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Comment by viach | Hacker News Reader

Everything is driven by incentives. Alcohol is cheaper for mass production and guaranteed to have good sales and huge consumer base. A state can't just allow to flow money away by legalizing a new drug which is, probably, mutually exclusive to alcohol.

It might be sound cynical, sorry if so, but again, everything is just driven by incentives.

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I'm sorry that you're being downvoted, but you're right. You can't easily sell, and make a profit on acid (you certainly can't patent it). The dose needed for a trip is so small; a "therapeutic" dose is even tinier.

The prison sentences for those who have produced acid are also completely ridiculous.

Huh?

Sandoz Labs produced pharmaceutical LSD for decades

I think the parent comment is saying that a person taking legal lsd would spend significantly less money than a person drinking. Lsd and alcohol would compete for recreational time. Lsd would reduce the tax income from alcohol sales, and not be able to replace it with new tax revenue. Governments have a fanical incentive to keep lsd illegal.

>Governments have a fanical incentive to keep lsd illegal.

They'd be taxing the sales of everything used to create it, they could require testing for purity, they could create an LSD tax, etc just like with tobacco and alcohol (and if they'd get their head out of their backside, THC containing products).

Take into account that alcohol comes in comparably big bottles and you need quite some of it to get drunk (if you are a professional of course). So, it is easier to control it's traffic than hunting for small pills which can be in everyones pockets.

Drug manufacturing isn't easy, most of the stuff is controlled and purchases of quantities of many required compounds will often immediately involve one or more government agencies, generally the DEA.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEA_list_of_chemicals

I see this a lot at work, I clear international freight through Customs (and any other applicable government agencies) for a living, and a lot of tariff numbers will flag as potential precursors by DEA.

I always thought the therapeutic dose was higher than the recreational dose.

I think they mean microdosing[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_microdosing

Also, alcohol is trivial to make at home.

Marijuana is trivial to grow at home, yet it's still illegal in most of the world.

To be fair to the person you replied to, homebrewing alcohol was illegal in the US until 1978 and you still aren't allowed to distill at home (for human consumption) without a distilled spirits permit or (for fuel use) a federal fuel alcohol permit.

Yet, a Hillbilly Flute can be purchased legally online and delivered to your home.

https://www.hillbillystills.com/hillbilly-flute-s/190.htm

Well duh obviously everyone that orders a still is going to use it in their living room as an art installation.

The presumption is that they have the permit.

Unlike firearms, the seller does not have to verify it.

You don't need a permit to buy a firearm unless it is something that is NFA and then you just need to go through the appropriate tax stamp process which is effectively a permit for that specific firearm/destructive device/accessory.

My point is that with alcohol is easy to circumvent the ban. And, just guessing, even easier than growing weed.

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