Why Are Psychedelics Illegal?
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What?? No! That won't be helpful at all!
Why not start with the discourse at the time they were banned. What was said? Should we take it at face value? Did the illegality emerge once and spread, or did it "evolve" separately, in lots of different places?
Plenty of policy gets passed due to specific, contingent circumstances right at that moment. It often comes down to the judgment of a few people thinking on a very short time-horizon.
Before reaching for some sort of grand dialectic theory, we should at least find out whether the "reasons" aren't wholly contingent. What if we just got stuck with this policy because of some specific set of circumstances, and we still have it due to sheer inertia?
However, you seem to be overlooking the overarching theme of prohibition that goes back many, many centuries in Western culture. There is a lot more to this than simply a modern governmental overreaction.
Jonathan Ott, in his Proemium, says it far better than I can:
" Despite overwhelming scientific and experiential evidence to the contrary, human beings are conceived of as a special creation apart from other animals, and we are enjoined to subdue the world, which is matter. This horrible superstition has led to the despoiling and ruin of our biosphere, and to the crippling neurosis and guilt of modern people (Hofmann 1980). I call this a superstition because when people have direct, personal access to entheogenic, religious experiences, they never conceive of humankind as a separate creation, apart from the rest of the universe. "Every thing that lives is Holy," us included, and the divine infuses all the creation of which we are an integral part. As the dualistic superstition took root in our ancestors' minds, their first task was to destroy all aspects of ecstatic, experiential religion from the archaic ("pagan") world. The destruction of the sanctuary of Eleusis at the end of the fourth century of our era (Mylonas 1961) marked the final downfall of the ancient world in Europe, and for the next millennium the theocratic Catholic Church vigorously persecuted every vestige of ecstatic religion which survived, including revival movements. By the time of the "discovery" of the New World, Europe had been beaten into submission, the "witches" and "heretics" mostly burned, and ecstasy was virtually expunged from the memory of the survivors. For the Catholics, and for the Protestants after them, to experience ecstasy, to have religious experiences, was the most heinous heresy, justifying torture and being burned alive. Is it any wonder that today we have no place for ecstasy?
In the New World, however, the Age of Entheogens and ecstasy lived on, and although in 1620 the Inquisition in Mexico formally declared the use of entheogenic plants like peyotl (see Chapter 1) to be heresy and the Church vigorously extirpated this use and tortured and executed Indian shamans, ecstasy survives there even now. It bears witness to the integrity of the New World Indians that they braved torture and death to continue with their ecstatic religion- they must have been bitterly disappointed in the "placebo sacrament" of the Christian Eucharist, which is a placebo entheogen (Ott 1979b)- and it is largely as a result of the modern rediscovery of the shamanic cult of teonanacatl (see Chapter 5) by R. Gordon Wasson in Mexico in 1955 that the modern use of entheogens, in many respects a revival of ecstatic religion, began. Even though myriad justifications for the modern laws against the entheogens have been offered up, the problem modern societies have with these drugs is fundamentally the same problem the Inquisition had with them, the same problem the early Christians had with the Eleusinian Mysteries- religious rivalry. Since these drugs tend to open people's eyes and hearts to an experience of the holiness of the universe... yes, enable people to have personal religious experiences without the intercession of a priesthood of the preconditioning of a liturgy, some psychonauts or epoptes will perceive the emptiness and shallowness of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition; even begin to see through the secular governments which use religious symbols to manipulate people; begin to see that by so ruthlessly subduing the earth we are killing the planet and destroying ourselves. A "counterculture" having ecstatic experiences in California is quite as subversive (Einhorn 1970) and threatens the power structures in Sacramento or Washington just as much as the rebellious Albigensians or Cathars, Bogomiles, Fraticelli "de opinione," Knights Templar and Waldenisians threatened the power structure in Rome and Mediaeval times (Cohn 1975)."
http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/pharmacotheon/pha...
However, the real credit should go to people like Jonathan Ott, Charles Grob, Stanislav Groff, James Fadiman and Benny Shanon. Terence McKenna too, of course, but I find his views are less appealing and less convincing to the typical HN demographic. There are far more academically credible authors who write deeply about these things than TM.
