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Comment by astura | Hacker News Reader

This is a ridiculous question, the answer is because they are illegal, of course.

Most of us aren't willing to risk a criminal record.

I wouldn't know where I could obtain such items even if I wanted to buy them. If I can't buy something off the shelf at a retail store I'm simply not going to bother.

Sketchy/unknown supply chain.

Tons of us have jobs (or whole careers!) that we could lose for using illegal drugs, many of those jobs include random drug tests. I'm not risking my entire fucking livelihood without a damn good reason.

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What a world. It feels like this is one of those topics where one side of the tracks has a vastly different worldview to the other.

During the UK conservative party leadership contest earlier this year I thought it was pretty telling that all or most of the main candidates admitted to using illegal drugs at some point.

But sometimes I forget that there are people out there who are significantly more risk-averse or perhaps more generally obedient and who see the world very differently.

I guess my point is that I didn't think it was a ridiculous question.

I'd also point out that your use of "most" here might be unwarranted. There are surveys which demonstrate more than half of respondents admitting to the use of illicit drugs [1].

[1] https://www.drugabuse.gov/national-survey-drug-use-health

> But sometimes I forget that there are people out there who are significantly more risk-averse or perhaps more generally obedient and who see the world very differently.

The criminal justice system treats people very differently, depending on who you are.

In my lived experience, for middle class white kids, using cocaine, heroin, LSD, etc. was just a right of passage, that for the most part, didn’t effect their future prospects for college or a career.

Meanwhile, black and brown kids caught with a dime bag ended up going to jail.

In the US, white and black people use drugs at about the same rate, but black people are convicted at much higher rates and with longer sentences: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5614457/

Possibly controversial view, but I think that these differences are largely socioeconomic in nature. The US justice system does not treat poor people kindly, regardless of their skin color or ethnicity. "Justice for all who can afford it" and whatnot.

(Of course there's also the odd case of a racist judge, but my impression is that it's by far the exception.)

Edit: The paper you linked does raise some very interesting questions about the motivations behind various government policies, however.

>The US justice system does not treat poor people kindly, regardless of their skin color or ethnicity. "Justice for all who can afford it" and whatnot.

Yes, income is a factor, but that still doesn't explain why blacks are 13% of the population but the prison population is nearly 40% black.

Nobody seriously disputes the clear racial bias in the criminal justice system.

I guess my reaction to your post is the closest I'll ever come to the feeling of envy.

IRL, I don't know a single drug user or way how to get them. I looked it up online several times in different countries. Result always the same, a good likelihood of your delivery getting intercepted and you getting fucked as a result. Everyting about this annoys me.

Try considering the notion that some of us value our mental well-being greater than we value our careers, and that what we do in the privacy of our own dwellings is our business and no one else's.

Hardly ridiculous. Marijuana is still illegal at the federal level but might as well be considered legal at this point.

No one is going to go to jail because you purchased a small amount of drugs. If you are the seller it's a different story.

That's obnoxiously ignorant. Even in high school one of my friends had their house raided and electronics, other valuables consfiscated. A dealer scapegoated him, and he had been searched and found with a pipe with resin in it. He carried the pipe to be cool. He had smoked weed less than 5 times at that point. I have other friends with criminal records for minute quantitites of personal use marijuana.

I’ve been to jail for a small amount of MJ. The chain of custody and the purity/contamination of a plant is much easier to track, then something like a powder a pill or liquid. There is literally no circumstance where I would trust something that wasn’t a plant on the black market

Everyone has a different risk tolerance. People use LSD, ketamine, and shrooms all the time.

Ehrlich's reagent will tell you if you have something in at least the same chemical family as LSD, which rules out almost all of the dangerous substances that are sometimes sold as "LSD."

If you are a person of colour in America you're definitely at risk.

> An estimated 137,000 people are in prison today on a basic drug-possession charge. Approximately 65% of them sit in local jails, and most of them have yet to actually be accused of a crime. These unfortunate individuals may have to wait months to get their day in court because of their inability to post bail. https://www.marijuanabreak.com/going-to-prison-for-marijuana...

It isn't risk-free, but the risk is low.

Michael Pollen literally wrote a best selling book about taking LSD, eating shrooms, etc. earlier this year.

The risk has a pretty high relationship with the color of your skin.

I'm sorry but "why does something being illegal prevent you from doing it?" is a ridiculous question.

Even if you start with the premise nobody is going to jail (which is blatantly untrue - I personally know people with possession charges), getting caught with small amounts of drugs can ruin the careers of some people, including my own career. Think people who must hold a professional licence, people who are subject to background checks (including coders who work at medium to large companies), people who work with children, people who work in certain safety critical industries, people who hold security clearances, etc. There was an FBI agent who was fired recently for testing positive for thc from using CBD oil, the federal government's position is there's no legitimate reason to test positive for thc.

You're referring to your own risk tolerance that is unfounded in most modern workplaces. If you work in tech absolutely no employer does drug tests for employment. People talk about microdosing LSD openly.

Michael Pollen wrote a best selling book about his experience with psychedelics earlier this year. Tim Ferris funded a research institute at John Hopkins and talks about it on his podcast all the time.

Unless you work for the federal gov't you're catastrophizing the risk.

There is still some risk. I think you're forgetting that (1) illegal drugs are hard to obtainn--no walking into CVS--and (2) illegal drugs are not reliably sourced--I trust mass manufactured marijuana far more than I do from the sketchy guy on the corner.

