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Comment by girvo | Hacker News Reader

Depends. In quite a few Australian states, any chemical that is similar in effect to an illicit drug is also an illicit drug. Yes it's a ridiculous law. In Queensland:

> The definition of a dangerous drug (s 4 Drugs Misuse Act) includes synthetic or analogue drugs that:

- have a chemical structure substantially similar to a drug in the schedules to the Regulation (or a salt, derivative or stereo-isomer thereof)

- have a pharmacological effect substantially similar to those drugs

- are intended to have a pharmacological effect that is substantially similar to those drugs.

If I recall the legislation correctly, those are OR, not AND.

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According to a travel guide the licking of toads is illegal in Queensland[0] due to its psychoactive properties.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_toad

This gives another perspective to fairy tales.

'Cane Toads: An Unnatural History' (1988) - IMDb : https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0130529/

'Cane Toads: An Unnatural History' : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_Toads:_An_Unnatural_His...

>'Cane Toads: An Unnatural History' site:youtube.com< : <https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/?q='Cane Toads: An Unnatura...>

Is it just psychoactive toads, or can I continue to lick normal toads there?

Just the psychoactive ones. Go nuts with other toads, as long as they are not native though: they have protections too

Bufotoxin : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufotoxin

Toad Toxins : https://www.erowid.org/animals/toads/toads_health1.shtml

> - are intended to have a pharmacological effect that is substantially similar to those drugs.

This one is interesting. So if someone with a 'bad intend' creates substance X, then substance X will be banned, even if it has no actual effect that is banned (and even if someone later figures out that it cures cancer)?

Hardly a ridiculous law. It would be ridiculous if you could evade the law by making trivial changes to chemical composition, which is what was happening before the law was amended.

Except it hasn’t worked. The point of those laws are to discourage drug use, and yet drug use is higher in Australia than nearly anywhere else in the western world, and these analogs are rampant — because their legality or illegality is unimportant to most.

But that's not the point. That's an argument about drug laws in general.

If the purpose of the law is to make psychoactive substances illegal, what would be ridiculous it would be to ban them one by one as they pop up (and they will never stop popping up)

That is, quite interestingly, what Germany is doing with LSD-like substances. They banned, in this order with 1 year between, 1p-LSD, 1cp-LCD, and 1v-LSD. 1d-LSD is currently (openly and seemily legaly) sold in Berlin.

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