12 ms·

California Could Legalize Magic Mushrooms in 2018

250 points by whatyoucantsay 9y ago

tptacek 9y ago
An alternate perspective could be that California is lagging the other western states on legalization exactly because of overreaching campaigns that don't acknowledge the conservatism in the middle and south of the state. A previous cannabis legalization effort in California, IIRC, proposed to make cannabis consumption a protected employment class.
- chipperyman573 9y ago
  Wouldn't making it a protected class just be a roundabout way of making drug tests illegal? Are there any other side effects of doing this? Other than not being able to fire people for talking about how lit they got the night before, I suppose.
  - gnopgnip 9y ago
    Talking about the night before is already protected in CA. You cannot take any action against an employee in CA for off duty conduct.
    - buxtehude 9y ago
      If a drug test result is positive you can certainly be fired for what may have been "off duty conduct" - ask any commercial pilot.
- metalliqaz 9y ago
  I thought California was lagging behind because their first try included a crazy monopolistic corporate giveaway to a handful of established companies.
  - DanCarvajal 9y ago
    Wasn't that Ohio?
    - metalliqaz 9y ago
      Possibly, I don't really follow this stuff.
    - vanattab 9y ago
      Yes it was.
  - zjaffee 9y ago
    That was Ohio, however, there was the belief that medical cannabis providers in California wanted to keep their control over the system where legalizing would have made things more restrictive.
- santaclaus 9y ago
  > conservatism in the middle and south of the state You don't even have to go to the middle or south of the state. Look at the current gnashing of teeth over marijuana dispensaries in San Francisco.
jrs95 9y ago
I mean I was pretty happy out here in the Midwest but you guys might pull me in with this one
- komali2 9y ago
  As a Wisconsin transplant, how are you happy when you must shovel, and shovel, and shovel. If I had stayed for one more winter I would have gone on a shovel-armed homicidal spree.
  - jlgaddis 9y ago
    Here in Indiana, I have a four-wheeler with a plow. I have one for my truck too, for when it gets really bad.
    - elliottkember 9y ago
      I mean I was pretty happy out here in San Francisco but you might pull me in with this one
      - mikestew 9y ago
        Well, then, here’s some more: if you have some free time, you can make that truck pay for itself plowing parking lots. Lots of friends of mine with 4x4s did that when we lived in Indiana. Might not pay for the truck, but it was reported that it easily paid for the plow and hydraulics in one winter.
        jlgaddis 9y ago
        Yep, before I got the plows, we paid a guy $75 to come and plow our (long, winding) driveway every time it was bad enough to need it. It took him about 20 minutes and ours is just one of several that he'd hit every time. He also had contracts with several businesses to have their parking lots cleared.
        elliottkember 9y ago
superplussed 9y ago
I wonder if this could be the birth of the legal microdosing industry?
- myrryr 9y ago
  I hope so.
- komali2 9y ago
  How so? Isn't microdosing done with LSD?
  - pantalaimon 9y ago
    The difference of effect of LSD and magic mushrooms is not very large. Classic psychedelics have a lot in common, the differences are mere nuances.
    - orthecreedence 9y ago
      Have you experienced this first hand? For me, mushrooms are either on or off. From what I know about LSD dosage (I haven't taken it) is that it's much more variable.
      - pantalaimon 9y ago
        Do you mean that they either work or don't? I mean the Psilocybin content can vary depending on how the mushroom grew and was stored and deteriorate over time. Whereas with LSD, even when the tabs are weak, there is at least something on there, at least that'd be my explanation. My experiences are several years in the past, so memory is hazy, but LSD always felt 'sharper' with fractal like infinite details on textures and the like. Mushrooms on the other hand felt more 'organic', but the head space was quite similar. I tried microcoding with mushrooms once and I think the effects were similar as to what people are describing with LSD microcoding. However the whole microcoding seems to edge between placebo and real response, almost by definition.
  - 9y ago
jpfed 9y ago
I think this is going to lead to a lot of unforeseen problems. Brick structures will be much more vulnerable once literally anyone can take one of these and become twice as large. And once you've had a mushroom, if you get the right kind of flower in your system you'd be an unstoppable fire-throwing menace. Then it doesn't matter what kind of gun control is on the books. I just don't know what they're thinking.
- clay_the_ripper 9y ago
  You got me
- oneshot908 9y ago
  Well how many times must this be explained? One pill makes you larger, one pill makes you small, and the ones that mother gives you don't do anything at all...
  - whyenot 9y ago
    I'd be on the lookout for a hookah-smoking caterpillar
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- webkike 9y ago
  And don't get me started on poison mushrooms!
- wallace_f 9y ago
  >It is distinctly possible that California voters could be the first in the nation to decide Your thinking might be more worldly than you realize. This--Nintendo--was banned in China until 2015. Now take the cultural stigma of psychedelic use and place it on Nintendo. Is it now any less ridiculous that mushrooms are banned here? 'Tyranny over the individual' was never have a legitimate role of government in the first place. While we're gaining some rights back (LGBT, prohibition), and losing others (privacy, free speech), maybe it's useful to connect these issues.
djsumdog 9y ago
You can currently buy psychoactive mushrooms in stores in The Netherlands. Buying mushrooms illegally from a legit dealer in the US means making sure they have several uniform bags of the product. You want to make sure they're grown safely in a lab or farm. There are too many people who will go out and just pick mushrooms, which is incredibly unsafe. Unless you're an actual mycologist, it's difficult to tell what's safe and what's toxic. There are even cases of mushrooms in the US that are toxic look exactly like an edible food variety in Asia; even down to identifying characteristics like spore prints. Entire families have gotten sick or even died as a result. So from just a safety perspective this would be a good move. Humans used psychoactive substances for centuries, usually under the supervision of a shaman or some type of religious figure to undergo a journey. It's not so different than psychologist today looking to use mushrooms to treat serious mental conditions. We have the advantage today of knowing we're not really going on some kind of cosmic journey, but merely acknowledging how dependent we are on our minds giving us our rational view of the world; and seeing how that can be easily and radically changed.
- ataturk 9y ago
  Is anything real or satisfying ever gleaned from all those so-called journeys or is it just a bunch of utter horse shit? Based on all the druggies I have ever been around, it seems like utter horse shit to me. Plus, they all become good-for-nothing slobs who couldn't hold down a job or a relationship and really I couldn't care if they were taken out back and shot.
- jlebar 9y ago
  > Humans used psychoactive substances for centuries, usually under the supervision of a shaman or some type of religious figure to undergo a journey. I don't have a position on legalizing psychoactive mushrooms, but I don't think this is a good argument. For example, humans also used lead to sweeten wine for centuries, but that's not evidence that lead is harmless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II)_acetate#Sweetener https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II)_acetate#Sweetener I'm sure we could come up with many more such examples.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
MoD411 9y ago
awesome
ataturk 9y ago
I am going to laugh so hard when all these states legalize every drug and then for the next decade or so we end up with millions of people high as kites all the time and nothing of real value getting done! It will be like planet Miranda where everyone got so chill that they all just died! Based on the poor quality of the service sector in Colorado, I'd say that state is already about there and that's with weed alone!
throwaway_kea 9y ago
While they're at it I really wish they would fix the laws around cacti. Federal law bans Lophophora williamsii specifically for obvious reasons, but California bans the entire genus as well. This is dumb because the other member of the genus (diffusa) won't get you high, and is a very pretty cactus, which is legal to own elsewhere in the US.
- whyenot 9y ago
  Both are vey slow growing. It can take 25+ years for a plant to be large enough to produce flowers. This has led impatient jerks go out and (illegally) field collect them to the point where both species are considered threatened. For that reason, I think their possession should be regulated everywhere.
  - orasis 9y ago
    So you want to make them more rare so that people have a strong incentive to harvest from the wild? If you legalize home growing you'll create a larger supply. You should look at the history of Chestnut blight in the US. Due to the blight the US government directed people to chop down chestnut trees by the millions. If instead, they had allowed the blighted trees to continue to live, we may have discovered some genetic mutations that would have allowed the species to survive. Proactive regulation is not always the best move.
    - whyenot 9y ago
      > So you want to make them more rare so that people have a strong incentive to harvest from the wild? No. I think them being illegal to posses is working to reduce field collection. This strategy is used for many other endangered plants (such as orchids) and seems to work. If people want to use psychoactives, then "magic" mushroom and morning glory seeds (or Hawaiian wood rose seeds) have a much lower impact on the environment and people should be steered towards those options by making them legal (most already are; carrot) and coming down on anyone who illegally collects Lophophora with a prison sentence (stick). > You should look at the history of Chestnut blight in the US. First of all, the species is not extinct. In fact, if you live in Silicon Valley, there is a chestnut orchard with some American chestnut trees just a short drive away in the Santa Cruz Mountains. There are many other populations and ongoing work to try and breed resistant trees. Second, trees were cut down to create a biological equivalent of a fire break. The idea was, if there was a gap of 10-20 miles in front of the advancing disease front where trees were removed, then it might be possible to contain the disease. In hindsight, this might seem like a overly drastic measure, especially since it ended up only delaying the spread and not stopping it completely, but based on what was known about the disease at the time, and the huge importance of the American chestnut as an economic resource, it was a risk people were willing to take. > Proactive regulation is not always the best move. Yes, but sometimes it actually is the best move. I believe it is in this case.
oh-kumudo 9y ago
Why Californians so obsessed with drugs? Any serious explanation?
- ravenstine 9y ago
  Because our insufferableness makes us very miserable people.
- cycrutchfield 9y ago
  Says the rest of the country that is currently drowning in oxycontin and heroin.
- cimi_ 9y ago
  They're not 'obsessed': criminalization doesn't work because of many, many reasons I will not repeat here. I think that moving to legalise drugs (harmless or not) is the normal, rational decision to make and the fact that is receives so much push-back saddens me. I would be curious to what lead you to your conclusion? The press is pretty bad at painting this picture as most articles I've seen try to tickle people's sensibilities rather than present objective facts.
  - yznovyak 9y ago
    But criminalization does work. Every time subject of criminalization comes up people cherry pick Portugal as some kind of miracle example completely ignoring Japan, Singapore, Georgia (country) Davao city, South Korea and countless others examples where strict laws (and their enforcement) almost completely eradicated drug abuse. In the US you guys have incompetent people running the show and despite throwing enormous amounts of money you still get abysmal results. You can't be seriously talking that USA has honestly tried to deal with drugs when you have whole genre of stoner movies (Pineapple Express, etc) and when Snoop Dogg alone smokes weed like a chimney. The incompetence in dealing with this is stunning. It's akin to homelessness problem in San Francisco. SF spends ~$30k per homeless per year and the problem only gets worse. Maybe, just maybe, those who are in charge are complete morons? At 30k per year you could rent everyone a room in a nice place. But currently it sure as hell doesn't look like homeless people have 30k worth of goods and services provided to them.
ravenstine 9y ago
After this, I hope that legalizing home distilling is next on the docket. I know it'd still be illegal federally, but you're much less likely to have the ATF bust down your door if the state law enforcement isn't interested in it.
- umanwizard 9y ago
  I hope they don't. It's much easier to kill yourself and others by home distilling than by taking shrooms.
  - ravenstine 9y ago
    Why, because fires? But people who are interested in home distilling are already doing it. I don't believe significantly more people would start distilling at home because it's pretty costly and it's much easier just to buy hard liquor. Admittedly, I don't know the numbers on how many fires are started by distilling every year. Regardless, you can legally distill for fuel purposes, which tells me that the government isn't terribly concerned about potential fires. If you mean that people are going to go blind, well that doesn't happen unless you adulterate your own moonshine with industrial methanol, which would be idiotic. People don't get methanol poisoning from homemade alcohol; that's very hard to do when ethanol is a methanol antidote.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - trhway 9y ago
      > I don't believe significantly more people would start distilling at home because it's pretty costly what is costly here - water, sugar or yeast? or 4 typical cooking pots needed to perform actual distillation? (an old USSR way where non-government distillation was illegal, and thus you couldn't have at home any special hardware for distillation :) >and it's much easier just to buy hard liquor. completely agree. Back in the USSR it was done only because where was an issue with getting the liquor - not available and/or government would price it too high. (Because of tight availability and high price the hard liquor - a bottle of vodka - was basically "liquid money/gold" widely used as payment/barter for various services/goods.) >If you mean that people are going to go blind, well that doesn't happen unless you adulterate your own moonshine with industrial methanol, which would be idiotic. unfortunately happened a lot during the USSR "almost Prohibition" in the mid 198x. Methanol, insecticide, whatever other killer chemicals - just to increase the "kick" per given volume - really reminds the today's situation with added fentanyl in heroin in US. That craziness was pretty much gone once the "almost Prohibition" was lifted.
calebgilbert 9y ago
I live in California and this is the first I've heard of this. Legal shrooms not happening this year or any other year soon, imho.
setgree 9y ago
I think this is a sign of civilization advancing. More on the subject would be difficult to add without creating a throwaway account.
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  I share both sentiments expressed in this post... I've had powerful, formative experiences that pushed me in new directions such that my values, viewpoints, and knowledge of the world were shaped in ways that feel increasingly significant as I grow older and pursue a fundamental understanding of the world around me. Much of this stems from endeavors that occurred entirely separately from any psychedelic experience, but I find it hard to imagine that I would have explored certain topics and ideas with the same enthusiasm, without those formative experiences. A few of the topics that I'm referring to are the nature of consciousness and identity, theories of the mind, cognition, the structure and relations of ideas and concepts in the brain, and how such things change over time. I believe it has also had other significant positive personal effects in terms of how I relate and empathize with others as well as process difficult personal issues, but this is harder to describe. I don't think these effects happen automatically -- rather, psychedelics are a powerful tool that, with great care and responsibility, can likely be very beneficial for many individuals. Like any powerful tool, it can be misused or abused, but as humans it is our job to make the most of the positive benefits while safeguarding and being responsible about the negative effects. I do think that many people today don't realize the extent of the positive benefits, and have an exaggerated view of the potential harms. Ideally, society can carefully and judiciously integrate the positive benefits these substances provide, as we learn more about them in the coming decades.
SCHiM 9y ago
I think this is great. Like many other things in life, when taken in moderation and responsibly, psychedelic drugs can be a great heap of fun!
garyclarke27 9y ago
Sensible Move - Magic Mushrooms are a truly wonderful very safe natural drug which does not harm others, like violence inducing Alcohol. Some suffer bad trips especially Women, but like a bad dream soon passes, with no harm done. One positive of the damp weather in Wales UK is abundant Magic Mushrooms in the Welsh Valleys in September to October. I took tens of thousands age 17 to 21 then grew out of them, fond memories though. The most I laughed in my entire life was watching Airplane on MM literally rolling on the floor creased up, Steve Martin films like the Jerk were also good on MM. Idiotic UK government made them an illegal Class I drug.
- palimpsests 9y ago
  Citation needed on women suffering more "bad trips" than men.
overcast 9y ago
This would actually make me want to live in California. Everyone should experience hallucinogens in the life, particularly magic mushrooms. It's truly a life changing experience, for the better. Some of the best nights of my young life were spent with friends, and mushrooms.
- intrasight 9y ago
  I'm in too!
dr_bloodmoney 9y ago
Which is good to hear, because currently it is one of a handful of states where ordering spores is illegal.
devdad 9y ago
Asking as someone not living in the US. Are mushrooms common and generally seen as ok for consumption in California?

An alternate perspective could be that California is lagging the other western states on legalization exactly because of overreaching campaigns that don't acknowledge the conservatism in the middle and south of the state. A previous cannabis legalization effort in California, IIRC, proposed to make cannabis consumption a protected employment class.

chipperyman573 9y ago
Wouldn't making it a protected class just be a roundabout way of making drug tests illegal? Are there any other side effects of doing this? Other than not being able to fire people for talking about how lit they got the night before, I suppose.
- gnopgnip 9y ago
  Talking about the night before is already protected in CA. You cannot take any action against an employee in CA for off duty conduct.
  - buxtehude 9y ago
    If a drug test result is positive you can certainly be fired for what may have been "off duty conduct" - ask any commercial pilot.
metalliqaz 9y ago
I thought California was lagging behind because their first try included a crazy monopolistic corporate giveaway to a handful of established companies.
- DanCarvajal 9y ago
  Wasn't that Ohio?
  - metalliqaz 9y ago
    Possibly, I don't really follow this stuff.
  - vanattab 9y ago
    Yes it was.
- zjaffee 9y ago
  That was Ohio, however, there was the belief that medical cannabis providers in California wanted to keep their control over the system where legalizing would have made things more restrictive.
santaclaus 9y ago
> conservatism in the middle and south of the state You don't even have to go to the middle or south of the state. Look at the current gnashing of teeth over marijuana dispensaries in San Francisco.

