It really is kind of insane that we have a law that criminalizes possession of a plant you can literally pick out of the grass in your lawn in some places.
The deeper insanity is that physically speaking, magic mushrooms are one of the safest known drugs to man. Nobody's dying from magic mushroom overdose, flying into violent rages, dancing until they pass out from dehydration, or robbing stores to pay for their next mushroom fix. Along any metric you'd care to name, psilocybin is a much safer drug than, say, alcohol.
I think I still agree that they're certainly safer than most other drugs
My opinion is that those people could end up there via different ways (alcoholism, mental shocks like car crash or other mental traumas), but this is definitely one way.
It is extremely powerful substance and can take you very far from common reality, not something most folks are prepared for. I know I was not, and having every single aspect that makes me me taken away, both on physical and personality level was by huge margin the most intense experience of my life.
I believe it should be legal (maybe with some huge warnings/education about potential consequences), but from all I've heard LSD is just synthetic variant of the same - why would that be illegal then? If that is OK, what about mescaline, that's also just a plant? Ayahusca? Cocaine is also a plant extract, and so is heroine (with some chemistry on top of that, but coca itself has quite an effect on its own). A bit slippery slope...
No link found between psychedelics and psychosis:
https://www.nature.com/news/no-link-found-between-psychedeli...
Cannabis approaches that point where if it were any easier to grow, everyone would. But it's not quite there yet.
Water requires organization but is plentiful enough to be mostly free for typical amounts. Companies that do the organization are heavily regulated and the people running it aren't getting rich.
Nobody wants willow bark (not totally accurate, but let’s accept it) because aspirin was formulated. That’s not a defense of your argument, it’s the hole in it. Why do you think that mushrooms, unlike willow trees and a thousand other natural sources for what would eventually be synthesized, won’t be made into a superior form by a drug company? Legalizing one opens up opportunities for the latter, which then displaces the old.
Why do you think mushrooms are somehow the exception?
The same mechanics are at work in the current push for cannabis decriminalization and ultimate legalization. It takes the building of a tax base in order to get politicians to take the cause of cannabis seriously. Political economics neatly explain everything about the world we live in.
We already have plenty of regulated drugs which are used recreationally. Adderall, narcotics. You're saying psilocybin isn't special compared to other drugs. You'd be right, except for the fact that there isn't already an industry that exists to cultivate and bring psilocybin mushrooms to people, simply because anyone can go out and pick them themselves. There already was a cannabis industry before legalization, albeit an illegal one. Where is the illegal mushroom business? It's just random people doing it for side profits. Nobody's getting rich off of it.
Because nobody can get rich off of it, there isn't a political economic reason for legalizing it. There might be a public-interest reason, but that means the public has to actually generate more political capital than the anti-drug crowd generates from saying it's horrible in order to get it legalized.
I'm not saying nobody can make money off of psilocybin or that research can't be done. I'm saying that because nobody is already getting rich off of it, its political heft is forever going to be limited to 'mere' public interest.
Cannabis required a public-interest campaign before it could be regulated in one state, because the existing black-market industry had a vested interest in cannabis remaining illegal. Once the regulation enabled taxes, now we're seeing more regulation and legalization.