Via the AP: Is salvia the next marijuana?
Native to Mexico and still grown there, Salvia divinorum is generally smoked but can also be chewed or made into a tea and drunk.
Called nicknames like Sally-D, Magic Mint and Diviner’s Sage, salvia is a hallucinogen that gives users an out-of-body sense of traveling through time and space or merging with inanimate objects. Unlike hallucinogens like LSD or PCP, however, salvia’s effects last for a shorter time, generally up to an hour.
Salvia divinorum is not one of the several varieties of common ornamental garden plants known as Salvia.
Indeed, one suspects that there are any number of items that are currently legal that once smoked or otherwise ingested would induce a high. Are we going to make all of those illegal as well? Is there really a massive salvia-smoking problem in the US. And, for that matter, are our anti-marijuana policies really something worth replicating?
At least they aren’t targeting the ornamental plants, as I have several in my yard and I quite like them.
The sad thing is, many people think as follows:
Mike Strain, Louisiana’s Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner and former legislator, helped his state in 2005 become the first to make salvia illegal, along with a number of other plants. He said the response has been largely positive.
“I got some hostile e-mails from people who sold these products,” Strain said. “You don’t make everybody happy when you outlaw drugs. You save one child and it’s worth it.”
But here’s the problem: that is an absolutely horrid standard for making laws. By that logic we should outlaw automobiles because it is incontrovertibly the case that banning cars would saves not just one life per annum, but thousands upon thousands. Yet, somehow, we keep driving. Indeed, people die of all sorts of things every year that are perfectly legal–anything from amusement park thrill rides to sports to food allergies discovered too late. Shall we outlaw all of those things as well? Indeed, one suspects that there are more deaths as the result of basic recreational activities such as sports, hiking, water skiing and the like last year than were caused by salvia smoking in the last century. Actually, the story answers that question, after a fashion:
No known deaths have been attributed to salvia’s use, but it was listed as a factor in one Delaware teen’s suicide two years ago.
However, because it sounds good, and because no one is in favor of “one child” dying, we spend billions on nonsensical anti-drug policies.
BTW, my point isn’t to support salvia smoking, but to note that this notion that we make policies based on saving one life is absurd, yet it pervades anti-drug politics. Further, I am so thoroughly convinced of the failure of our current approach to drugs that any expansion gets my hackles up.
Beyond any of that, the story itself is poorly written, insofar as the proper comparison here is to mushrooms or LSD (or some other hallucinogen), not marijuana, which is a depressant and really has nothing in common, in terms of effect, to the drug described here.
h/t: PB, who further discuses the “if it saves one kid” argument.
March 13th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
My guess is that by making these drugs illegal, legislators are giving this previously unknown drugs wide exposure through the press. It almost makes me wonder whether more people who have never heard of the drug before will try to use it now that they know of its existence, since it is readily available. I also wonder whether when someone hears about this “illegal” drug, whether the mere fact that it has become illegal will make them want to try it. I’d chalk this up as another failure of our overall policies towards drugs.
March 13th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
I would concur.
March 13th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Tell us how you really feel
I think the comparison to Marijuana was intended to be one of availability and widespread use than effect.
Nevertheless, your points are all well taken, and I agree.
There are an awful lot of things you can get high on if you really put your mind to it. I remember being in the field at Ft. Knox one spring and having a fellow soldier offer me the burning root of some shrub, which he claimed would give me a “mean buzz.” I declined.
It does seem like the panic alarm goes off over some drug every few years; first it was heroin, then it was crack, then it was meth. I guess pot has always been there for good measure, and it makes a good filler when we’re in between panics.
I too am glad the ornamentals were not banned. I’d have less color in my front yard without them.
March 14th, 2008 at 5:16 am
I did a serious double take because I thought the headline was that “saliva” could be made into a drug.
March 14th, 2008 at 7:23 am
[...] And finally, here’s Dr. Steven Taylor — one of my favorite PoliSci gurus — with an update from one of our many well-planned Wars. The latest dangerous drug? Salvia: [M]y point isn’t the support salvia smoking, but to note that this notion that we make policies based on saving one life is absurd, yet it pervades anti-drug politics. Further, I am so thoroughly convinced of the failure of our current approach to drugs that any expansion gets my hackles up. [...]
March 14th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Greg, I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who wondered how saliva could be made hallucinogenic.
March 14th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
The sad part is, if saliva COULD be made hallucinogenic, someone would try to outlaw it. “To save one kid” and such.