Denver voters consider next frontier in decriminalizing drugs: magic mushrooms
latimes.com
latimes.com
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19069200
Interested in seeing what discussion emerges this time!
This really punched me in the feels.
It also sucks that Justin preferred not to share his last name for fear of retribution for possessing some fungus that occurs naturally in the wild.
Kinda reminds me of the veterans in the US who have been trying to lobby the VA to stop being jerks about cannabis. They say it helps with their PTSD. Currently we don't have a lot of scientific certainty on whether it actually does help or not because of the lack of research. But even putting that aside, it's still kinda absurd that we dictate which naturally growing plants people are allowed to possess / cultivate / smoke / ingest / whatever.
To put it another way... if heroin were legalized tomorrow, would you start shooting up? Is illegality the best (or only) way to prevent addiction? Look at tobacco. It's legal. Most people don't use it, because it's addictive and dangerous, and usage rates have dropped considerably due to social pressures and awareness campaigns.
When proposing (or defending) a solution, make sure you ask yourself if it actually solves the problem.
And the more you crack down, the more valuable this market becomes. Market forces don't care that something is illegal. Supply and demand.
So here's the question for you... even accepting your premise that some portion of the population is kept from using drugs simply because they are illegal, does that justify the social cost incurred by the creation of the black market?
There's also the fact that a lot of black-market stuff only ever happens because it's illegal, which is why countries that decriminalize prostitution and take a treat-instead-of-prosecute approach tend to see benefits in addition to fewer people in jail for the associated crimes. I know there are people that won't break the law, but there are also people that make beaucoup bucks breaking the law because they're good at it. Which one wins out? No idea. Not sure if there's a way to get data on that beyond the enforcement vs. addiction studies.
There is plenty of room to discuss the effectiveness/costs of making drugs illegal and how (potential) enforcement should be handled. To whit, your response is answering an entirely different question than the one you originally posed!
EDIT Response to below. I can't understand your position. How is the data we do have even remotely relevant? Its a study about enforcement and so presupposes a population that is excluded by the very question posed...
And no data that I'm aware actually points towards prohibition having significant effect.
Its 'Are there people who would do drugs (and become addicted) if they were legal but will not currently because they are illegal'.
What the discussion here is missing is that it would be nearly impossible to abuse mushrooms, and that mushrooms seem more likely to get people out of other addictions than push them into one.
And if you claim it does reduce overall rates, can you provide a source? Portugal's drug addiction rates have plummeted since they decriminalized: https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/04/18/524380027/...
There was an article/interview that I can't find discussing the lack of available services for those with addiction in a Scandinavian country post decriminalisation. I don't remember it all that well but the jist was that now that drugs were legal, it was a personal problem rather than a societal one; the 'treat it as a medical condition' aspect of the broader argument never actually materialized with services for those in need
It may or may not be illegal to jump off a cliff, but even if the government declared it explicitly legal tomorrow how many more people will start doing it?
This is simply not true.
This notion that legalizing something will incur less addiction is simply not reasonable.
Opiates are available by prescription and that is huge source of addiction, even within that controlled environment. Doctors in Canada now give out the absolute minimum - I had major dental surgery and got two pills. Just two! Because it's that addictive. US doctors are changing as well.
Consider what full opiate legality would mean: it would be infused into tobacco, cola, alcohol, food etc. and available within an arms reach with billions in advertising behind it.
Even though a good number of people wouldn't use it, and another chunk can actually 'handle their drugs' - for a significantly high group of others it would be destructive. If only 5% of our population fell prey to this, and instead of having jobs they were stealing, in hospitals, rehab etc. - it would be a huge crisis.
I'm always surprised by how people put this issue mostly in the context of the here and now, and don't consider how so many things would transform.
Vaping (i.e. repackaging of nicotine) is blowing up massively in the US, Juul is hiring 2000 people just in SF and their business is exploding! This is not because vaping 'tastes good'. It's because it's deeply addictive, and as an ex-vaper (short period) I suggest there's a whole host of problems we haven't seen yet.
No good will come of a generation re-addicted to nicotine.
So yes, Portugual et. al. took a different path on hard drugs, but this is nothing remotely near legalization. It's still a health problem, they just deal with it differently.
Mushrooms are a different thing, they are not remotely addictive, so they're in a different class. That said, they are actually dangerous. Also the inherent demand is just not nearly there. Some degree of de-criminalization ought to be considered surely.
