Embattled Montreal hookah cafe to close

MONTREAL, July 16 (UPI) -- The owner of a Montreal cafe where patrons can smoke a psychoactive variety of sage says he will close up shop next month.

Matthew Liscomb told the Montreal Gazette that Les Mentheurs would go out of business on Aug. 23 due to legal battles and changes in provincial tobacco laws.

On top of that, he said, business insurance has been increasingly difficult to get.

"It's not been easy getting insured and it's not legal to operate a business without proper insurance," he told the Gazette.

The closure will mark the end of a stormy history for Les Mentheurs, a 30-seat establishment that provides salvia divinorum, a Mexican plant that is considered a hallucinogen and can reportedly produce a sense of well-being and sedation as well as some more-unpleasant effects when smoked in a hookah.

The Gazette said salvia isn't illegal in Canada but its reputation prompted the building's owner to take Lipscomb to court to force him to stop selling salvia and a euphoriant tea made from psychoactive leaves from the Southeast Asian kratom tree.