Chemically-derived ones like LSD and MDMA are not in-scope in Wiener's bill, even though (like mushrooms) they aren't the kinds of drugs that cause social problems.
That's a problem. The other side of that is "natural = unstandardized doses" That's become a big problem with cannabis, which has had huge potency upgrades through both selective breeding and concentrates.[1][2]
The good thing about cannabis used to be that the effective dose and the hazardous dose were a long way apart, and it was hard to reach the hazardous dose. That's changed.
[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201116092241.h...
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/states-legalized-...
And while psychosis occurrence might raise with increased doses, at least LD50 for THC in rodents (I know, but hard to ethically gauge it in humans) is 1250mg/kg orally. If we naively scale this up to humans, a 70kg human would have to consume 90g of pure THC, which is an incredibly outrageous, absolutely unattainable amount.
I would also argue that you need less cannabis to reach a desired state if it is of higher potency. Do people measure their intake in "joints" which are consumed no matter what the actual potency is?
So yes strong stuff is a godsend, can get to desired state more effectively and cheaply too.
The only situation where it may make sense is some inexperienced users taking too much, which can easily happen with random illegal street stuff. But its like arguing to ban hard liquors since people can get shitfaced from few shots easier than from beer. And indeed getting properly wasted increases the chance to develop some bad mental issues, father of one of my ex gf ended up with lifelong schizophrenia just from excessive drinking at ripe age of 18.
Which is all true but response is - don't do stupid stuff, as it should be with other drugs. Legalizing and having easy available advice / guide is much better.
I don't really see how legalization could work, let alone in an area with extremely high numbers of people with mental illness. Shrooms + mental illness go together like ammonia and bleach. And how many 'flying deaths', particularly of otherwise healthy young people, will society accept before backtracking? One can already easily envision the commercials for the inevitable proposition over it.
Everybody thinks they are immune to psychotic breaks until they do enough psychedelics and have one. This could be you some day.
Everybody thinks they are immune to psychotic breaks until they do enough booze and have one. This could be you some day.
Seems quite petty of a response.
They were specificaly asking about people wanting to fly.
“And I have never, ever seen anybody try to fly.” was the direct quote. Doesn’t say anything about psychotic breaks or deaths.
Better decriminalize murder in that case.
if murder were legalized, the murder rate would jump, a lot.
It's not that uncommon. If you don't believe me, volunteer for a medical tent for any music festival where psychedelic use is rampant. You'll get psychotic breaks all night.
One of you is saying "mushrooms" and the other is saying "psychedelics".
If you get caught in this state at a music festival and restrained (sometimes restrained to a gurney if you are caught in a camping festival like Electric Forest and they determine an ambulance is not necessary) you get sent off via an ambulance where they will feed you benzodiazepines/antipsychotics and hold you at a hospital until you are back to reality, incurring a pretty hefty ER bill. This is not just a bad trip that someone can talk you down from. This is literally losing control of your entire being. It's like having someone else at the wheels. Short term psychosis.
That's how ALL big music festivals in the US handle psychotic breaks. They won't let you just go around the festival endangering yourself and being a menace to the rest of the patrons.
Not a great place to be in, but I've seen it enough times to know it's not uncommon.
Whether that's because people whose brains are more likely to experience psychosis are more drawn to music festivals, whether it's a supply-trust or dosage issue (lower purity or higher potency compounds, goers don't know what they took or how much), or that prior exposure to cultural lore like "drugs makes people want to fly" is influencing them, I don't know.
Age is also a known factor - schizophrenia is more likely to emerge around the age of maturity, often associated with stress and drug use (again, may be wet roads causing rain - people self-medicate even if they don't realize it), even though, statistically, "college" would be just as likely, and it often happens as a psychotic break, the way you described. I worked with young musicians for many years and saw it happen regularly enough - no psychedelics required.
So the fact that everything you mention happens is evidence, but of what? That's a harder question to answer.
I’ve witnessed it. There might have been weed and/or alcohol involved as well.
Or massive sleep deprivation powered by stimulant abuse over a protracted period of time.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/bali-death-ong...
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manches...
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/man-jumped-from-balcony-afte...
This is the scene, no idea what movie though.
However, I have very real concerns about the effects on those who might have dormant mental illness. I have no proof but the idea that many kinds of drugs could amplify or accelerate a mental illness scares me in a mass consumption setting.
If there is no evidence for this then I’d like to know. If there is evidence for this then we need to really make it clear and educate people of the risk.
My 2 cents, out of all the psychedelics, Mescaline seem to be the most gentle on the human psyche.
But less is more. Mescaline is very potent.
It’s not something you want to be doing too much of anyway, it’s exhausting.
I believe there's another source (S. Pedro cactus?) that doesn't have the tribal history, and is thus considered a reasonable alternative for legalization.
It is, in my opinion, a very strong argument for not allowing unsupervised mass consumption. And to be fair, most people are not using psychedelics in a way that maximize their psychological healing, but rather just to trip. On the flipside, smoking and alcohol are legal, and that causes a lot of early deaths every single day, even to people not smoking or drinking.
1 person died and she was 17 so could not legally purchase mushrooms.
> Sale to minors is prohibited, and an information leaflet should be given with the mushrooms (apparently, the French girl had not bought the mushrooms herself, but older friends).
I think we live in era when driving a car and dying is ok while taking mushrooms and dying is not ok.
The first has one or two orders of magnitude more deaths than the second case.