If opiates were legal, it seems unlikely to me that any significant number of people would need to steal to support their habit. I lived in Canada for a few years, and had a friend up there who worked in an ER there. All of the drugs they used had price tags on them as an incentive to remind the staff how much government money they were spending when they used them. He told me the giant syringes full of morphine that they used for severe burn injuries were a tagged as a few dollars.
Here in Washington state, legalizing marijuana has driven down the price so much that it's actually hard for growers to turn a profit.
FWIW, I don't use either of them.
FYI - people steal for dope not because it's insanely expensive, they steal because their lives are ruined and that's their recourse.
It's really nary impossible to make the case that we should be make super cheap opiates widely available. There is a reason (actually many) that it's essentially illegal everywhere on the planet wherein there is any form of governance.
The odd thing about the 'drugs debate' is how many very intelligent people have trouble with seeing the societal implications. To me the very debate itself is a fascinating social phenom, and I wonder what drives people to make odd arguments.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the demand for Chinese goods (particularly silk, porcelain, and tea) in Europe created a trade imbalance between Qing Imperial China and Great Britain. European silver flowed into China through the Canton System, which confined incoming foreign trade to the southern port city of Canton. To counter this imbalance, the British East India Company began to grow opium in India and smuggle them into China illegally. The influx of narcotics reversed the Chinese trade surplus, drained the economy of silver, and increased the numbers of opium addicts inside the country, outcomes that worried Chinese officials.
In 1839, the Daoguang Emperor, rejecting proposals to legalize and tax opium, appointed viceroy Lin Zexu to go to Canton to halt the opium trade completely[8]. Lin wrote to Queen Victoria an open letter in an appeal to her moral responsibility to stop the opium trade.[9] When he failed to get a response, he initially attempted to get foreign companies to forfeit their opium stores in exchange for tea, but this ultimately failed too. Then Lin resorted to using force in the western merchants' enclave. He confiscated all supplies and ordered a blockade of foreign ships to get them to surrender their opium supply. Lin confiscated 20,283 chests of opium (approximately 1210 tons or 2.66 million pounds)[10].
The British government responded by dispatching a military force to China and in the ensuing conflict, the Royal Navy used its naval and gunnery power to inflict a series of decisive defeats on the Chinese Empire,[7] a tactic later referred to as gunboat diplomacy.
And I'm not expecting China to invade the US if the US legalized opium.
We can already look to a few countries --I think as success models (Portugal, Netherlands, Czech Republic) -- that have done this and see how the demand curve for more dangerous substances has trended.
All of those countries legalized Weed, LSD and Magic Mushrooms, Amphetamines, and natural opiates at the same time (I think).
I think the US states will legalize them in categories, and I'll be interested to know if by having LSD legal, if that significantly impacts the market for illegal MDMA. Or if by having MDMA legal, if that significantly impacts the market for opiates.
We should already have some data on that by weed being legal in a lot of the US for a year or more now.
DARE clearly didn't work. But whatever we did for smoking worked very well. Only 10.4% of 18-24 year olds smoke cigarettes.
If you start selling it, or make it a business, then it becomes everyone's problem, and government should step in. If/when weed is legalized nationally, the big tobacco companies (plus a few others) will smell money, take over the market, and advertise like crazy; then we'll have to set some limits.
Drugs have to be regulated on a case-by-case basis. Caffeine is available to anyone and untaxed. Alcohol is only available to those over 21, and taxed. Tobacco, 18 and heavily taxed. Opium? I'm not comfortable with selling opium becoming a legal business model. Like most things in life, drug legalization is a compromise.
Advertising ban for Marijuana seems similarly reasonable, although then Alcohol advertising should also be banned.
We've already been down that road with heroin, and it wasn't pretty: http://www.businessinsider.com/yes-bayer-promoted-heroin-for...
How about synthetic opium? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Timeline._Overdose_deaths...
But it is a damn shame that opioids are effective and inexpensive for pain management. But at this point they are all but unobtainable. I understand why, it's just a shame.
You can buy opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) plants in the US. Just go to your local home and garden shop. https://www.lowes.com/pd/1-Quart-Potted-Oriental-Poppy-L6366...
If we discovered a strain of plant which produced current synthetics like heroin or LSD, would that change one's answer? What if it produced fentanyl, or something else potent enough to blur the line between drug and poison?
"Plants are wrong to regulate" and "plants are too hard to regulate" still seem like possible answers there; after all we don't regulate straightforwardly highly poisonous plants. But it's an instructive starting point for how much weight we're actually giving to natural origins, as opposed to safety or difficulty of regulation.
