Legislature poised to make salvia Minnesota’s next illegal drug
Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 8:45 am
- 14 Comments
Salvia divinorum. Photo: Wikipedia
After several failed attempts in past sessions, the Minnesota Legislature appears poised to ban a little known but psychedelic plant called salvia divinorum. Bills that would penalize those who sell or possess the herb have moved through House and Senate committees and now await floor votes in both chambers. And while law enforcement officials push to expand the drug war, critics say this is an opportunity to enact sensible policies not create more criminals.
“What this bill will do is make salvia divinorum illegal in Minnesota,” Rep. Morrie Lanning, R-Moorhead, told the House Public Safety Policy and Oversight Committee last week. A chief author of the bill, Lanning said he offered it at the urging of Moorhead Chief of Police David Ebinger.
“It’s a dangerous substance and a severe hallucinogenic,” said Ebinger. “We have more consequences attached to a pack of Marlboros.”
“I think it provides a gateway to using illicit substances with kids,” he said. “We find it in schools. [Minnesota] will continue to be a source of this material to youth if we don’t take some actions,” he said noting that North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin have taken steps to criminalize the drug.
For centuries, salvia has been used by the indigenous people of southern Mexico, and only recently has it found its way to the United States.
While it can be chewed or turned into a tincture, the main way to ingest the herb is to smoke it. As one user told the Minnesota Independent last year: “I smoked it, and it tasted really gross…and then I got a little light-headed, so I lay down on the ground and it sort of felt like I was floating. It wasn’t like a marijuana high at all. It was like a catatonic feeling with a little bit of floating.”
Most users report that the high, which lasts about five minutes, has a dissociative effect — a feeling of being outside one’s body. Some report hallucinations, but nearly all say the experience was as brief as it was profound.
Carol Falkowski of the alcohol and drug abuse division at the Minnesota Department of Human Services also testified in support of the bill, but she admitted that the federal government hasn’t taken action to criminalize it because they don’t have evidence that it’s dangerous.
“They don’t have a preponderance of evidence about the negative consequences,” she said.
“I’m sure Minnesota has other things to worry about. Criminalizing salvia is a waste of taxpayer money,” Grant Smith, federal policy coordinator for the Drug Policy Alliance, said of the bill.
“It would expand the drug war by adding yet another drug that is prohibited.” Smith said that Minnesota should adopt less restrictive laws surrounding salvia, like Maine and California, which regulate it instead of criminalizing it.
“Our approach is to ban sales to minors and regulate sales to adults,” he said. “If you criminalize it it will simply go underground and minors will gain access to it. Drug dealers don’t check IDs.”
Zach Tauer, of the University of Minnesota chapter of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, had a similar take. “SSDP feels that Salvia should remain legal,” he said. “By making it illegal, it creates a potential black market Salvia. Instead of buying Salvia from a headshop (where you know the concentration), you may end up buying it on a street corner with an unknown concentration and purity.”
Smith said that some in the medical community have doubted the wisdom of criminalization. He pointed to drug abuse researchers at Johns Hopkins University who spoke out against it, doubting salvia’s dangers and stating that making it illegal will inevitably hamper research into the drug’s benefits. Drs. Roland R. Griffiths and Matthew W. Johnson submitted testimony when Maryland attempted to pass a salvia ban (pdf):
[D]espite the popularization of Salvia divinorum use over the past 5 to 10 years, there are no case reports of addiction to Salvia divinorum in the scientific literature, and Salvia divinorum use has not been reported to be a problem in substance abuse treatment programs.
…
Although addiction appears to be of low concern with Salvia divinorum, it is clear that some use of Salvia divinorum can legitimately be considered abuse (i.e. use in a way that risks the well being of the individual or others). For example, Salvia divinorum can lead to substantial motor impairment that could potentially lead to accidents, particularly if the user is in a hazardous environment or situation. It should be noted, however, that there is little evidence that such injuries are occurring because there are no emergency department case reports in the scientific literature suggesting such injuries. This is perhaps due to the extremely short time course of the drug when smoked, allowing little time for such injuries to occur. Users describe effects to be substantially resolved in approximately 5 to 10 minutes.
In Louisiana, North Carolina and Tennessee, salvia can be grown as a garden plant but not for human consumption. In California and Maine, salvia is illegal to sell to minors. In Wisconsin, possession of salvia is legal, but sales and “delivery” of the herb are not.
Minnesota’s proposed law would make it a gross misdemeanor to sell salvia and a misdemeanor to possess it. A vote on the bill could come as soon as this week in either chamber of the Legislature.
Follow Andy Birkey on Twitter14 Comments
Comment posted March 24, 2010 @ 11:59 am
Let’s remember this stuff is an invasive garden plant and hard to get rid of if this becomes a law they’ve just made criminals out of hundreds, if not thousands, of grandmas in the Twin Cities alone.
Comment posted March 24, 2010 @ 10:19 pm
What an effing joke. I smoke weed all the time, and I don’t even want to smoke salvia. Seriously, we have far more important things to worry about.