> There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others. [...] its effect on the degenerate races.
[0]http://io9.com/anti-marijuana-laws-were-based-on-racism-not-...
This in my opinion is exactly right. I do not have wide experience with psychedelics, but I have experienced a few, and the common element among all of them was how much it opened my mind up to new lines of thinking, and these paths were tended lead in directions that were not amicable towards our neoliberal capitalist society.
In mathematical modeling, they say that every model is wrong, but some are useful.
Insofar as psychedelics are dissociatives, they can cause harm by convincing us to discard our wrong but useful models of the world. And I have experienced that when no associations seem significant, all associations gain significance, independent of usefulness.
Our brain works pretty well with our incomplete-but-useful heuristics, and the ability to discover these heuristics and transmit them culturally is one of our central powers as a species. I don't have the perspective of a state to say why exactly they have been banned, and I don't have the perspective of a god to say whether the lubrication of psychedelics might slip us into a greater local optimum. But I do have enough personal experience to say that bad things can happen to an unmoored mind.
Therein lies the problem though. It comes down to mindset. Psychedelics are great for helping people with anxiety, stress/tension and helping them remove dependence on medication, alcohol and so on (my experience) as it helps you step outside the square and play the whole "mind over matter" thing. That being said, if you're an anxious person, there's a chance that being on a "trip" would make you even more so. That wasn't the case for me. I believe in myself, I just needed to see myself outside the square.
I would imagine for Politicians especially, they may be able to discover something within themselves on just that: _themselves_. They're people, like you and I. I'm sure there's plenty out there who have crippling anxiety over something. Undue stress about another thing. Rely on alcohol to get to sleep, and so on.
I used to have the worst anxiety until I tried psychedelics for the first time (many years ago) and I still remember every second from that wonderful journey. I am confident the world would be a better place with healthier and happier people. (note: not everyone needs to if they can face their problems/demons without any help)
I would argue that the reality is that the people who make the laws are paternalistic and view drug use (including psychedelics) as a moral failing. Since they are paternalistic, they believe it is the role of government to fight moral failings, and outlaw drug use. This is the same mindset that opposes goverment funding for birth control or sex education.
Counterpoint: Isn't that pretty obvious even without psychedelics?
Also, if it were obvious that there's a possibility everything you know is wrong, most people wouldn't be living their lives based on the infallibility of one particular book.
If it were obvious the power structures were not based in reality, we wouldn't have an unshakable two-party system.
None of this is obvious to the majority of people.
IMO though, the vast majority of humans are completely absorbed with self interest to get outside of their own head without a little boost.
If true, what this says to me is that a ban on psychodelics is justified if you are interested in maintaining civilization.
Like when economists talk about the Market like it's some oracular weather system instead of a bunch of things people made and do.
This is also the actual meaning behind the "drop out" of "turn on, tune in, drop out" - not to leave all civilization entirely, but to leave /this/ civilization in order to participate in your own.
I think "the status quo" would be a bit more accurate.
Fixed it for you?
So I also think that government prohibitions exist largely to allow governments to assert their authority. If you can't be trusted to follow a simple law like "don't use this recreational drug" then you can't be trusted to follow more serious laws like "don't stab someone in the face".
(Not saying I agree with it. I'm just making an observation.)
Then, the law sticks around long after the (probably flimsy) initial reason is long gone, making it hard (for instance), to get a good breakfast meat with your eggs at Denny's. I suppose this is the likely the origin of customs and cultures in general.
Although it's mostly just inertia. There's little to gain by taking intelligent stances on things. What politician will gain much by appearing to be in favor of LSD? Same for things like seizure laws. Why hurt donors' budgets by pushing back on such laws? And also run the risk of being painted as sympathetic to cartels or terrorists?
All drugs have multiple effects, most of which receive little or no study. Particular effects may be useful, and the others we call "side-effects". The problem with drugs is determining these characteristics, a notably difficult task since individual responses vary widely. BTW, the US FDA considers AE occurrence of >=1% to be "frequent", that is, a major/signficant side-effect of the drug.
