Against the background of a typical, white-brick college dorm room wall, Phil, a wiry boy with chin-length hair, wraps a towel around his shoulders, feverishly inhales from a water pipe and, within seconds, begins to laugh and mumble uncontrollably. His arms flap and flail about as he fails to hold himself up. Phil is the star of a four-minute video on YouTube called, simply enough, "Phil tripping on salvia." He is a face behind the mysterious drug Salvia divinorum, a legal hallucinogen discovered by Mexican shamans that has managed to enrapture youth and consume officials, especially in Texas, with its strange, controversial presence.
Salvia is a drug of recreational exhibitionism. Whereas other drugs like LSD and psilocybin mushrooms swirled around in subversive underground communities during the 1960s and 1970s, Salvia's recent rise to prominence is notable because it has been recorded for anyone to see on the Internet. Search "salvia" on YouTube and you'll find more than 1,700 results, mainly short videos of people like Phil in their dorm rooms, parents' basements and friends' garages, wanting you to see the weird, brief hilarity Salvia caused them.
There's no debate that the Salvia trip is rife with stupidity - as even a quick perusal of the videos on YouTube reveals - but the issue at hand for Texans is Salvia's legal availability.
In a March 30 Daily Texan article, Sara Haji reported that Salvia is being sold right on the Drag at Pipe's Plus, and its popularity is staggering. Wacky as it is, Salvia exists as one of the last few "legal highs," although according to researchers, Salvia has great potential as a medicinal drug. For the time being, Salvia remains cheap, accessible and strictly recreational, obscure enough to escape widespread connotations but potent enough to make some wonder why it is still legal.
What worries us is not Salvia's legality, but the implications that its legality brings forth in relation to other drugs. The obvious: Salvia, a drug that, as The Houston Chronicle reports, causes schoolchildren to see imaginary soldiers, is legal and marijuana isn't?
Efforts to ban Salvia are being spearheaded in Waco after the drug was seen in schools, and similar efforts exist in Delaware, where a 17-year-old allegedly committed suicide after he started using the drug. Officials in at least five other states have expressed worry about Salvia. The Drug Enforcement Administration marked it a "drug of concern" and is considering classifying it on the same level as marijuana and LSD. But laws and action are slow in coming.
Salvia may only be entering the popular lexicon, but it's been around for ages. Among the more experienced drug-curious youth, it's regarded as an insubstantial substance, unworthy of time, money and attention. But that feeling will most likely change as soon as a law comes down on Salvia and schoolyards, college campuses and YouTube will likely sprout with the indignance of rebellion.
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