That's not necessarily true, especially in consulting firms. I am drug tested somewhat regularly.

"If you work in tech"

You think there are no tech jobs in consulting firms?

What is tech? If you mean sv startups perhaps. But pretty much any embedded sw shop will at least test at hire on.

google, amazon, fb, netflix, apple...these are not "startups"

I don't know where you get this, maybe start-up land. I have been a dev since the early '90's and all kinds of enterprises do drug testing. Most utilities, health-related organizations, defense contractors, transportation businesses and even many large manufacturers routinely drug test potential employees. Most only test for pre-employment screening, but random testing is still used in many places.

Most recently, three years ago, I was tested for a contracting gig at a Wisconsin power company for a web dev job.

modern tech cos do not drug test

Sometimes I think startup land is a different planet, around here pretty much every company who would hire a software developer drug tests AND background checks unless maybe it's a really, really small company. Some even do the hair drug test instead of the piss test.

I've ALWAYS been drug tested before starting a software job. I've been drug tested working for the most benign of industries. I actually had a friend who quit weed so she could get a better paying job.

That sounds like a different planet to me. I don't know of any big tech company, let alone startups, that drug test. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case for dev jobs in older industries but it doesn't seem to be the norm any more.

> No one is going to go to jail because you purchased a small amount of drugs.

What world are you living in? Drug possession is one of the most common reasons for being arrested.

https://www.bjs.gov/content/dcf/enforce.cfm

I consider myself extremely risk averse, and would probably agree with you on most things.

But with unbeatable Major Depression you are dealing with a significant suicide risk, and the risk to your legal status may be worth the benefit to your overall happiness.

People who want to replace a little Prozac with Psilocybin can afford to wait 10-15 years for treatments to become standardized, legal and affordable.

I spent 15 years assuming that I would kill myself someday, and basically all of life was a delaying action to put suicide off as long as possible. So for me taking the plunge into illegal self treatment was worth it. A yearly Ayahusca session for me does more to combat depression that years of therapy and legal medications.

> People who want to replace a little Prozac with Psilocybin can afford to wait 10-15 years for treatments to become standardized, legal and affordable.

Be very careful making that transition, you can get serotonin shock.

Supply chain is a definite concern with LSD, and other synthetic drugs. They are often incorrectly dosed and sometimes laced with other chemicals.

Naturally grown drugs like marijuana, mushrooms, even peyote and it's cousins are easy to identify, easy to dose safely and there is almost no risk of supply chain tampering.

Counterpoint: the amount of psilocybin in a mushroom can vary by 5x, even of the same strain, depending on growing conditions and time of harvest.

On the other hand, if you buy 250mg of powdered psilocin or psilocybin from a reputable vendor, you know exactly how much you are getting.

"there is almost no risk of supply chain tampering"

Hell no. There are sadly a million ways to increase the weight of hash with neutral to very harmful chemicals.

Also just the buds of marijuhana can be poisened. Low quality ganja mixed with artifical thc(or something else for example happened quite a lot in recent times)

Fortunately, you do can grow your own ...

Psilocybin mushrooms were decriminalized in Denver, CO this year.

Also Oakland CA.

> Tons of us have jobs (or whole careers!) that we could lose for using illegal drugs, many of those jobs include random drug tests. I'm not risking my entire fucking livelihood without a damn good reason.

It is ridiculous how "square" things have gotten in 2019 when you read things like this on a forum called "Hacker News." Have you ever heard of Mondo 2000? Or that time The San Francisco Examiner sent a reporter to SIGGRAPH because they could not believe the claims that so many people in computer graphics were doing LSD? Things were different in the Valley in the early 1990s.

Seriously, the responses in this thread are just embarrassing. It's like listening to purity-ring wearing adolescent virgins talk about sex.

Most of the people I know wouldn't think twice about dropping some l or shrooms on a weekend with some ketamine and a hit of DMT, and we all have respectable jobs and families. It's just not that big of a deal.

"It's like listening to purity-ring wearing adolescent virgins talk about sex."

You're an ignorant jerk. Anyone who hasn't been caught won't think it's a big deal. Anyone sitting in jail because of it would disagree. Seriously, fuck off with your holier-than-though "adolescent virgins" schtick because some people don't want to just have a bender with illicit substances that aren't standardized.

This has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with people who want to do shrooms or acid on a weekend, it's about people looking for therapeutic relief! I can't fathom the ignorance that leads to someone like you conflating medical treatment with nonchalant recreational drug use. They aren't the same, and I'm not looking to get high and have a fun weekend. I'm looking to relieve mental illness you ignorant ass.

A buddy of mine, who rarely drinks and dislikes marijuana, grows his own psilocybin mushrooms. It wasn't difficult for him to learn, and he bought kits online. The legal risk is minimal to non existent unless you are dumb enough to sell them.

The health risks aren't bad either. Psilocybin mushrooms have distinct properties which can be tested for with a white sheet of paper in a super simple test.

In other words, fortune favors the bold.

You realize that drug tests don't detect psychedelics. And it's ridiculously easy to grow your own psilocybin mushrooms (the spores for which are legal to purchase in all states except California, Georgia, and Idaho) if you're worried about the supply chain.

That’s so interesting because it is so different from my experience. I find it incredibly easy to find access to these items and if I move to a new city all I end up doing is going to a local bar and chat up people to find new sources.

This is not a ridiculous question. If you are just willing to suffer without exploring illegal alternatives, so be it. But it is not ridiculous to take a small risk to explore a compound that can alleviate suffering.

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