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Comment by sizzzzlerz | Hacker News Reader

50 years too late. Of course, 50+ years ago, it was the hippies doing the experimentation. As The Man hated the hippies and the youth culture of the time, they instituted these draconian drug laws we've lived under since making it impossible to determine whether drugs like LSD or psilocybin or cannabis might have beneficial therapeutic effects.

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Meh... 50 years ago psychedelics were overplayed and used in inappropriate settings. Not surprising the backlash.

It looks like this time around the experiments are much more controlled and looking to get hard data rather than just "turn on, tune in, drop out".

At the same time the people who did take it seriously were also unfairly discredited. There was a legitimate theory of the psychedelic state as a "model psychosis" which was simply rejected during the anti-drug hysteria which followed.

The government (CIA) also used psychedelics in all kinds of horrible, torturous ways with their experiments.

Better late than never?

Not much comfort to the thousands (millions?) of people that may have found some comfort in these drugs.

True, but could be millions more.

But a lot of comfort to the future millions of the people who would have had the same frustrating experience as the previous generation who couldn't find the comfort in those drugs due to their criminalization.

Fair enough, but then on the other hand who knows where a continuation of widespread carefree usage of psychedelics would have led us....perhaps to a relative utopia, perhaps to societal chaos that would have resulted in a ban that would have lasted far more than 50 years. Either one seems perfectly plausible to me.

But don't worry, we got those opiates, A++.

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