Systematic study is extremely laborious. That's the reason therapeutic drugs require such expensive and time-consuming development. Potential severe but rare effects may not come to the fore until millions of people are exposed to the drug. If it comes to light that >=1/10^6 recipients have a fatal response, that may represent too big a risk to leave the drug on the market.
Hallucinogenic drugs are not risk free. Spend a few days in the ED where such drugs are being widely used and there will be multiple instances of panic, dissociative responses and psychosis. This is something I've personally observed. Yes, it's anecdotal, but large, well-structured, placebo-controlled trials have not yet been done.
In the absence of such studies, is it ethical to assert the use of any drug is "safe"? Even if serious adverse effects are "infrequent" (<1%), encouraging people to use a drug (particularly for non-essential purposes) could conceivably result in thousands of people trying it, and consequently a substantial number suffering harm. Such advocacy would almost certainly not meet standards of responsible behavior.
There's not much evidence that psychedelics cause any physical harm to the body or risk of death/overdose, but there is evidence that psychedelics can have lasting psychological effects. I think most of the time (as in my case, personally) the effects are generally positive. However, I think that excessive use (which is uncommon due to the nature of these substances being generally non-addictive) can increase the chance of adverse effects.
HPPD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_percept...) for example is the occurrence of latent "sensory disturbances" that people can experience years after psychedelic drug use.
Anecdotally, a friend of mine had to be temporarily hospitalized for a week or so due to a "psychotic break" that occurred after a year or two of fairly heavy psychedelic drug use. He had been otherwise mentally sound and physically healthy leading up to that point, and to this day he believes that the psychedelic drug use either directly contributed to the meltdown or otherwised exacerbated some previous unknown condition. Thankfully he's been mostly fine ever since.
I don't think that this evidence is reason enough to ban psychedelics. I think there is some genuine benefit that they can provide, and that more research should be done so the positive and negative effects can be better determined.
How would you distinguish between lasting psychological effects from psychedelics, and lasting effects from other impactful experiences? (World travel, adventure tourism, cults, psychiatry...)
In other words, do you have any ideas about to distinguish between the lasting effects of the chemical versus lasting effects of the experience?
I will say that I personally think the experiences themselves are powerful enough psychologically on their own to have lasting effects, similar to the effects you would get from other worldly experiences. Psychedelics do differ from "real" experiences in that they are comparatively brief, more intense, and have other unique characteristics (such as ego loss). I think that the intensity of those experiences, if repeated enough times, definitely has the potential to permanently change you psychologically (and potentially negatively). Fortunately, that intensity also has built in anti-addictive properties, so most users would not be endangering themselves in that way.
It's actually a pretty common comment from experienced "psychonauts": that you can have the same experience without the substances, it just takes years or decades of training and quite a bit of per-experience preparation. This is also because, on a chemical level, a number of psychedelics actually just get your brain to do something it'll normally (but rarely) do - the substance you take doesn't actually create the experience, the substance your brain releases/creates/doesn't absorb due to what you've taken does the work.
That all said? In a normal life, by a normal person? Yeah, those three you mention are what I'd expect to seriously differentiate the psychedelic and non-psychedelic experiences.
I think my response is colored by my relative lack of life experience. I agree with you that it is likely possible to achieve a similarly intense experience via activities like skilled meditation, though I haven't done it myself.
In my humble anecdotal opinion, HPPD is not a real phenomenon.
I experienced lots of such sensory disturbances before trying psychedelics. E.g., I clearly remember myself seeing halos around my teacher in elementary school when playing to keep my eyes still (I was really bored) and when discussing such phenomenons with my peers they suddenly noticed them too (and reported not to have noticed them before).
I just think not a lot of people pay attention before trying psychedelics, and after the experience they notice those subtleties and link them to the substances.
Also: self-reported phenomenons such as HPPD are unrealiable. I noticed lots of people are willing (and looking forward to) experience HPPD.
