Back of beyond in the mountains of northern Oaxaca, Huautla has had a far bigger impact on Western civilization than vice versa. Its valleys are a cornucopia of rare flora and fungi with strange powers, and its ”magic mushrooms” ignited the psychedelic culture of the 1960’s.

In the first, a teenager waves his left arm while seated and staring blankly as someone else laughs. A voice in the background attributes the boy’s actions to Salvia. In the second video, a teenager appearing to be in a daze after smoking Salvia is encouraged to sit down. He does, and minutes later crawls along the floor on all fours.

Ms. Nowick, a Smithtown Republican, sponsored the bill to ban Salvia divinorum (pronounced SAL-vee-ah dee-vin-OR-um), which is inexpensive, easily accessible and legal in most of the country.

She said she began researching the drug a year ago after seeing a news report about a 17-year-old Delaware high school student who committed suicide in 2006 after smoking Salvia. The medical examiner ruled that Salvia divinorum contributed to the boy’s death, and Delaware lawmakers banned the drug.

The Suffolk County law, which was passed, 17 to 0, includes penalties of up to a $1,000 fine and a year in prison. Steve Levy, the county executive, said he would sign the ban into law after conducting a public hearing within the next 30 days. It would become effective immediately.

According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, Salvia divinorum is a perennial plant native to Oaxaca, Mexico. Salvia divinorum, an herb similar to the sage plant, has large green leaves that when smoked or chewed induce ”mystical or hallucinogenic experiences,” the agency says.

Until now, Salvia divinorum has been sold on the Internet and in several smoke shops in Suffolk, the Suffolk County Police said. Susan E. Eckert, an aide in Ms. Nowick’s office, said she bought about a half-ounce of it Feb. 27 for $15 plus tax at a store in Commack.

Krista R. Whitman, a chemical dependency coordinator at the Pederson-Krag Center in Smithtown, an outpatient behavioral health and chemical dependency treatment center, said teenagers as young as 13 began reporting their use of Salvia divinorum about two years ago.

”We have noticed that adolescents are using it frequently because it is legal and it can’t be detected in urine drug screenings,” she said. She said the highs are strongest in the first few minutes.

Ms. Whitman said that since the beginning of 2006, there has been a 30 to 40 percent increase in Salvia use by those treated at her agency. ”It went from something we didn’t even think to screen for to something we now ask all the kids about,” she said.

Dr. Humayun J. Chaudhry, commissioner of the Suffolk Department of Health Services, said Salvia divinorum has no medicinal use.

Although there are no federal restrictions on the sale or possession of Salvia divinorum, a growing number of states and countries are clamping down. The federal Justice Department said seven states and eight nations had placed controls on Salvia divinorum or Salvinorin A, the plant’s active component, and a dozen states, including New York, were considering restrictions.

Anthony T. Ferrandino, a drug and alcohol counselor in the Northport-East Northport School District, said he recently began asking students if they used Salvia.

”Several of the kids admitted experimenting with it, and one kid described the high,” Mr. Ferrandino recalled. ”He said it was like an out-of-body experience — like he was in an altered reality state. He said it lasted 15 minutes.”

Maureen Rossi, president of Kings Park in the kNOw, a group of 20 residents formed to educate parents and children about the dangers of substance abuse, said that although the use of Salvia divinorum ”is not a huge problem here, some kids have used it.”

”Just look at YouTube,” she said. ”Will this law keep Suffolk County teenagers from using Salvia? No, because they can still buy it on the Internet. But at the end of the day, it creates an important dialogue and is a step in the right direction.”

DALLAS — With a friend videotaping, 27-year-old Christopher Lenzini of Dallas took a hit of Salvia divinorum, regarded as the world’s most potent hallucinogenic herb, and soon began to imagine, he said, that he was in a boat with little green men. Mr. Lenzini quickly collapsed to the floor and dissolved into convulsive laughter.

When he posted the video on YouTube this summer, friends could not get enough. “It’s just funny to see a friend act like a total idiot,” he said, “so everybody loved it.”

