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Comment by johnwheeler | Hacker News Reader

To me, it's obvious that if you give unrestrained access to something and increase its availability, more people are going to use it. I'd be leery of reports that say otherwise. In fact, the current opioid epidemic is a testament to this.

Mushrooms are not for everybody. I don't want my kids using them. Should they be illegal? I don't know. I'd take them being illegal over making them easier to obtain.

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I think you are being unfairly downvoted for your opinion. I upvoted you though I disagree.

I'd like to know, how do you feel about the legality of cigarettes and alcohol. Presumably, you don't want your kids smoking cigarettes. Would you like them to be illegal to sell?

I'm also not really sure your thoughts on availability really hold in the way you are thinking. Take for instance glue and paint. These are both widely available for getting high currently, but are rarely used to do so because people understand the negative tradeoff associated. Under your view though, it would seem you prefer these be made illegal to prevent availability?

Im an alcoholic and I wish alcohol would be as illegal as cocaine. I often dream of some self-registration no alcohol sale allowed list that would make it harder for me to be able to obtain it. Alcohol kills.

I've heard you can get medication that makes your body reject the alcohol? A more elaborate self-registered anti-alcohol measure.

I think you're thinking about Antabuse, which does make you sick after drinking.

There's also Naltrexone which supposedly blocks the receptors that alcohol reacts to so you don't get the "good" feeling of alcohol.

I think it's more important for people to understand WHY they're drinking though, instead of masking it or using drugs to fix it. This is probably a conversation for another thread though.

Alcohol still killed a lot when it was illegal, though, and for new reasons: On average, 1000 Americans died every year during the Prohibition from the effects of drinking tainted liquor.

I do support your idea of a list you could write yourself into. Sounds like a solution with way fewer bad consequences.

Thanks

> I'd like to know, how do you feel about the legality of cigarettes and alcohol.

I wish they were illegal. I don't see any societal benefit with cigarettes, and I don't drink alcohol so am only left to deal with its consequences.

> but are rarely used to do so because people understand the negative tradeoff associated.

I don't think the masses are good at making decisions. You have to weigh the benefits of glue and paint against the small number of people who are going to injure themselves with them. I think we've gotten along fine without psilocybin, and any societal benefits are outweighed by the problems it can cause.

I don't think mushrooms are all out bad. If they're used responsibly, they probably help you think about things in a more intelligent way. But I don't want my kids eating psychedelic mushrooms. They can be horrifying and torturous for 8+ hour stretches of time.

Just because something does social harm doesn't mean it should be illegal.

I think alcohol is a great example of this because we made it illegal and saw that the consequences of it being illegal were far worst than the consequences of it being legal.

>> I'd like to know, how do you feel about the legality of cigarettes and alcohol.

> I wish they were illegal. I don't see any societal benefit with cigarettes, and I don't drink alcohol so am only left to deal with its consequences.

Weren't the consequences much, much worse when alcohol was illegal? That was the era when the word "gangster" was invented.

> I don't think the masses are good at making decisions.

What you mean, I think, is that the masses aren't good at taking the decisions that you would take. That way lies authoritarianism.

There are elements of authoritarianism that aren't categorically bad. The example that comes to mind is Lee Kuan Yew who took the city-state of Singapore from a swamp to having one of the highest GDPs per capita through benevolent dictatorship.

Authoritarian states can be successful, for sure. But they're still immoral. Rome did really well with slaves, for centuries. Does that mean that slavery is good?

or if paint was, like hemp, regulated to the point of de facto unavailability, leading to the use of environmentally inferior alternatives like solid wood and cotton.

omg tobacco is totally different from psychedelics, come on. and glue? seriously? glue has a practical purpose other than getting high. what are mushrooms good for outside of getting stoned?

There are lots of salient differences between tobacco and psychedelic mushrooms, but they are mostly of the "banning tobacco would be much more reasonable" variety. I think that was the point.

Only if you ignore cultural path dependency which has a huge impact on the utility and adverse consequences of a ban.

Laws can only be meaningfully evaluated in a concrete social context.

So what if it's only purpose is to get high?

What moral high ground do you have to say others can't get high?

Some people just know that they're right. That they have "the truth". Burroughs called it the "Right Virus". That was before we had the concept of memes.

On the plus side magic mushrooms generally are not habit forming. (Lots of sources out there on that.)

In my own experience I remember thinking how it felt like a nice 20 hour scenic drive. After a long drive like that I was all set for a few years before desiring to do it again. (And not purely for hedonistic reasons, either. I appreciated the "bad trips" the most!)

