Inadvertant Advertising

A little over a week ago, a local television station was hyping one of their local news features for the evening broadcast. There tag line was something along the lines of "Local Store selling potent hallucigen!" As I had to go to work before the evening news broadcast, I asked my wife to watch the program to find out what was being sold and where. After the news, she called me and told me that the news story was about Salvia Divinorum, an herb grown in Mexico, central America, and Hawaii. It contains a pyschedelic compontent known as Salvinorum A. It can be chewed or smoked and from what I have read, it is found to be very unpleasant by most people who experiment with it. The herb is completely legal in the United States as are Nutmeg and Morning Glory seeds, two other common products that you can trip on if you are so inclined. If you are more interested in it and its nauseating side effects, check out www.erowid.com for more information. Back to the news story. It seems that a local shop that sells, posters, incense, beaded curtains, tee shirts and the like was indeed selling the herb. As it is completely legal and most likely 99.9 % of our local population did not know of it's existence, there it sat on the shelf, almost no one knowing it was there. But the television station trotted out a list of local people who were outraged that such a substance was for sale in our fair community and of course, the city should do something to protect us from this demon. Made me think of the 1937 movie Reefer Madness. The afternoon before this program aired, virually no one knew of it's present, I certainly didn't and have been in that shop many times, and thanks to the stations free advertising, now thousands knew about this psychedelic herb for sale, right here in river city, my friends. Sometimes I think people would be better off if we were not quite so well informed by the well meaning do-gooders of our society. Maybe there is an upside to this, instead of our youth looking for an illegal six pack of beer or bottle of booze, the well meaning television station has now informed them about a legal pyschedelic they can all take. Sometimes I wonder and other times, I just don't know. Peace and love until next time.