Until a decade ago, the use of salvia was largely limited to those seeking revelation under the tutelage of Mazatec shamans in its native Oaxaca, Mexico.

Today, this mind-altering member of the mint family is broadly available for lawful sale online and in head shops across the United States.

Though older Americans typically have never heard of salvia, the psychoactive sage has become something of a phenomenon among this country’s thrill-seeking youth.

More than 5,000 YouTube videos — equal parts “Jackass” and “Up in Smoke” — document their journeys into rubber-legged incoherence.

Some of the videos have been viewed half a million times.

Yet these very images that have helped popularize salvia may also hasten its demise and undermine the promising research into its possible medical uses.

Pharmacologists who believe salvia could open new frontiers for the treatment of addiction, depression and pain fear that its criminalization would make it burdensome to obtain and store the plant, and difficult to gain government permission for tests on human subjects. In state after state, however, including here in Texas, the YouTube videos have become Exhibit A in legislative efforts to regulate salvia. This year, Florida made possession or sale a felony punishable by 15 years in prison. California took a gentler approach by making it a misdemeanor to sell or distribute to minors.

“When you see it, well, it sure makes a believer out of you,” said Representative Charles Anderson of Waco, a Republican state lawmaker who is sponsoring one of several bills to ban salvia in Texas.

When the federal government this year published its first estimates of salvia use, the data astonished many: some 1.8 million people had tried it in their lifetimes, including 750,000 in the previous year. Among males 18 to 25, where consumption is heaviest, nearly 3 percent reported using salvia in the previous year, making it twice as prevalent as LSD and nearly as popular as Ecstasy.

Recent studies at college campuses on both coasts have yielded estimates as high as 7 percent. The herb’s presence on military ships and bases has prompted enough concern about readiness that the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology was asked to develop the first urinalysis for salvia and is now testing 50 samples a month.

Though research is young and little is known about long-term effects, there are no studies suggesting that salvia is addictive or its users prone to overdose or abuse. Indeed, a salvia experience can be so intense, and at times so unsettling, that many try it just once, and even devotees use it sparingly.

Reports of salvia-related emergency room admissions are virtually nonexistent, likely because its effects typically vanish in just a few minutes.

With little data at its disposal, the Drug Enforcement Administration has spent more than a decade studying whether to add salvia to its list of controlled substances, as is the case in several European and Asian countries. In the meantime, 13 states and several local governments have banned or otherwise regulated the plant and its chemically enhanced extracts.

Known on the street by nicknames like Sally D and Magic Mint, salvia can have vastly different effects depending on dose, potency and the mindset and tolerance of its users, according to researchers and experienced smokers (though bitter, it can also be chewed or consumed as a tincture). Dozens of online vendors sell mild extracts for as little as $5 a gram; the strongest, at up to 100 times the potency of the raw leaf, sell for more than $50.

Users often report a sudden dissociation from self, as if traveling through time. The experience tends to be solitary, introspective and sometimes fearful: a 2003 bulletin from the Department of Justice concluded that salvia was unlikely ever to become a party drug.

“I’ve used several psychedelics, and salvia’s definitely the most intense experience that I’ve had,” said Brian D. Arthur, founder of Mazatec Garden, which sells salvia and other herbs online from a nondescript house in Houston. “Salvia takes you out of the world and puts you in a different place.”

Regular users say it can be a restorative, even spiritual tonic, and recall their visualizations with precision.

“Informed by Trail RCMP, Trail city council decided it was in the best interest of residents to proceed on a cautionary basis, asking LeMoel to take the drug off the shelf.

“The city is concerned that salvia may be a hallucinogenic substance potentially harmful to the public, and as such, it is felt that the sale of the product should be restricted,” explained Trail administrator Michelle Ferraro. “(Casey) LeMoel was asked to cease the sale of the product from his new and used shop. Failing compliance, the matter would have been advanced to council to consider the suspension or cancellation of his business license.”

In other words, if the owner of the pawnshop would not comply, the city would take his business license – for selling a product that is 100% legal? How does that make sense? Are they after the local supermarket too, for selling glue? And what about liquor stores?