Lying back, exhaling: usually the last thing a person does before leaving this world. Only in this case it is the world that is leaving me.

A few minutes ago I smoked a pipe of Salvia divinorum, a powerful hallucinogenic herb that I bought openly and legally from a shop near my home. Of the UKP 25 I handed over, more than UKP 4 will find its way into government coffers in the form of sales tax. And salvia was just one of dozens of powerful but entirely legal psychoactive substances that I could have chosen.

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