Peyote is becoming harder and harder to find in Texas, the only place in the U.S. where it grows.

Only three people in the state are licensed to sell the hallucinogenic, a sacrament of the Native American Church. But they aren't able to harvest it in as many places because landowners aren't letting them on their properties.

"Things are kind of getting slower every year," Mauro Morales, one of the three with a license, told the Associated Press.

Morales said his crews pick about 3,000 buttons a day, down from 10,000 a day four years ago. Yearly sales have dropped from 2.3 million buttons in the mid-1990s to 1.5 million buttons last year.

"If we don't do something to ensure survivability, it may not be around for my great-grandchildren," Teodosio Herrera, a leader of the Rio Grande Native American Church, told the AP.

Peyote is considered an illegal drug except for practitioners of the Native American Church who are members of a federally recognized tribe.

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Scarcity of peyote means hard times for dealers (AP 11/10)