# Tell me all about those "Legal Smoking Herbs" **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 13, 2005, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-all-about-those-legal-smoking-herbs/294279 "2005-03-13T02:33:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Merl\_Minnozza](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b3f665/32.png) [@Merl\_Minnozza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merl_Minnozza)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2005, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-all-about-those-legal-smoking-herbs/294279/1 "2005-03-13T02:33:53Z")
www.herbalsmokeshop.com These are all legal so let’s have a conversation about what they do, their effects, etc. They sure look cool. I used to think they were a scam, that they don’t do jack, but how would the company stay in business otherwise? Hell, they’re cheap enough that I could order a half-ounce and not be at that great a loss if it turns out they aren’t as effective as I had hoped. Maybe I will… Tell me about these herbs. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2005, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-all-about-those-legal-smoking-herbs/294279/2 "2005-03-13T03:45:44Z")
The American Indians smoked the inner bark of bearberry (_Arctostaphylos uva-ursi_\*, mixed with certain other herbs, and called it _kinnikinnik_ (perhaps the longest single-word palindrome used in English). I wonder, can you buy any Indian kinnikinnik smoking mixture nowadays? Or find the ingredients to blend your own? Anybody got any favorite kinnikinnik recipes to share? I’d like to know just what the Indians got out of smoking this bark. I looked at the herbal smoking blends on that Herbal Smoke Shop site, which has the slightly sleazy ambiance of some head shops I once knew. They don’t have any kinnikinnik! Some Herbal Smoke Shop you are! But they have _Salvia divinorum_, and one thing I can tell you is that stuff does get you seriously fucked up. For only about 7 minutes, then it wears off. \*The botanical name translates as “bear grape” in both Greek and Latin. ---
**Author:** ![Merl\_Minnozza](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b3f665/32.png) [@Merl\_Minnozza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merl_Minnozza)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2005, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-all-about-those-legal-smoking-herbs/294279/3 "2005-03-13T03:52:03Z")
I know all about Salvia. I don’t want to be freaked out, I just want a relaxed high, which is what they claim those herbs do on the website. Do they? ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2005, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-all-about-those-legal-smoking-herbs/294279/4 "2005-03-13T18:27:50Z")
The OP reawakened an old curiosity from my teenybopper years in the early 1970s. When I was in 8th grade, a friend told me that smoking _Damiana_ gets you high. I think he actually had me toke on a bowl of it. I don’t have any memory of getting high off it. Or I might have imagined the memory, I’m not sure, it was too long ago. So does it get you high or doesn’t it? There are a few reports at Erowid that answer in the affirmative. My curiosity piqued, I took some _Damiana_ and smoked it as one would smoke _Cannabis_. Lo and behold, it did produce a mild buzz and a slight but comfortable mental relaxation. Or was my sample contaminated by the bowl I smoked it in (which might have still had tiny uncombusted remnants of a certain other herb)? ---
**Author:** ![Merl\_Minnozza](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b3f665/32.png) [@Merl\_Minnozza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merl_Minnozza)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2005, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-all-about-those-legal-smoking-herbs/294279/5 "2005-03-13T21:29:12Z")
That’s hella cool but does anyone actually know about those specific herbs on that website? Specifically the “buds” that they sell, which are indeed mixtures of a great many different herbs. Even if they didn’t do anything I might buy them just because they look so damn cool… ---
**Author:** ![CanTak3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f14d63/32.png) [@CanTak3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CanTak3)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-all-about-those-legal-smoking-herbs/294279/6 "2005-03-14T06:18:02Z")
If you try the salvia use 1x only. The higher doses of that are so intense you’d be surprised they aren’t illegal. ---
**Author:** ![Merl\_Minnozza](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b3f665/32.png) [@Merl\_Minnozza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merl_Minnozza)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-all-about-those-legal-smoking-herbs/294279/7 "2005-03-14T06:51:38Z")
I know about Salvia already. (Thanks for letting me know, though, because it’d be good advice if I didn’t already.) Does anyone know about those other herbs? What plant does “Hawaiian Herbal Hybrid” come from, and what is “dagga?” ---
**Author:** ![bookbuster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9bd4f/32.png) [@bookbuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bookbuster)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-all-about-those-legal-smoking-herbs/294279/8 "2005-03-14T07:10:57Z")
I have heard a thousand people say it is a scam (except for Salvia, which made me think i was a “choo-choo” train) ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-all-about-those-legal-smoking-herbs/294279/9 "2005-03-14T07:15:10Z")
