America was introduced to LSD via CIA's MK-ULTRA program.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra
'to channel youth dissent and rebellion into more being and non-threatening directions' - FBI internal memo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra
'to channel youth dissent and rebellion into more being and non-threatening directions' - FBI internal memo
Without MKULTRA, LSD still hits the US and still causes some cultural tremors.
Subproject 6 of MK-ULTRA involved funding Eli Lilly to develop its own synthesis of LSD. The CIA embarked on this to ensure an adequate supply after finding that Sandoz had produced only 40 grams total of LSD. After Lilly succeeded, the CIA became the main customer, and via various other subprojects funded and supplied researchers that experimented with LSD.
In particular, many counterculture figures first encountered LSD as subjects of CIA-backed experiments, including Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, and Grateful dead lyricist Robert Hunter.
Timothy Leary himself was one step removed, being introduced to psychedelics by a fellow Harvard researcher whose research into magic mushrooms was CIA-funded.
[this is all discussed in Kinzer's "Poisoner in Chief"]
Without the CIA it might have taken decades longer.
Isn't that quite a lot of LSD?