But we have effin' tobacco industry killing hundreds of millions and still running strong within our society and acting like they do some moral business when in fact they operate one of worst amoral slow-kill-and-extract-money-for-it business in history of mankind.
We have alcohol industry who causes misery on global scale. When some pharma drugs are found to be damaging to the patients, there is strong reaction including banning, investigation, fines, regulations etc. But alcohol gets all the free passes there are and some more. How many people do you know personally that ruined their lives purely due to alcohol addiction?
All politicians realize this. Practically none have the balls to stand up to those economical behemoths, they know they would probably lose. Once in distant future our offsprings will look on our era and wonder what the heck was wrong with us for many reasons, be it environment, poverty, flat-earthers and so on. Self-righteous folks who feel they are above everybody else to dictate morals and beliefs. And treatment of some well-known substances will be one those wrongs done by few upon the rest.
It may or may not be the best policy, but I disagree that it is "absurd." If we were a nation of sovereign citizens, that would be one thing. But we're not. We live in a society, where we have undertaken quite extensive obligations to each individual. At least where I live in Maryland, we have committed that we will pay for the medical care of each individual below 133% of the poverty line. Unlike some states, we do not deny benefits based on drug testing. Indeed, if you're a drug addict, we'll even pay for your treatment at the public expense.
In that context, it is not "absurd" for the government to regulate (1) behaviors that could cause people to become a liability to the welfare system; (2) behaviors that could prevent people from being productive contributors to the economy that funds the welfare system.
For example, as to marijuana, which is a relatively mild drug in the grand scheme of things, there are studies showing cognitive impacts even after the high wears off: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/marijuana-may-be-...; https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-pot-really-d...
> A slew of studies in adults have found that nonusers beat chronic weed smokers on tests of attention, memory, motor skills and verbal abilities, but some of this might be the result of lingering traces of cannabis in the body of users or withdrawal effects from abstaining while taking part in a study.
Likewise, studies show that the number of people trying marijuana for the first time doubled after it was legalized in Canada: https://www.businessinsider.com/since-pot-was-legalized-in-c....
Maybe, on the balance, legalization is still the right call, at least for marijuana. But, in a developed welfare state, the government has the right to make that judgment and legislate accordingly.
These are the downsides to welfare programs that people should really be focusing on. It's not the cost in terms of dollars, but in freedoms that it calls into question.
Society must pay for drug rehabilitation -> society should consider banning drugs.
Society must pay for medical bills -> society should consider limiting behaviors that have a high probability of incurring medical expenses.
These activities are hazardous. In a scenario where the government manages health hazards as a consequence of managing health, government regulation of ice climbing or paragliding is logical.
Again, this was hypothetical, not extant.
If the campaign to eliminate driving from most people's lives is successful (whether through autonomous vehicles or public transit), I expect activists will move on to the next most dangerous activity. Something will always be the leading cause of preventable injury/death and certain people will always be enthusiastic about banning whatever it is.
I think involving prevalence in the equation is ethically inconsistent. A society that bans drugs on the grounds that they incur a medical cost and provide limited utility should clearly ban base jumping as well.
Search and rescue is just one element of saving somebody who has hurt themselves climbing or base jumping. If I understand the policy GP described correctly, if the participant were poor enough, their physical therapy might be covered. Certainly surgery would be.
Differences between how we treat adrenaline junkies and drug users today are really just details. The broader moral question remains: Does a society that has committed to providing medical assistance to those who cannot afford it not tend towards limiting behaviors that tend to cause unusually high medical bills?
We are a nation of sovereign individuals. That is the entire foundation of the American governmental system which was founded upon the enlightenment idea that we each have unalienable rights, and that the main purpose of government is to protect those rights, and that the government does not grant rights! That the government derives it's power from the people is a huge reason America is, as the British defector Christopher Hitchen's called it, "the last revolution that stands a chance"[1]
I cannot stand this "social contract" approach to rights. In almost every area it is used to abuse the people, not to actually protect them, it is an abrogation of the fundamental principles of the American system, and if we truly adopted it we would only be increasing the speed of decent into authoritarian totalitarianism.
If we were to allow for that approach, there is literally nothing the government couldn't regulate as long as they decided it was in the "interest of the public health". Do you not see the slippery slope of your approach?