The CIA was testing LSD as a mind control drug under the MKULTRA program in the sixties and seventies. [1]
Gordon Wasson, who was VP of Public Relations at JP Morgan and had close ties to Allen Dulles (head of CIA), introduced Americans to magic mushrooms in 1957 on the cover of Life magazine, a JP Morgan company. This effectively kicked off the psychedelic movement in the US. [2]
Terrance McKenna, an evangelist for psychedelics and the "archaic revival", admitted to being a "bard" and working for the FBI as a background agent. [3]
These points barely scratch the surface, but there does appear to be a concerted effort to promote psychedelics as a spiritual rite of passage or initiation, into a New Age religion of sorts. Similar to how the Eleusinian Mysteries in Greece ushered in the Greek Dark Age, it is likely that the Psychedelic Revolution will be used to usher in another dark age, as a way to get people to accept a new form of feudalism and totalitarian state control.
Just something to think about the next time you drop some acid. Are you really having a "god manifesting" spiritual experience, or being taken on a carnival ride of socially engineered mythology?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra [2] http://www.gnosticmedia.com/public-notice-appeal-to-the-cia-... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj1yFZRmFsw#t=15753
The TM quote is pretty hilarious/strange - "they" either means the government or whatever tryptamine fueled fantasies he encountered in South America.
Could you cite something regarding the Eleusian Mysteries ushering in the Greek Dark Age?
Cicero supposedly said: "Among the many excellent and divine institutions that your Athens has developed and contributed to human life, there is none, in my opinion, better than these mysteries, by which we have been brought forth from our rustic and savage mode of existence, cultivated and refined to a state of civilization; and as these rites are called "initiations" so, in truth, we have learned from them the first principles of life and have gained the understanding, not only to live happily, but also to die with better hope. "
http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/e/eleusinian_myst...
Of course, since I can't read Latin or Greek, I can't really verify that this quote truly was written by Cicero.
Regarding the strain of opinion that thinks modern entheogen advocates are being systematically manipulated by government agents - there might be some truth to it, but I feel like it must be an inadequate explanation.
Entheogens have been used well before modern USA governments. Governments in general seem to expend much more energy trying to prohibit them than they do covertly advocating their use. I just find the whole thing to be very implausible.
Regarding a citation of the Eleusian Mysteries ushering in the dark age, I don't have anything specific other than the fact that they were correlated in time. Since they were mysteries, the curators of which went to great lengths to guard their secrets, facts are hard to come by. Substitute Eleusis for Egyptian magic rituals, the Roman imperial cult, or other state religions, and I think you'll see similar patterns.
But I think it's useful to ask, why did these mystery religions use occulted knowledge? Why keep knowledge from groups of people, if not to keep them in the dark as a means of controlling them? Are these mysteries not akin to the noble lie which Plato discussed in The Republic?
Myths, combined with psychedelic drugs, which provide emotional catharsis and grandiose visions, are an effective way to /mystify/ people. Mysticism, by way of confusing, offers a means to control an individual by providing an opportunity to substitute or suggest the reality the hierophants want their initiates to believe.
This is the opposite of the scientific discovery, reason, and the challenging of traditional authority that marked The Enlightement.
I'm curious if you are at all familiar with the theories Micheal Hoffman discusses at his website egodeath.com
His ideas are extremely difficult to summarize, but they are of great relevance to the issues we are discussing (Eleusis, Egyptian mysteries, Roman state religion, Plato, myths, mysticism, etc)
http://egodeath.com/emperorworshipjesusfigure.htm
http://egodeath.com/index.html#_Myth-Religion_and_Mystic
http://egodeath.com/#_Entheogen_Diminishment_Fallacies_1
This intro page is his attempt at explaining his theory in broad terms: http://egodeath.com/EntheogenTheoryOfReligion.htm
He would probably answer your question "Why did they keep knowledge from groups of people, if not to keep them in the dark as a means of controlling them?" by saying that, while political control was, of course, a real thing in those times, the original function of mystery cults was actually to initiate participants into true knowledge of the transcendent through the use of ritual and entheogenic drugs.
