In Laying Out Salvia Bill, Anderson Dupes Criminal Jurisprudence Committee With YouTube Video

Yesterday, when laying out House Bill 126, which would make salvia divinorum a controlled substance, State Rep. Charles “Doc” Anderson (R-Waco) and witnesses testifying for the bill duped the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence by showing committee members a YouTube video of someone preparing to give driving lessons after smoking the substance; the video, it turns out, was from a humor site and not actually something from real life.

Here is the video:

The Chronicle has more on the showing of the video:

The second, and possibly more compelling video, was of a man whose apparent goal was to provide tips on how to drive while under the influence of the substance.

After taking a hit from a water pipe, the man leans back in his car seat and becomes visibly disoriented. A couple of seconds later, he focused on a cat that jumped on the hood of the vehicle.

“He’s seeing monsters there,” said state Rep. Charles Anderson, who authored the Salvia bill.

“The experience of alternate realities is typical.”

But when advocates tried to load the third video, committee chairman state Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine, stopped them cold. [EMPHASIS ADDED]

Aside from the fact that the man in the video probably wasn’t seeing monsters because it was, in fact, a video for humorous purposes (and originally appeared on humor site Ebaum’s World before making the rounds on You Tube), it appears as though Anderson failed to vet his evidence (or the evidence provided by the folks he invited to come testify in support of the bill.

Anderson, if you will recall, is the Legislature’s one-man-crusader against salvia because the folks at Silver Maple Church in Robinson are crusading for its criminalization because their minister’s daughter allegedly used salvia, broke curfew, and came home high one morning.

Not only was the video in question a parody, but it is part of a series that includes such titles as Gardening on Salvia.

Interestingly, when we watched a few of these videos, we noticed that they had “speech balloons” in them. Evidently, had Anderson, or whichever staffer he had helping him show the video, moused over the wrong thing at the wrong time, a speech balloon like this might have popped up: