All the publicity about banning Salvia divinorum is bringing new customers to Nebraska stores owned by Christian Firoz.

Firoz says he’s always had moderate sales of the herb that can be used to alter consciousness.

“But it’s going like crazy this last month,” he said this week.

Sales of little packets of the green-brown ground leaves have been strong, particularly in the Lincoln and Omaha Exotica stores, Firoz said.

Right now, it’s perfectly legal to sell and to buy the herb that is generally smoked to create a short-term hallucinogenic experience.  But Firoz says many of his customers, generally college age, believe Salvia may be banned this summer, as early as June or July.  So they’re buying up the drug now.

That prediction may be premature.

A bill (LB840) that would make Salvia divinorum an illegal drug in Nebraska has moved to the floor of the Legislature, but it has no priority status and there’s little movement to add it as an amendment to another bill. It has little chance of passage during the last six weeks of the legislative session.

Sen. Vickie McDonald of St. Paul, who sponsored the bill on behalf of the attorney general, said she hasn’t heard from Attorney General Jon Bruning since an early January news conference about the issue.

She’s not optimistic about the bill’s chances. Unless it is added to another bill in an amendment, the salvia measure has little chance of passage this year, and McDonald said she has no idea what bills might be available for amendment.

“The attorney general hasn’t talked to me about where we might put that bill,” she said.

But Bruning said his staff has been talking almost weekly with McDonald’s staff and is trying to find a home for the bill.

“We want to get it passed. It is an issue. Kids continue to use it, and we want it banned,” he said Friday.

Unless the measure passes this year, the bill succeeds only in publicizing a drug many people had never heard of before, McDonald said.

“We may be doing a disservice with this bill if all we have accomplished is advertise the drug,” she said.

That is an unintended consequence, Bruning said.

“That’s why we need to get the bill passed this session.

“The Legislature has been a common-sense group when it comes to the health and safety of Nebraskans,” said Bruning, adding that he remains hopeful senators will act on the bill.

McDonald agreed to sponsor the bill after seeing a YouTube video of a young man screaming, rolling on the floor and running around the room after smoking Salvia, a cousin of sage.

Firoz thinks the fear over Salvia is unwarranted. It gives one a very deep self-awareness, said Firoz, who has smoked the herb.

“It’s all psychological. It puts you in a trance.  It’s very hard to explain.”

Firoz said he didn’t testify against the bill at the public hearing this winter, but he opposes it.

The much-publicized videos are extreme reactions, he said, and using the herb does not make people violent.

There is not one example of someone who has gone out and committed a crime while using the herb “like they do on alcohol, cocaine and meth,” Firoz said.

The herb, which is generally smoked or chewed, comes from a Mexican plant used by Mazatec natives for healing and ritual prophecy. The Mazatec shamans crush the leaves to extract leaf juices for a tea.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse characterizes Salvia’s effects as “intense but short-lived.”

Firoz says the effects begin within a minute or two and last just a few minutes.

He said he does not sell Salvia to people younger than 18 and that most of the people interested in it  are in the 18-to-25 crowd.

At least nine states have made the drug illegal. The Nebraska bill would treat Salvia similarly to marijuana, LSD and psychedelic mushrooms, with penalties ranging from one to 50 years in prison.

Reach Nancy Hicks at 473-7250 or nhicks@journalstar.com.