You also might find this interesting: http://csp.org/experience/experience.html
Have you had a unity/mystical/transcendent type experience with chemicals or other methods?
> Given that the Empire used entheogenic mystery-religion initiation to dominate socially and oppressively, Christianity used mystery-religion initiation to emancipate/liberate ... The religions of Jesus and Caesar were in a battle over the meaning and application of mystery-religion initiation. It's a battle about what to do with the fact of mystery-religion initiation. [1]
Perhaps there were mystery cults with the best of intentions, such as the Gnostics for example, who would have had good reasons to conduct their initiations in secrecy to avoid persecution. And perhaps psychoactives can be used for "short path enlightenment" as Watts would say, as well as for political control.
What gives me pause for concern is the evidence of deep involvement on the part of the CIA with the drug counterculture. This is the same agency with a history of overthrowing democratically elected governments, conducting heinous psychological experiments on Americans, and not to mention torturing and murdering people around the world. They're simply not to be trusted.
Yet we find the fingerprints of the CIA all over the origins of the so-called psychedelic revolution, even carefully crafting the terms and definitions in which to frame the discussion:
> In the early years of research into these drugs, psychology researchers and military intelligence communities sometimes called them, aside from “hallucinogen,” by the name “psychotomimetic” –which means psychosis mimicking. The word hallucinogen, “to generate hallucinations,” came just a few years before psychotomimetic. The same year that psychotomimetic was created we also saw the creation of the word “psychedelic” – which means “to manifest the mind.” The last stage of this etymological evolution, as we’ll see, was the word “entheogen” – which means “to generate god within.”
The word "entheogen" was a creation of Wasson and Ruck [2], which has the intended effect of framing discussions about psychoactives as spiritual phenomenon. Like Leary said, it's all about set and setting.
Jan Irvin, a researcher in this field who I quoted above, has said that "mysticism is the tool of tyrants". It's hard to find cases in history of mysticism liberating individuals with so-called true knowledge. Usually, it's been the opposite: rational, scientifically-based discovery has been the liberator from superstition, ignorance, prejudice, and authority.
I'll definitely check out csp.org since this is an area of interest for me. And I'd be happy to talk about experiences via an email discussion with you at donald dot ness at gmail dot com.
[1] http://www.egodeath.com/SocioPoliticalResistanceAsThematicLa... [2] http://www.gnosticmedia.com/Entheogens_WhatsinaName_Psychede...
Hush drug for the poor, it ain't.
I'm thinking the keyword is "unexpected". People who took psychedelics behaved in an unexpected and unpredictable fashion. When it was a few Native Americans and University researchers, no big deal. When it became a large percentage of America's young people dressing up funny and doing weird things (i.e. anti-social from the perspective at the time)... well, that's a different matter and steps _had_ to be taken! Western civilization hates and fears the unknown.
So as usual with these types of things (terrorism, communism etc). everything got all blown out of proportion and the person who screamed "Fire" the loudest got the most air time while anyone who dissented was highly suspect and had trouble staying employed. You know, the usual nonsense that seems to repeat throughout history.
There probably was a (very small) seed of reality at the base of the hysteria. Twisting everything around can on occasion produce undesired side effects along with whatever benefits are claimed. The idea of drugs for extra powers of perception is not new. Psychedelics have been used for thousands of years. While I am in full agreement that they may on occasion lead to individual realizations which can be useful, if psychedelics were a magic answer for creative thinking, then it would have been a tribe of jungle natives sailing over to greet the linear thinking palefaces rather than the other way around....
Should psychedelics be legal? To that I answer... what are laws when time and space are expanding? (real answer... I don't know. I guess I don't care either. But I don't think people should be criminally prosecuted for drug use. I believe I would be wary of mass commercial availability. Not for the masses I think.)
As to your later points though, in a magic mushroom study "Eighty per cent of the volunteers reported moderately or greatly increased well-being or life satisfaction." [1]
Also in regard to european conquest of the americas, it seems to be more a sign of who was good at fighting and spreading than who was most creative or some other more universal measure (if there is such a thing).
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/...