However they can still be misused, so one day if they are decriminalized I would hope a fair amount of education would be allowed, if not encouraged. Perhaps legitimize a qualified sitter arrangement, if feasible.

There is no reason it has to be black or white. I think you brought up a good point—that we can have requirements. We don't need to open the flood gates.

Criminal drug laws aren't stopping the opioid epidemic, and they prevent us from asking the real question: why is it that so many people prefer an opioid stupor to being productively engaged in our society?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

Note the overlap between the suicide maps and the opioid overdose maps:

https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/

People are killing themselves. Heroin and fentanyl are just tools.

What's happening in those red areas of the country? Economic collapse and social alienation.

If people want to check out and slowly (or quickly) kill themselves making drugs illegal won't stop them. They'll get them anyway or they will find other methods.

As far as mushrooms go: they are not particularly addictive. There is not and never has been a 'shroom epidemic. I highly doubt there ever will be. They can be a little bit dangerous, especially if you have latent psychological problems. They're not some kind of panacea either. But they're not really that bad and they're definitely not worth putting people in jail over.

The fear that we have of mind altering substances is totally irrational, especially when placed next to the lack of fear or stigma that we have for so many other more dangerous things. If you drop acid or 'shrooms you're a demonic criminal even though the worse you'll get is a bad trip and maybe some psychological disturbance, but if you kill yourself cave diving or rock climbing you're a hero.

Would I want my kids doing them? Not until they're adults and not without care. It would worry me a bit. It would worry me a lot more if they got a motorcycle. I see crosses and candles by the road all the time. I've never read about anyone dying from 'shrooms.

I disagree, but I upvoted you. In the short term (probably 3-6 months, but actually until the novelty wears off), you are correct that more people will use it. However, once the novelty wears off and people realize both the hazards and that said something will remain legal, people will lose interest. From my anecdotal experience, the temptation/desire of "forbidden fruit" has a strong correlation with the strength of the force maintaining the forbidden-ness all other things equal (e.g. equally addictive): the more forbidden something is, the more tempting/attractive it becomes. You could almost colloquially call it a "bad boy factor".

Is there any research to support this?

I don't have much information on Mushrooms personally, but shouldn't the default be that anyone is allowed to use a substance unless a case can be made that it needs to be restricted?

Given the current opioid epidemic, that exact same process of deciding when things should be restricted should be applied to opioids - but that practically gets a different treatment because there is a lot of money involved...

I wish the Overton Window was more open to some kind of middle ground: "this isn't legal in general, but we have these tightly monitored, zero-advertising, well-trained centers where you can use the drugs". Apparently our only options are "legal for all adults" or "legal for no one".

It's not an Overton Window problem so much as a federal law problem; state decriminalization is easy and low legal risk even when it conflocts with federal law, state tight regulation is more problematic, since compliance produces evidence for federal criminal prosecution. With marijuana, there has been federal tolerance of state liberalization which somewhat mitigates that concern, but that seems less likely with mushrooms.

The Overton Window encourages factions to push extreme positions to move the middle ground of what is acceptable, but still it is the middle ground that is acceptable, not extreme positions with an excluded middle.

> Mushrooms are not for everybody. I don't want my kids using them. Should they be illegal? I don't know. I'd take them being illegal over making them easier to obtain.

You can say the same for marijuana and alcohol, with alcohol being worse than marijuana and psilocybin mushrooms (in terms of toxicity and violent behavior) yet being not only legal, but even culturally encouraged (see what happens when you turn down a drink at a party). Psilocybin and marijuana also have more medicinal value than alcohol.

One of the most unsettling thing about the war on drugs is that we've rejected data and embraced misinformation. In terms of addiction and toxicity, psilocybin mushrooms are fairly benign; comparing them to opioids is like comparing coffee to opioids (yet opioids are still used medicinally while psilocybin mushrooms aren't).

> unrestrained access to something and increase its availability

Nothing about decriminalizing the use of something does that. It's still illegal to sell it but people won't have a felony on their record for trying it. I don't think the drug should ruin people's lives just because they used it or had a personal use amount on them when they were driving while black/mexican/suspicious looking to a cop as they tend to get pulled over more in a vicious cycle.

I don't use them and have no real desire to but I am not a fan of 1. paying for nonviolent drug users that are in prison and 2. ruining someone's life with a felony possession charge and 3. even if they can get off without jail time and have their record expunged they are in debt to a lawyer for thousands for no really good reason.

