Plant could get airmen in legal hot water

  • Published
  • By Jeanne Grimes
  • Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center Public Affairs
TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. (AFPN) --  A hallucinogenic plant, lawful to possess and use, is being reviewed as a controlled substance that could land airmen in legal hot water.

The plant, Salvia divinorum is a perennial herb related to sage and a botanical cousin to an ornamental favored by gardeners, said Ven Sovo, of Tinker's Joint Drug Enforcement Team operating out of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Detachment 114.

The team is taking its lead from Air Force Instruction 36-3208, Administrative Separation of Airmen, which identifies drug abuse as "the illegal, wrongful or improper use, possession, sale, transfer or introduction onto a military installation of any drug," Mr. Sovo said.

The instruction casts a wide net, defining drugs as "any intoxicating substance, other than alcohol, that is inhaled, injected, consumed or introduced into the body in any manner for purposes of altering mood or function."

Salvia divinorum fills that bill and the Drug Enforcement Administration includes the plant in its "drugs and chemicals of concern," Mr. Sovo said.

"It's currently under review by the medical and scientific community to determine if it should be a controlled substance," one investigator said. Federal law ranks controlled substances in five schedules according to their potential for abuse, availability and effects on the user.

Tinker's drug team members were told that airmen in uniform have been seen buying Salvia divinorum. Users in Tinker's military population may number "as high as 100 or more," Mr. Sovo said.

DEA officials report the drug is smoked to induce hallucinations, "the diversity of which are being described ... similar to those induced by ketamine, mescaline or psilocybin." Sellers offer both dried plant material and the plant's extract, investigators here said.

The user population appears limited to younger adults and adolescents "influenced by the promotion of the drug on Internet sites," DEA experts said. One such site has published a user's guide that promises to "teach you how to work with this herb in a way that is personally rewarding and how to do so as safely as possible."

But online research convinced JDET members the plant is not harmless and they have read the accounts of between 200 and 300 individuals who have tried Salvia divinorum.

"Almost all of them have been scared by this drug," they said, adding most users report an "LSD-type reaction." (Courtesy of Air Force Materiel Command News Service)