Comment posted March 25, 2010 @ 6:53 am
There are no evidence that cannabis and salvia divinorum leads to any problem. *All* paper arguing on the danger always confuse (A entails B) with (B entails A) at some point. On some subject, cannabis can lead to habituation, but slighter than television habituation. When salvia is consumed in noisy and lightly environment, the worst happening is some mess around, bruises and nightmares: those things happen to sober people too.
It is just false that salvia is a gateway drug. On the contrary, it disgusts most people from drug in general. Salvia does not even lead to habituation, and has natural powerful *anti-addictive* power.
It seems to me that cannabis and salvia are just efficacious and cheap medication. The only problems related to those plants are due to their illegality. A persistent scandal.
Comment posted March 25, 2010 @ 9:43 am
California has pot legalization on the ballot and we have a salvia panic? Do we have to play the tail of the dog?
Comment posted March 25, 2010 @ 9:46 am
Both my mom and grandmother grew salvia because they liked the way it made their flower gardens look. None of us kids ever thought of “smoking” it. I have some growing in my flower garden, but I won’t be smoking it. Never even thought about it.
Comment posted March 25, 2010 @ 10:04 am
A joke indeed. Law enforcement is trying to give themselves more and more reason to shake people down. They have the audacity to go before legislatures and claim that things like Salvia or synthetic pot are “just as dangerous as pot,” yada yada. However, there is a decided and not coincidental LACK of research of pot. How can anything be “as dangerous” when the basis of comparison has no science backing it??
Hopefully California can pass marijuana legalization and begin the process of enacting sane, humane policy.
Comment posted March 25, 2010 @ 12:18 pm
While I don’t favor criminalization, I don’t favor consumption either. People are better off trading the drugs in for a stair stepper or exercycle.
Comment posted March 25, 2010 @ 7:53 pm
More stupidity from our elected representatives. It’s now clear to all but the dullest among us, which apparently includes the MN legislature, that the drug war is a war of harm maximization on every level.
Plus, has it ever occurred to these idiots that the US has a massive over-incarceration problem? We have more people as a percentage of our population in prison than did Stalin’s gulag. We lead the world in needless and counterproductive imprisonment. And they’re fine with more of the same!?
Comment posted March 25, 2010 @ 9:17 pm
I was speechless when I heard this on the radio. I am disgusted that we would be wasting time or money on trying to ban this.
Things you should know:
Salvia Divinorum is just one of the many forms of Salvia that are around and, as far as I know, is the only one that is psychoactive. The stuff that you find in your garden is likely not the Salvia they are looking to ban.
Most people don’t care much for the effects of Salvia and don’t try it more than once or twice (they have a tendency to try looking macho and overdoing it which can cause feelings of panic just like alcohol). The primary effects of Salvia only last 2-5 minutes. I’ve tried it a couple of times and found that it caused me to experience memories and feelings from my childhood that have long since forgotten. I don’t have any immediate plans to do it again, but don’t think it appropriate that anyone try to limit our freedoms on something this benign.
Yes, you can look up videos of people doing Salvia on youtube and the majority do seem pretty scary. Please try to keep in mind that the videos on youtube are of the people trying to be macho and taking much more than they can handle on their first time (try thinking of how scary of a situation it could be for someone who has drank too much).
I say vote for freedom.
Thanks
Comment posted March 27, 2010 @ 8:09 am
This drug should have been outlawed many moons ago. It was proven last year to cause COMPLETE PSYCHOSIS in a SINGLE use!! (source: American Journal of Psychiatry). This is the most potent naturally occurring hallucinogen known, more so than LSD! Why the DEA/FDA hasn’t banned it yet is beyond comprehension.
And to the idiot who wrote that grandmother’s will be arrested for growing salvia in their garden wise up! This is not the same plant. Not even close.
Comment posted March 27, 2010 @ 2:43 pm
Robsont do you even listen to yourself? Do a little more research then one article(source: American Journal of Psychiatry). If you are going to make an agrument against something then okay, but don’t lie about the (facts). You are talking about the one and only case involving Salvia to bring on psychosis. What we know about that person before the use of salvia is nothing. That “article” was just a letter to the editor anyway. To use a word like “proven” is so far of a strech i didnt’ even want to respond to what you wrote. I’d gladly debate wheather or not this should be legal, regulated or banned out right, but please don’t lie when doing so
Pingback posted October 19, 2010 @ 10:06 am
[...] pot provicialists; ’round here decriminalization folks still seem like hippy hangovers and the legislature busies itself banning even more psycho-active plants). This was written by Jake. Posted on Tuesday, October 19, 2010, at 8:26 am. Filed under [...]
Comment posted March 7, 2011 @ 4:49 pm
they can still buy it online from websites like http://hollywoodherbalincense.com/ go see for yourself, it is CRAZY!! cant believe they are smoking this stuff
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
