Having done Salvia several times and had some pretty intense experiences, I can say more about it than the journalists that write secondhand. It's a very powerful psychedelic, and a very poor party drug (though most people who try it out usually try it with their friends, usually from a pipe they smoked or will smoke weed with...). It's a very strange, mystical sort of experience, more intense than most acid trips (really). Just like any drug, in order to do it safely a person should take precautions (set, setting, and sitter in this case, just like any psychedelic). However, it's nearly impossible to kill yourself with it - it'll just scare the crap out of you.

So where is the rationale for banning it? Where is there enough reason to take away a person's right to experience what they wish away from them?

Don't talk about one guy's suicide - alcohol has a much stronger link to suicide, and I'm betting that more people decided NOT to kill themselves after trying Salvia than have decided the other way. In the Delaware case, the contribution of life issues, other drug use (principally alcohol), and anything else is completely opaque to the public. All we have is an anecdote. What we do have on record is a real, measured SAFE usage of the drug - even though in many cases it's often in less than ideal circumstances. We don't have a record of the gains people have made with this drug, either. If it was made illegal, we will have real, measurable HARM, as people are harrassed and imprisoned.

When we illegalize a drug, we take away any people's freedom and any good results from it's use. No one is being forced to smoke Salvia. Most people are well aware of it's potency. So far, the only record we have of it's negative effects is the same record we have of it's positive effects - an anecdotal one. Psychedelics in particular suffer from this, because although as a class they are generally very physically safe (very few deaths can be directly linked to LSD either), many people have negative mental experiences, and the voices of those who have positive experiences is generally ignored as the voice of "druggies" and "hippies". Our culture frowns on mystic experiences outside of it's accepted channels, and so it ruins people's lives to no clear benefit.

Freedom matters, including the freedom to "trip" if you want to, whether it be for shits and giggles or for a mystic experience or for anything else. This, and the record of safety, is the reasoning behind letting Salvia be legal, and this is the reasoning that needs to come out when rebutting articles pushing for the restriction on people's freedom. I applaud the mentioning of safety in this article, but insist that we defend real freedom, in this case the freedom to take Salvia, as having a value on it's own.

in the tennessee town antioch where i now reside as a student I am going back to roane county very soon the people that drive here are on drugs for sure.

they will run over your car and you this has happened several times if I had not pulled off the road

they also use their cell phones to gang up on non drug users and set up several traps that are very frightenign on these raods. Now that theyare unpaved the traffic has to slow down but there are still many druggies out there and it is very dangerous. as my cousin franklin roberts used to say he lives in lafayette tennessee oil rich county never trust anyone that smokes dope.

Never trust anyone from Tennessee who has no concept of grammar.

I've never been messed up enough as to communicate as poorly as poor margaret above. Sounds like a drunk to me. Maybe the other drivers aren't the real problem.

Margaret, for someone not on drugs you sound awfully paranoid and hysterical.