Not to mention the fact that the drug war was never actually about protecting the people in the first place, when we have the former aide to Nixon openly admitting that it was essentially the new version of Jim Crow laws. Beyond that, all the evidence shows that prohibition doesn't work, and is impossible to enforce, and it does nothing but enrich and empower the worst kind of people (like cartels and their CIA black-budget drug-gun running butt-buddies)
Furthermore, this approach is essentially an endorsement of thoughtcrime enforcement. By declaring that people who do drugs do crime, and therefor drugs = for criminals in the future, the establishment has essentially codified thoughtcrime into the system via bad law and precedent.
Let me say this absolutely clearly: The government has absolutely no right to tell me what I can and can't put in my body. I and I alone can make that determination. Whether that's lettuce, or sodas, or cannabis, it doesn't matter.
Now having said that, I think the majority of the debate about the drug war is actually a great opportunity to teach the Constitution. So if you look into it, it is mostly the abuse of the Commerce clause that congress has used to get legislation like this passed, but when talking about the health justification position it is worth remember that is a states level issue not a federal one for the most part, and it is actually the states that claim "health" reasons for their drug policies, even though as said before health wasn't the actual reason at all. So to me it is a great opportunity to talk about states rights vs federalism in a modern context. (Such as can the states pass laws that are in opposition the the Constitution? There is actually a lot more debate on this subject than you might expect. One particular writer who takes a position on that I disagree with but find well put and worthy of understanding is Kevin Gutzman. [2])
So in essence, I vehemently reject almost every sentence you just posted, and I strongly warn other Americans against so quickly acquiescing to such an egregiously Un-American position.
States have the general powers to regulate both the public health and public morality. Regulation of socially-harmful vices was always understood to be within the scope of state regulatory power. Adultery, for example, was uniformly illegal in colonial America, because of the potential threat to the social order. There is nothing that suggests the Constitution intended to deprive states of that traditional power. (To the contrary, those powers are expressly reserved to the states.) Regulating the ingestion of psychoactive substances falls squarely within that power.
I happen to agree with you to a degree--I don't think the Commerce Clause permits the federal government to make drugs illegal. (Indeed, I think the whole scheme of federal systems for public health are constitutionally questionable, since that is something historically committed to the states.) But the state governments inherited all the powers of the British sovereign, save for those delegated to the federal government, and subject only to peoples' individual rights. While those individual rights aren't necessarily enumerated in the Constitution, they must exist and be recognized. Nobody has ever recognized a general right of individuals to "do what they want with their own bodies." Drug prohibition is fair game for the states.
More instructive is to ask “why make something illegal that people use in private,” to which one might reasonably counter “because there are externalities in the form of societal costs.”
This, then, gives us a much more interesting question of “how can we reduce the societal costs of people using substances in unhealthy ways?” Indeed, banning a plant has proven not to be an effective way of accomplishing this.
So what is? I don’t know the right answer for the US, but there are examples of other more successful approaches. In particular, it’s worth looking at Portugal’s decision to treat substance abuse as a public health problem.
How so? I find that to be a reasonable argument, outside of "invasive species" issues.
How can anything be illegal? It's all just atoms.
Psilocybin (the psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms) is non addictive, has many health benefits, and huge potential for personal growth. Much like ayahuasca, I very much doubt people would abuse magic mushrooms recreatively like they do with cocaine, or even alcohol.
If we want to make a drug illegal it should be alcohol anyway. It causes huge numbers of deaths every year. It’s probably the most dangerous drug we have.
Clarification: All I m trying to say is that it's dangerous to say "there is no addiction risk in mushrooms. They are totally benign". If you say that it will be really easy for opponents to find counterexamples. Instead we should say they are not more dangerous than already legal things so there is no point in prohibiting mushrooms while other similarly harmful things are legal.
But that's so vague it's basically meaningless. If you drink enough alcohol to be hung over is that "abuse"? Only the most uptight people would say it is. Similarly, any recreational activity that costs money and results in that money being unavailable for things that other people consider a more important could be considered "detrimental to one's self" and therefore abuse by that metric. I assure you the guy who lives in a trailer with a Corvette in the driveway is not "abusing" cars, he's making a decision that reflects his priorities.
All I m trying to say is that it's dangerous to say "there is no addiction risk in mushrooms. They are totally benign". If you say that it will be really easy for opponents to find counterexamples. Instead we should say they are not more dangerous than already legal things so there is no point in prohibiting mushrooms while other similarly harmful things are legal. .
Even with hard drugs such as cocaine the vast majority of people take it recreationally without falling into an addiction.
I don't have a good link to share right now except for these Joe Rogan shows with Dr. Carl Hart:
I mean... that's what I hear.
LD50 is also a non-issue as it requires you to eat near your own body weight. Again... that's what I hear anyway.