jrs95 9y ago

I mean I was pretty happy out here in the Midwest but you guys might pull me in with this one

komali2 9y ago
As a Wisconsin transplant, how are you happy when you must shovel, and shovel, and shovel. If I had stayed for one more winter I would have gone on a shovel-armed homicidal spree.
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  Here in Indiana, I have a four-wheeler with a plow. I have one for my truck too, for when it gets really bad.
  - elliottkember 9y ago
    I mean I was pretty happy out here in San Francisco but you might pull me in with this one
    - mikestew 9y ago
      Well, then, here’s some more: if you have some free time, you can make that truck pay for itself plowing parking lots. Lots of friends of mine with 4x4s did that when we lived in Indiana. Might not pay for the truck, but it was reported that it easily paid for the plow and hydraulics in one winter.
      - jlgaddis 9y ago
        Yep, before I got the plows, we paid a guy $75 to come and plow our (long, winding) driveway every time it was bad enough to need it. It took him about 20 minutes and ours is just one of several that he'd hit every time. He also had contracts with several businesses to have their parking lots cleared.
      - elliottkember 9y ago

superplussed 9y ago

I wonder if this could be the birth of the legal microdosing industry?

myrryr 9y ago
I hope so.
komali2 9y ago
How so? Isn't microdosing done with LSD?
- pantalaimon 9y ago
  The difference of effect of LSD and magic mushrooms is not very large. Classic psychedelics have a lot in common, the differences are mere nuances.
  - orthecreedence 9y ago
    Have you experienced this first hand? For me, mushrooms are either on or off. From what I know about LSD dosage (I haven't taken it) is that it's much more variable.
    - pantalaimon 9y ago
      Do you mean that they either work or don't? I mean the Psilocybin content can vary depending on how the mushroom grew and was stored and deteriorate over time. Whereas with LSD, even when the tabs are weak, there is at least something on there, at least that'd be my explanation. My experiences are several years in the past, so memory is hazy, but LSD always felt 'sharper' with fractal like infinite details on textures and the like. Mushrooms on the other hand felt more 'organic', but the head space was quite similar. I tried microcoding with mushrooms once and I think the effects were similar as to what people are describing with LSD microcoding. However the whole microcoding seems to edge between placebo and real response, almost by definition.
- 9y ago

jpfed 9y ago

I think this is going to lead to a lot of unforeseen problems. Brick structures will be much more vulnerable once literally anyone can take one of these and become twice as large. And once you've had a mushroom, if you get the right kind of flower in your system you'd be an unstoppable fire-throwing menace. Then it doesn't matter what kind of gun control is on the books. I just don't know what they're thinking.

clay_the_ripper 9y ago
You got me
oneshot908 9y ago
Well how many times must this be explained? One pill makes you larger, one pill makes you small, and the ones that mother gives you don't do anything at all...
- whyenot 9y ago
  I'd be on the lookout for a hookah-smoking caterpillar
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
webkike 9y ago
And don't get me started on poison mushrooms!
wallace_f 9y ago
>It is distinctly possible that California voters could be the first in the nation to decide Your thinking might be more worldly than you realize. This--Nintendo--was banned in China until 2015. Now take the cultural stigma of psychedelic use and place it on Nintendo. Is it now any less ridiculous that mushrooms are banned here? 'Tyranny over the individual' was never have a legitimate role of government in the first place. While we're gaining some rights back (LGBT, prohibition), and losing others (privacy, free speech), maybe it's useful to connect these issues.

djsumdog 9y ago

You can currently buy psychoactive mushrooms in stores in The Netherlands. Buying mushrooms illegally from a legit dealer in the US means making sure they have several uniform bags of the product. You want to make sure they're grown safely in a lab or farm. There are too many people who will go out and just pick mushrooms, which is incredibly unsafe. Unless you're an actual mycologist, it's difficult to tell what's safe and what's toxic. There are even cases of mushrooms in the US that are toxic look exactly like an edible food variety in Asia; even down to identifying characteristics like spore prints. Entire families have gotten sick or even died as a result. So from just a safety perspective this would be a good move. Humans used psychoactive substances for centuries, usually under the supervision of a shaman or some type of religious figure to undergo a journey. It's not so different than psychologist today looking to use mushrooms to treat serious mental conditions. We have the advantage today of knowing we're not really going on some kind of cosmic journey, but merely acknowledging how dependent we are on our minds giving us our rational view of the world; and seeing how that can be easily and radically changed.