> [@Merl Minnozza](#): > > That’s hella cool but does anyone actually know about those specific herbs on that website? Specifically the “buds” that they sell, which are indeed mixtures of a great many different herbs. Even if they didn’t do anything I might buy them just because they look so damn cool… I’d be shocked if there was much of anything. (I’m always surprised that Salvia is legal - but if there were a lot of shops selling something akin to marijuana, the government would ban it in an instant.) Anecdotally, I’ve heard that they taste bad and don’t do anything (and don’t forget that they fuck up your lungs, psychological effects or no.) The companies stay in business the same way companies selling diet pills and penis enlargers stay in business: the public is dumb, and willing to believe anything when they’re desperate. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-all-about-those-legal-smoking-herbs/294279/10 "2005-03-14T17:05:03Z")
“Herbal” smoke shop? Is not tobacco “herbal”?? ---
**Author:** ![whistlepig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/73ab20/32.png) [@whistlepig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whistlepig)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-all-about-those-legal-smoking-herbs/294279/11 "2005-03-14T17:57:20Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > The American Indians smoked the inner bark of bearberry (_Arctostaphylos uva-ursi_\*, mixed with certain other herbs, and called it _kinnikinnik_ (perhaps the longest single-word palindrome used in English). I wonder, can you buy any Indian kinnikinnik smoking mixture nowadays? Or find the ingredients to blend your own? Anybody got any favorite kinnikinnik recipes to share? I’d like to know just what the Indians got out of smoking this bark. I’m not an Indian but I got a headache and then a lecture from my mom, who thought I was smoking pot. I don’t remember any buzz, though it has a not unpleasent taste. whistlepig ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-all-about-those-legal-smoking-herbs/294279/12 "2005-03-14T18:31:43Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > I wonder, can you buy any Indian kinnikinnik smoking mixture nowadays? [Yes](http://basementshaman.com/kinkinnatamb.html). Can’t speak to its authenticity or efficacy, but there you go. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-all-about-those-legal-smoking-herbs/294279/13 "2005-03-14T18:53:02Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > The American Indians smoked the inner bark of bearberry (_Arctostaphylos uva-ursi_\*, mixed with certain other herbs, and called it _kinnikinnik_ (perhaps the longest single-word palindrome used in English). I wonder, can you buy any Indian kinnikinnik smoking mixture nowadays? Or find the ingredients to blend your own? Anybody got any favorite kinnikinnik recipes to share? I’d like to know just what the Indians got out of smoking this bark. > > I looked at the herbal smoking blends on that Herbal Smoke Shop site, which has the slightly sleazy ambiance of some head shops I once knew. They don’t have any kinnikinnik! Some Herbal Smoke Shop you are! But they have _Salvia divinorum_, and one thing I can tell you is that stuff does get you seriously fucked up. For only about 7 minutes, then it wears off. > > \*The botanical name translates as “bear grape” in both Greek and Latin. [Here](http://www.dixiegunworks.com/product_info.php?products_id=10220&osCsid=810b19a7faff3225c4684d605f14de4a) is a version that aparently contains some tobacco. ---
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-all-about-those-legal-smoking-herbs/294279/14 "2005-03-14T19:13:31Z")
> [@Merl Minnozza](#): > > I used to think they were a scam, that they don’t do jack, but how would the company stay in business otherwise? Astrologers, Nigerian 419 scams, polygraph & VSA vendors, homeopathic remedies, psychics, mediums, and alternative message boards to the SDMB all manage to stay in business quite nicely. Effectiveness isn’t a prerequesite for business success - marketing that makes people say “This must work or they couldn’t stay in business” is. ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-all-about-those-legal-smoking-herbs/294279/15 "2005-03-14T19:16:50Z")
Note that “kinnikinnick” is also a popular name for the “bear berry” plant itself, rather than the smoking preparation. That’s what I always called it, not “bear berry”. According to this, it’s also called “sandberry”": [http://www.laspilitas.com/plants/81.htm](http://www.laspilitas.com/plants/81.htm) It grows wild all over the northern US, and is easy to recognize. It’s also sometimes used for a ground cover in landscaping, which is what that link seems to be about. Most sources will mention use of the leaves as a “tobacco substitute”, but I wouldn’t try it. Most sources don’t say what it’s supposed to do for you. The berries are edible, but not very tasty - the Indians used them in pemmican. More on the plant: [http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/environment/culres/ethbot/a-c/ArcUvaUrsi.htm](http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/environment/culres/ethbot/a-c/ArcUvaUrsi.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2005, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-all-about-those-legal-smoking-herbs/294279/16 "2005-03-15T01:38:38Z")