But people could fall from a lethal height or walk into traffic while they are tripping.
They can be a Friday or Saturday night of fun for far cheaper than a dinner or a movie. When you have lowered mental inhibitions and expanded visuo-spatial reasoning, it's quite a bit of fun thinking about things.
You really get to know what you've got half way in, get a good feel for the effects and can build of model of how the trip will span. I'm an designer and enjoy painting and writing during a trip. I also love watching cable TV, just flipping around and avoiding the news. Personally, TV is such a perfect compliment if you want to look at things from a new perspective. I know people who only do it in the woods and stuff. That's great, but give me some cartoons and some toy commercials.
There are other fun things you can do once you've got a feel for your batch including tossing a bit of booze, weed or coffee into the mix. The few times I've done this (with 3 to 5 year gaps) have been huge wins for my mental health, art and my relationships.
There is some research going on, although not enough IMO. Here's a good introductory article:
https://www.livescience.com/48502-magic-mushrooms-change-bra...
It definitely could help someone's depression. But not everyone benefits from SSRI for depression, so the anti-depressant effect might be limited.
Weird how taking that same fresh mushroom and sticking it in a dehydrator converts it into a felony to posses.
Main point, fucking hard to od on mushrooms when you can barely walk ;-)
God bless the LA Times for getting the terminology correct. Keyword: "decriminalize". My temper is max'ed out on the mainstream media saying "legalize" (mainly when reporting on pot), as if Uncle Sam and the federal level laws suddenly disappeared.
For all intents and purposes "legalized" qualifies as fake news. It is intentionally misleading. And if it's negligence, that's not any better.
I had only the most positive and enlightening experiences with it, but can imagine many folks with deep unresolved issues (ie messed up childhood) could have a very very bad experience. Quality supervision and proper preparation should be mandatory.
First of all there is being outside in the countryside with a group of friends, roaming the hillside. If the pressures of assignments are getting to you this is a welcome change of scene. Particularly if there is some 'rave style' party that this expedition is in preparation for.
Next there was the challenge to one's perceptions about finding the things. Initially it looks like a hopeless task. But you find one, then you find another and soon you get to be very good at seeing the things.
From a very small age we get told that wild mushrooms are going to kill you. So how do you know that you are picking the magic ones and not the ones that will be as deadly as getting bitten by a snake?
But, you don't end up picking the wrong ones, they are all good.
Coupled with that is the other things that can get you - creepy crawlies, bugs that you can't see, that sort of stuff. Again, not a problem in reality.
There is obviously proof in the pudding, however, before getting as far as tasting some slimy mushroom brew heavily flavoured with something like Ribena you have accomplished at least three things that you can feel good about - physical exercise, having a laugh with friends and doing something that you thought was beyond you in just collecting the things.
So I think that this legalisation thing should insist on a 'trip' each time, a trip outdoors to do all of the prep. No commercialisation of the product (selling the things to people who don't do the outdoors bit). A great time can be had, and going outdoors to pick some other herbs, e.g. some rosemary or some chives, is never going to be anywhere near as fun.
Keep it recreational and spirits will be lifted. This privately - non sociable, non-recreational - partaking of the active ingredient on one's lonesome just isn't going to hit the mark in quite the same way. Might as well micro-dose alcohol at home alone (half bottle of wine with a meal, every night) if that is the approach. This is alcoholism, which contrasts with alcohol enjoyed out and about in socially engaging experiences.
I fear Denver are well meaning but going to get this wrong.
Psychologically, it appears that introverts prefer mountains and forests, while extroverts prefer plains and beaches.
"RIP everyone has their demons" really doesn't accurately describe that "someone laced their cocaine with fentanyl"
testing kits exist, but a regulated purchase would fix this
Legalization would most likely mean sanctioned avenues for legal sales, as well as obviously being totally legal to possess and consume at your own home, above age 21.
Does it? It turns a cost-centre for the state into a profit-centre.
Speeding tickets are handed out like candy during the safest road conditions when it’s also the safest to be outside. I never see speedtraps around a sharp bend when it’s dark and rainy, where they would deliver the most safety value.
Text of the ordinance can be found at: https://www.denvergov.org/content/dam/denvergov/Portals/778/...
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19756067
> https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/190994/imperial-launches-wor...
When you say "high speed trains and clean energy" the nation that comes to mind is China. China is not exactly an example of a progressive and/or liberal (in the traditional sense) society.
America has its problems but it's not like the rest of the democratic world is earning a gold star atm either. And it's not like it gets better outside the democratic countries...