The idea of psychedelics for mind expansion is not new nor is it novel. But as civilization became complex, the idea was largely discarded or relegated to arcane corners (and on occasion persecuted). I'm saying I believe there is a reason this happened and in those societies in which it didn't, complexity didn't develop.
There may be benefits for certain people at certain times and places. But I believe psychedelics are not a magic bullet for out of the box thinking and enlightenment which everyone should take. Not if we want to the trains to keep coming on time.
The funny thing is that this book was published in 1987, 8 years into Margaret Thatcher's rather violent domination of GB. But why let facts come in the way of fantasies rooted in the size of very old clay statues?
I thought this was Hacker News not reddit.
No. Psychedelics are illegal because they make you want to run in front of an oncoming bus because its headlights sound like tchaikovsky and the wind tastes like blueberries.
According to http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/nationwide-t... , about 0.4% of the US uses a hallucinogen each month. According to http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-con... about 60% have had alcohol in the same month.
Thats a ratio of about 150. Let's round it up to 200.
Nearly 88,000 people die from alcohol related deaths per year (see http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-con... ).
Thus, if the risk factors for death related to hallucinogens is higher than that of alcohol, I would expect to see about 440 such deaths per year.
10,322 died due to alcohol-impaired-driving. Using the same ratio, I would expect to see about 50 such deaths related to hallucinogens.
I have failed to find deaths of the sort you described, which make me doubt that there's a simple causal relationship between the number of fatalities and the prohibition of a substance.
Given that an average LSD dose is 50-150mcg and because of the "Cascade effect" nature of the drug, LSD is often not measurable in the blood even when someone is heavily under the influence. And even in the cases where it would be detectable if they tested for it, LSD is not included in coroners' postmortem tox-screens unless it is specifically suspected. Movies and TV get this wrong frequently.
Basically, I'm saying that since it isn't routinely tested for (and is often undetectable anyway) the published statistics have no reason to be accurate.
But really, how much more common (even after adjusting for frequency of overall usage) are "Hey, watch this. Hold my beer" deaths than any deaths from LSD? My estimate is "a lot."
For example, methods besides chemical traces might determine the cause of death. Friends of the deceased might provide information about the circumstances of death, additional drugs or paraphernalia might be in the pockets of the victim, or in the immediate surroundings.
In addition, if it were true then there should be a lot more people who are injured in similar circumstances. The medical personnel at the hospital may learn some of the background context when asking for details about what happened to cause the injury.
I've read that when people are admitted to the hospital, if drugs are mentioned, they are required by law to report the admission as "drug-related". The person admitted doesn't have to be actually taking any drugs him/herself, much less be in the hospital because of any action on such drugs on their body or mind, nor even do the people around them have to be on any drugs. They only have to be mentioned and then the admission is considered "drug-related".
Furthermore, when people die and they're on illegal drugs, it's rare for there to be just one drug involved. Usually it's a cocktail mix of chemicals (often with alcohol being one of them, and one of the drugs that's most dangerous to mix with others).
Finally, lots of drugs are metabolized very quickly or don't show up in the standard tests that are done during an autopsy (if an autopsy is actually performed).
The bias you mention should only serve to increase the number of reported cases. As I cannot find statistics anywhere near the scores of people who must die each year for the OP's comments to make sense, nor historical justifications for the prohibition of psychedelics that were based on scores of people dieing per year, your comment doesn't seem relevant. That is, I could ignore it completely and still draw the same conclusion.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/drugs_caus...
(That list has alcohol at the top but that's mainly due to drunk people's tendency to harm others via driving or violence)
Here's a link to a Vice documentary talking about it: http://www.vice.com/video/back-from-the-brink-heroins-antido...
This is why there are many opiate overdoses where the victim is starting to use after being sober for some time - they go back to the doses that were normal for them not so long ago, but their body chemistry has changed enough that those dosages are now dangerous.
See for example http://www.bmj.com/content/326/7396/959
Citation please.