I may have been mistaken. I may have to smoke my words. All the botano-sites I looked up that mention smoking kinnikinnik say that the _Arctostaphyllos_ leaves were what is smoked, not the inner bark. Since the _Arctostaphyllos_ is just a low shrub with twiggy limbs, it produces leaves aplenty — but I imagine the inner bark, if you could extract any, would be quite scanty. It must have been some tree whose inner bark went into some American Indian smoking blend. I got out a book, _Earth Medicine, Earth Food: Plant Remedies and Foods of the North American Indians_, rev. & exp. ed., by Michael A. Weiner (a gift to me from my sister), and looked up _A. uva-ursi_. This book has a taxonomical name index as well as a common name index and a general index. It says > [@](#): > > The edible berries are favored by bear and grouse, and the dried leaves were formerly mixed with tobacco, forming an Indian smoking mixture known as _sagack-homi_ in Canada, and _kinikinik_ among the western American tribes. (p. 83, under the heading “Kidney and Bladder Ailments.”) The only other mention of bearberry is on p. 120, in a list of plants that furnish Vitamin C. As for _dagga_, this name comes from Central Africa. Everybody’s heard of the Hutu and Tutsi. Do you remember the third tribe of Rwanda and Burundi? That’s right, the Twa. People of short stature, maybe first cousins of the Mbuti (Pygmies), the Twa used to be employed as musicians and entertainers at the courts of Tutsi royalty. They it was who smoked _dagga_, their name for marijuana. Or so I read in a book on marijuana back in the '70s; it had a picture of a Twa _dagga_-head toking up on a waterpipe made of a coconut or a small calabash. Whether the name _dagga_ is also used in Africa for any other herbs, I don’t know. Anyone? If the marketer meant only to invoke an exotic name of marijuana to entice consumers, he should have put irony quotes around “dagga.” I remember back in the '70s, the ads for these herbal smoking blends in _High Times_ magazine always had the irony quotes: Get your LEGAL herbal “Marijuana,” “Hashish,” “Opium,” etc. I bet the editors of _High Times_ made the advertisers use the quotes. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2005, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-all-about-those-legal-smoking-herbs/294279/17 "2005-03-15T01:48:10Z")
No sooner had I posted the above post than I googled up a [url=http://my.freeway.net/~fred/plants.html]page stating the answer to my question: the inner bark of Red Willow (_Salix lucida_) was smoked in kinnikinnik. Sure enough, [url=http://basementshaman.com/kinkinnatamb.html]the Basement Shaman lists Red Willow along with Bearberry among their tobacco-free kinnikinnik blend. **scumpup** , the kinnikinnik you linked to mentioned tobacco, but didn’t specify the other ingredients. It looks like Red Willow is the inner bark I was looking for. ---
**Author:** ![neutron\_star](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/51bf81/32.png) [@neutron\_star](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/neutron_star)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2005, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-all-about-those-legal-smoking-herbs/294279/18 "2005-03-15T02:40:21Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > When I was in 8th grade, a friend told me that smoking _Damiana_ gets you high. I think he actually had me toke on a bowl of it. I don’t have any memory of getting high off it. Or I might have imagined the memory, I’m not sure, it was too long ago. So does it get you high or doesn’t it? There are a few reports at Erowid that answer in the affirmative. Well, to be fair, some of those drug experience posters at Erowid seem to be able to get high off _anything_. I’ve tried damiana. It tasted vile and had no effect. As a teenager, I was dumb enough to order from one of those ads in _High Times_. I forget how much money I pissed away, but I got a decent amount of different herbs. Every damn one tasted foul and did nothing. A couple years back, a web site (or maybe a magazine that posted its articles online?) ordered a bunch of different herbal blends from several companies and had them analyzed. I don’t really remember all the details, but basically it’s all damiana and a bunch of similar herbs that have little or no effect. IIRC, a few of the vendors even used some sort of food glue to mash different plants together in attempts to make them look like dried and cured marijuana. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2005, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-all-about-those-legal-smoking-herbs/294279/19 "2005-03-15T05:02:42Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > It looks like Red Willow is the inner bark I was looking for. You coulda saved yourself a great deal of effort if you’d read my link. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2005, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-all-about-those-legal-smoking-herbs/294279/20 "2005-03-15T07:08:34Z")
Thanks, **QED**. So that was how that page found its way to my screen. I found the answer about “wild dagga,” which [**bibliophage**](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=470335&postcount=7) posted years ago. > [@bibliophage](#): > > Wild Dagga gets its name from the mistaken belief that it is a wild form of dagga (cannabis). Wild Dagga is Leonotis leonurus. True cannabis is Cannabis sativa Like the common name “Indian Hemp,” which is not a translation of _Cannabis indica_, but a different plant altogether, _Pilocarpus jaborandi_. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-all-about-those-legal-smoking-herbs/294279.md?page=2)