> It's still illegal to sell it

No, under the actual measure proposed, as stated in the source article, it would no longer be illegal under state law for adults 21+ to sell it.

I was on mobile and these sites are awful to read on it so I didn't see that detail. I was going off of the bill that Arnold signed for Cannabis decriminalization that made it still an infraction to have it/use it/sell it but not lead up to a year in jail like the current system will do to a mushroom user.

I am not sure I agree with this proposal unless they make it as an infraction to buy and sell it. (not a misdemeanor and certainly not a felony)

> I was going off of the bill that Arnold signed for Cannabis decriminalization that made it still an infraction to have it/use it/sell it but not lead up to a year in jail

That never happened. A decriminalization bill passed one Assembly committee when Schwarzenegger was governor, but it didn't leave it an infraction (it had a system of commercial license for growing and selling), and neither it nor any other made it out of the legislature to his desk.

> Nothing about decriminalizing the use of something does that.

Behavioral economics wholly disagrees with that. When you take away disincentives, you increase bad behavior like people selling, consuming, etc.

I agree with you about not ruining peoples' lives over it. Maybe a $5000 fine would be enough of a disincentive.

when Arnold signed the bill decriminalizing cannabis use there were still penalties in place... this is just moving how you punish someone for low-level drug use from jail to a monetary penalty I think.

You are issuing a false equivalency here. The opioid epidemic is largely catalyzed by the fact that prescription rates are boosted because doctors are incentivized with money. Furthermore, opiates carry a physical dependency after long enough, creating a positive feedback loop. As a third point, the prescriptions are usually issued for those who are under intolerable pain and so the path to addiction is somewhat smoothed by the fact that they simply need to take that much of the drug to feel human again. Before you know it, you're hooked.

Psilocybin suffers none of these problems. It would be more intellectually honest to compare it to something like marijuana and its uptake in society.

The opioid epidemic was a direct result of giving out opioids as painkillers.

A better example is smoking. You allow it, you tax it, you educate people about the dangers. Some people still smoke, but the numbers are way down.

So would you rather have substances like this unregulated? Allow black market dealers to sell to minors and people who don't know what they're getting into? I'd rather have substances like this regulated, taxed, and give people who want to use substances like this a chance to be educated on how it will affect them. People are going to use this stuff regardless, how about we make it safer for those who want to partake and society around them. That's why decriminalization is a good idea.

I don't particularly care if more people use it: Their loss, not mine.

If you don't want your kids using it, education rather than (attempts to bring about) eradication.

Do you mean legal/prescription opioids (Access is hardly unrestrained for (say) heroin). Psilocybin is rated "low" for dependance liability, heroin is ranked "very high".

Are they (perhaps psychedelics in general) even that dangerous. In the UK, LSD is a Class A drug despite it being responsible for (at a glance) 3 deaths in about 20 years.

That's my 2cents.

Personally, I think it should be possible to take a harm-reduction test and get examined by a doctor and get a license to possess certain currently illegal substances. (Taken to it's most extreme, that would also include alcohol and nicotine) I also don't think they should be government issued either, but rather by certain regulated third parties, in order to ensure privacy.

I don't know of many places aside from china where taking drugs is illegal, normally it's just possession and sale that is. Normally, the sweet-spot for things like this is decriminalizing possession, but keeping sale illegal. Again, I think this is less than ideal, as it makes it harder to limit sale to children.

For the sake of reference, do you have a strategy to keep your kids away from other drugs? I don't have children, but I expect my plan to involve describing what each of the substances do, and why they might want to avoid them. (or wait until they're older)

Nobody is suggesting prescribing mushrooms for any pain greater than a pulled muscle and covering it under insurance like we do with opioids. If I wanted an opioid recreationally, I'm pretty sure I'd have a hell of a time finding it. The opioid "epidemic" is _not in any way_ an issue of unrestrained access or availability.

Your kids will do many things that you don't want.

And in any case, not wanting your kids to do X is a horrible reason for delegitimizing the use of X by everyone.

I mean, I wouldn't want my kids to BASE jump in wingsuits. But I wouldn't want to see BASE jumping or wingsuits become illegal.

Perhaps a more relevant question would be:

If you found out your kid tried mushrooms, do you think they'd deserve criminal charges and jail time?

Yes, that's an excellent question.

Porn, alcohol, cannabis, do you want to prohibit all that too?

That is opposite of the Portuguese experience

totally agree. also not sure people should be going to jail for it (live and let live) but increasing availability by putting into every corner 7/11 is ridiculous. sometimes I think all this is happening to keep the voting public dumb and docile.

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