Who decides what is a necessity and what is not? I would say that the harm rate could be a good indicator what a society should tolerate and anything that is less harmful what is tolerated should be legal.
But it is fine to put those "otherwise healthy young people" to prison for having a pack of shrooms in their pocket, amiright?
And when they are out (probably not as healthy or as young anymore) let's ruin their lives further by preventing them for ever getting any reasonable job for having a criminal record...
The Netherlands have been under the control of a conservative government for a long time now, and countless coffeshops have been forced to close under their rule. Banning magic mushrooms is just par for the course.
The Netherlands used to have a well-deserved reputation for tolerance, but that's been wearing away for decades now, with intolerance for everything from Muslim immigrants to drug users.
I say this with a heavy heart, as someone who absolutely loves the Netherlands for everything else it has to offer, and who used to be in awe of how tolerant and accepting they were.
There was a day when the Netherlands could be justly proud of leading the world in tolerance, but that time is over.
They just aren't as tolerant as a society as they used to be.
I think that is a mistake; both have a long record of use and potential in clinical trials dating back since the 60s in Harvard, with a litany of uses from depression, alcoholism, schizophrenia etc... We all know the work of T. Leary, but the research needs to be continued and implemented at a time when we seem to need it more than ever.
Thus why this portion is perhaps the most notable take-away and not the decriminalization aspect (Oakland, like Denver, has been decriminalized for sometime):
The bill also would require the California Health and Human Services Agency to study the therapeutic use of psychedelics and submit a report with its findings and recommendations to the Legislature.
Oregon was supposed to lead the way in this respect but has effectively stalled out in the process despite having first mover advantage [0], so I hope CA takes over in it's place. Colorado doesn't seem to have any interest in anything other than decriminalization, either.
0: https://www.opb.org/article/2023/08/23/psilocybin-mushroom-t...
My comments were from memory - I had heard about this bill earlier (but it was also only plant medicine then).
I claim an absolute, perpetual, inviolable, and inalienable moral right to my own person, and modifying it in any way I see fit: tattoos, scarification, branding, piercing, amputation, et cetera. I get to choose what medical procedures I will or will not accept. I get to choose when my life ends voluntarily. I alone choose what I will or will not eat, will or will not insert into my bloodstream.
The same moral authority that tells me I cannot put a specified substance into my bloodstream must also simultaneously claim the authority to tell me that I must swallow a certain substance or food, which is ridiculous. Does looking at it in that way reveal its absurdity to you?
If you don't have the moral basis to force me to eat a food I do not wish to eat, you do not have the moral basis to deny me the right to ingest a drug I do wish to ingest.
https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-...
My question was not what authorities the state claims - my question is about upon what moral or philosophical basis such claims would be morally justified.
I am of course aware the state claims such authority. I am also aware that they further claim the authority to enslave me, arm me, ship me across the earth, and execute or imprison me if I then refuse to commit murder on their behalf. The state claiming an authority does not actually provide them with a moral basis to do so.
On what reasonable moral basis could anyone claim the authority to strip someone of their rights to final disposition over their own body?
On a societal scale, if there is a 1:N chance a drug or experience will nullify your health and you will require society to bear the burden if your existence, then people in society may decide to attempt to minimize such occurrences through law.
If N is 6 as in Russian Roulette, society might control what you might accidentally put in your body. If N is 1,000,000 like in driving, we might regulate the requirements of who can do that to minimize the chance of harming others and drive N higher.
If N is 10,000 (for certain drugs) in terms of the chance you might overdose and harm yourself sufficiently, society might say the benefit isn’t worth the risk and ‘control what you do with your body.’
With alcohol you can maybe put more spirits in a drink than you claim. It is not tasteless.
It definitely is harder to notice after the first couple normal alcohol content drinks.
I've played pranks on my friends like this in the past. They were surprised how wasted they'd been the night before.
That's risky. I and millions and others have natural hallucinogens growing in the fields in North America and much of Europe. Henbane is pretty hard to completely eradicate, is likely one of the most naturally powerful hallucinogens and is also one of the most dangerous to use as a recreational drug safely as potency varies wildly in each plant. Every part of the plant is a drug and every part of the plant is deadly. It can be and has been used in the medical field but has been replaced with chemicals that are safer to measure.
People doing MDMA or LSD generally don't harm others.
People smoking do. Bartenders, card dealers, etc have their workplaces polluted by cigarettes.
I'm sure there are plenty of libertarians who are against social restrictions on smoking. There are others who tolerate the restrictions because they personally find it to be a nicer experience to not have ambient smoke out in the world. Nevertheless, nobody thinks you should be thrown in jail for carrying cigarettes.
Taxing cigarettes and decriminalizing psychedelics are not the same conversation. Your attempt to conflate them is a fallacy.
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Moreover, that aspect of the conversation is just about the "should"s - should someone be free to alter their minds/bodies in the privacy of their own homes/if they aren't causing undue harm to others?
The strongest argument for legalization is to defund the cartels. Countless dollars are being funneled to violent mobs because of the remnants of Richard Nixon's paranoia. The world would be a better place if the cartels were less powerful, and the drug problem would be much less of a problem if drugs weren't adulterated.
The cartels and fentanyl poisoning are causing trauma for way too many families. There aren't enough pros to Nixon's line of thinking to justify that.
The argument is not important, the motivation is what matters, because that tells you where things are going to go. People that want drug legalization want to do drugs, not defund their supply, that is just a convenient argument.