The DJ, who goes by the name Ryder, said he was concerned about a video of Miley Cyrus smoking the drug and he wanted to show that it should not be used for fun. He smoked salvia during Ryder and Brandy's "The Big Show" on Wired 96.3 FM on December 16.
"I wanted, needed to show people that it wasn't just a fun party drug, that it was actually very serious," the CBC quoted him as saying.
The video, which is about 12 minutes long, was posted online and has been viewed by thousands of people. In it Ryder is seen smoking and then quickly showing effects.
“This is so weird,” he says as he leans forward with a red face.
“Why am I looking at the floor?” he asks at one point. “What the hell is going on?”
While still seated on the chair he asks why he is lying on the floor.
The station received calls from people who were upset about what Ryder did, as well as from people who applauded them for attempting to discourage young people from using salvia.
The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council also received complaints.
"I didn't have fun," the CBC quoted Ryder as saying. "If that's the perception some people are getting when they watch the video, they are wrong."
He said he won't smoke it again, and wants it made illegal. The radio station posted links for a petition on their Facebook page.
There are hundreds of species of salvia, including ornamental plants and those used in cooking. The hallucinogenic variety is salvia divinorum.
It grows in the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico and was used in by shamans in rituals.
Salvia divinorum (also known as Diviner’s Sage, ska María Pastora, Seer’s sage, and by its genus name Salvia) is a psychoactive plant which can induce dissociative effects. Its native habitat is within cloud forest in the isolated Sierra Mazateca of Oaxaca, Mexico, growing in shady and moist locations. The plant grows to over a meter high, has hollow square stems, large leaves, and occasional white flowers with violet calyx. Botanists have not determined whether Salvia divinorum is a cultigen or a hybrid; native plants reproduce vegetatively, rarely producing viable seed.
Salvia divinorum remains legal in most countries and, within the United States, is legal in the majority of states. However, some have called for its prohibition. While not currently regulated by US federal drug laws, several states have passed laws criminalizing the substance. Some proposed state bills have failed to progress and have not been made into law (with motions having been voted down or otherwise dying in committee stages). There have not been many publicized prosecutions of individuals violating anti-salvia laws in the few countries and states in which it has been made illegal.
Salvia divinorum, a psychoactive plant, is currently legal in most countries. Current exceptions, countries where there is some form of control, include Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden.
Scientific researchers say the public is right to be concerned about the herb’s growing abuse. But some say salvia is also showing promise in legitimate laboratory research.
Salvia divinorum’s active ingredient, Salvinorin A, is a powerful hallucinogen, “as potent as LSD, and essentially, the most potent naturally occurring hallucinogenic drug,” says Dr. Bryan Roth, a biochemist and neuroscientist at Case Western Reserve University.
Roth also directs the National Institute of Mental Health’s Psychoactive Drug Screening Program. Three years ago, he and others in his Cleveland lab discovered how Salvinorin A affects the brain.
“What we found is quite remarkable and unprecedented among naturally occurring drugs of abuse,” Roth says. “This compound seems to have absolute specificity for a single receptor site on the brain.”
Studies have shown that Salvinorin A works in the same place in the brain as morphine and related pain reducers known as opioids.
“There’s been some showing that by modulating opioid receptors, you can potentially treat stimulant abuse,” says Thomas Prisinzano, a University of Iowa professor in the division of medicinal and natural products chemistry.
Most studies of salvia’s effect on the brain have been on rodents, and no one knows yet whether the results can be duplicated in humans. Such scientific developments still may be a long way off.
Other medical, biochemical and pharmacological scientists have published early studies suggesting that research on Salvia divinorum and Salvinorin A might eventually lead to new drugs that could be used to treat Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia and other diseases.
“The bottom line is, we really don’t know enough and we need to know more,” Prisinzano says. “The field is really beginning to grow, and we are beginning to know and understand more of what Salvia and Salvinorin A are able to do in the body.”
He and others worry that classifying Salvia as a Schedule One drug of abuse — a class that includes marijuana and LSD — could slow or even halt promising research. Yet because of salvia’s powerful effects, few believe that the drug shouldn’t be regulated at all.
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