Anyhow, here's one result to get you started: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4043895
Assuming it were true, it's odd that a PubMed search finds no more recent papers. No matter what, it's decidedly rare. Renee Honaker was believed to have died of LSD overdose. Quoting http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201303090102 :
> Downey said his initial research into LSD-related fatalities hasn't returned very many reported cases. ... Dr. Elizabeth Sharman, head of the West Virginia Poison Center, hadn't researched the case but said it's the first fatality she's heard of in the state.
Later, "It turns out that the drug Todd and Reneee Honaker took was not LSD after all; according to WSAZ, a TV station in Charleston, it was an NBOMe compound." - http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobsullum/2013/10/21/lsd-did-n...
NBOMe is also a psychedelic, so falls under the general thesis of the OP. However, it's a rather recent psychedelic so cannot be the reason for the prohibition.
I would worry more about the folks taking stuff like Ambien and Chantix, as those are legal and have well documented horror stories of people losing complete control.
On a statistical, national population level, it does appear that alcohol (legal but regulated) is more dangerous to more people than LSD (currently basically illegal). But individual personal risk profiles vary, and I would not want LSD (for example) to be more readily available to the general public than the typical prescription medicine. If a knowledgeable physician prescribes LSD for an indication for which LSD is generally safe and effective, then fine, but I hope nobody I hope to see live a long and healthy life is obtaining LSD from current "street" dealers or "friends."
On the broader topic of drug regulation, there does appear to be some cross-national evidence to suggest that "decriminalization" (which is not the same thing as "legalization") may help set up systems of drug regulation that actually reduce societal use of dangerous drugs, which sounds like a very good idea to me. Let doctors figure out what each kind of drug is good for, and let most members of the general public pursue a typically sober lifestyle and pursue new ideas and creative thoughts in their right minds.
And I have seen people do this when they weren't on any drugs (not to mention those who were drunk on perfectly legal and socially respectable alcohol).
Sometimes it was because they were listening to an iPod and were so wrapped up in their own thoughts and the music that they were oblivious to what was going on around them.
Perhaps we should make iPods illegal.
Very few psychedelics render you capable of that level of dissociation from reality while also leaving you capable of locomotion.
Seriously, if you take anything that inhibits your natural sense of danger and alertness, you should not be out on the streets. This kind of idiotic behavior by tourists is the excuse a conservative government in the Netherlands has abused to crack down on psychedelics, where previously there was absolutely no problem at all.
If irresponsible behavior is a reason to ban stuff, why don't we just ban alcohol, cars, electricity and sharp objects, all of which "cause" more harm than XTC.
Here's someone who died because of walking into traffic while wearing an iPod: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1091715/Girl-14-kill... . Should we prohibit listening to music while walking?
Personally, I think both indicate that we should change social policy to reduce the number of cars, have strictly enforced speed limits, and place primary responsibility for such incidents on the driver of the vehicle.
The Dutch road traffic engineer Hans Monderman is famous for his "shared space" urban design, where he would "walk backwards into dense traffic to demonstrate that drivers would be sufficiently human not to run him over."
Why shouldn't we draw that conclusion, instead of prohibiting Ecstasy?
Had they actually provided an argument, statistics, or a new insight on the problem, I doubt they would be so downvoted.
Even at very high doses of psychedelics, you remain perfectly aware that you are tripping, and if anything, tend to be extra-careful not to do anything that might be foolish in "the real world", which you understand you still physically inhabit.
On the other hand, dissociative drugs, as the name implies, are drugs that make you lose your grip on reality (and even your own personhood). These are the "jump out the window" drugs. They can be dangerous in that sense, and also in the sense that they can be used to cause harm to others - for example, as date rape drugs.
They are not always hallucinogenic, are not the same thing as psychedelics, and they tend to be extremely unpleasant so they're not even particularly popular.
If done responsibly, about the worst thing that a person on LSD will do (assuming no pre-existing mental instability) is lie down, cry, and have a very bad time waiting for the bad trip to be over. No murderous rampage or flight attempts.
Perhaps it's not common to have such problems, but your key word is responsibly. It's misleading to suggest that an uncontrolled bad trip can't easily result in tragedy. (Not that that's good justification for making it illegal.)