
“We had people who wouldn't smoke pot who would come and buy it because it was legal - they felt safe,” she said, “but it's a false sense of safe.”
“It's a flawed way of thinking,” she continued, “they think, ‘Oh, if it's legal then you're not going to feel much, it's not going to be that big of a deal,' but it's not that way with Salvia.”
Indeed, many find of the effects of saliva unfavorable and far too intense.
Brian, another CU student, who declined to provide his full name, never enjoyed the effects of saliva.
“The whole sensation made me incredibly uncomfortable,” he said, referring to the effect he experienced after smoking salvia during his freshman year of college. “The people I was with were standing up around me, and I took a rip out of this water pipe, and when I looked up, their bodies were sort of stretching over me. They were all looking at me - that's what made me uncomfortable.”
Because of the dramatic effects of the legal herb, which can be purchased in shops such as The Fitter or online, Dahl says she cautions those who come into her store looking for salvia, especially first-time users.
“I have a lot of customers that do not like the effect of it,” she said, “when we have first-time users, I usually try to have them start at the lower levels” of potency.
At The Fitter, extracts of saliva are sold in a condensed leaf form, the potency of which ranges from 5 to 20 times that of the leaf. The “doses” of saliva are generally sold in one-gram amounts, the price of which ranges from $16 to $50, depending on the potency.
According to Dahl, there are extracts of salvia that are 65 times the potency of the leaf, which she labeled “out of hand.”
Strangely, a drug that can cause out-of-body of experiences can be legally used anywhere a cigarette can be smoked. So, an individual with adequate courage could legally take bong hits of salvia on the steps of a court house or police station, provided he was more than 15 feet away from the entrance (in accordance with state tobacco-smoking ordinances).
“At this point, since it's not on the banned substances list in Colorado, it would be treated the same as any other smoking device or instrument, such as cigarette,” said Brad Wiesley, the spokesman for the CU-Boulder Police.
If someone were caught with saliva or paraphernalia used to smoke it, “there's certainly not anything legally we can do about it,” Wiesley said. To confirm that the residue in a smoking device is nothing illegal, Wiesley said the police could perform a quick field test using a chemical that reacts to THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. If there is no THC in the pipe, the test result would be negative.
Salvia, like a number of other legal substances used to get high, could only be a passing trend, according to Wiesley.
“It may just be the new fad,” he said, “this may just be something that somebody came up with and, until the legislature decides what they want to do with it, people can take it and not have any legal consequences.”
Regardless of its legal standing, smoking salvia and operating a motor vehicle is illegal.
“It's illegal to drive a car while your impaired by any substance, whether the substance is legal or not,” said Wiesley. “If somebody is impaired by saliva while driving a car Š that [violation of the law] would be enforced like any other DUI arrest for alcohol or drugs.”
Eight states have already placed restrictions on salvia, and 16 others are considering a ban or have previously.
“It's a new trend and we'll see where it goes,” said Wiesley, “whatever the legislature does, we will work within that framework.”
Contact Evan Sandsmark about this story at (303) 443-6272, ext. 113, or at
[email protected].