ataturk 9y ago
Is anything real or satisfying ever gleaned from all those so-called journeys or is it just a bunch of utter horse shit? Based on all the druggies I have ever been around, it seems like utter horse shit to me. Plus, they all become good-for-nothing slobs who couldn't hold down a job or a relationship and really I couldn't care if they were taken out back and shot.
jlebar 9y ago
> Humans used psychoactive substances for centuries, usually under the supervision of a shaman or some type of religious figure to undergo a journey. I don't have a position on legalizing psychoactive mushrooms, but I don't think this is a good argument. For example, humans also used lead to sweeten wine for centuries, but that's not evidence that lead is harmless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II)_acetate#Sweetener https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II)_acetate#Sweetener I'm sure we could come up with many more such examples.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago

MoD411 9y ago

awesome

ataturk 9y ago

I am going to laugh so hard when all these states legalize every drug and then for the next decade or so we end up with millions of people high as kites all the time and nothing of real value getting done! It will be like planet Miranda where everyone got so chill that they all just died! Based on the poor quality of the service sector in Colorado, I'd say that state is already about there and that's with weed alone!

throwaway_kea 9y ago

While they're at it I really wish they would fix the laws around cacti. Federal law bans Lophophora williamsii specifically for obvious reasons, but California bans the entire genus as well. This is dumb because the other member of the genus (diffusa) won't get you high, and is a very pretty cactus, which is legal to own elsewhere in the US.

whyenot 9y ago
Both are vey slow growing. It can take 25+ years for a plant to be large enough to produce flowers. This has led impatient jerks go out and (illegally) field collect them to the point where both species are considered threatened. For that reason, I think their possession should be regulated everywhere.
- orasis 9y ago
  So you want to make them more rare so that people have a strong incentive to harvest from the wild? If you legalize home growing you'll create a larger supply. You should look at the history of Chestnut blight in the US. Due to the blight the US government directed people to chop down chestnut trees by the millions. If instead, they had allowed the blighted trees to continue to live, we may have discovered some genetic mutations that would have allowed the species to survive. Proactive regulation is not always the best move.
  - whyenot 9y ago
    > So you want to make them more rare so that people have a strong incentive to harvest from the wild? No. I think them being illegal to posses is working to reduce field collection. This strategy is used for many other endangered plants (such as orchids) and seems to work. If people want to use psychoactives, then "magic" mushroom and morning glory seeds (or Hawaiian wood rose seeds) have a much lower impact on the environment and people should be steered towards those options by making them legal (most already are; carrot) and coming down on anyone who illegally collects Lophophora with a prison sentence (stick). > You should look at the history of Chestnut blight in the US. First of all, the species is not extinct. In fact, if you live in Silicon Valley, there is a chestnut orchard with some American chestnut trees just a short drive away in the Santa Cruz Mountains. There are many other populations and ongoing work to try and breed resistant trees. Second, trees were cut down to create a biological equivalent of a fire break. The idea was, if there was a gap of 10-20 miles in front of the advancing disease front where trees were removed, then it might be possible to contain the disease. In hindsight, this might seem like a overly drastic measure, especially since it ended up only delaying the spread and not stopping it completely, but based on what was known about the disease at the time, and the huge importance of the American chestnut as an economic resource, it was a risk people were willing to take. > Proactive regulation is not always the best move. Yes, but sometimes it actually is the best move. I believe it is in this case.

oh-kumudo 9y ago

Why Californians so obsessed with drugs? Any serious explanation?

ravenstine 9y ago
Because our insufferableness makes us very miserable people.
cycrutchfield 9y ago
Says the rest of the country that is currently drowning in oxycontin and heroin.
cimi_ 9y ago
They're not 'obsessed': criminalization doesn't work because of many, many reasons I will not repeat here. I think that moving to legalise drugs (harmless or not) is the normal, rational decision to make and the fact that is receives so much push-back saddens me. I would be curious to what lead you to your conclusion? The press is pretty bad at painting this picture as most articles I've seen try to tickle people's sensibilities rather than present objective facts.
- yznovyak 9y ago
  But criminalization does work. Every time subject of criminalization comes up people cherry pick Portugal as some kind of miracle example completely ignoring Japan, Singapore, Georgia (country) Davao city, South Korea and countless others examples where strict laws (and their enforcement) almost completely eradicated drug abuse. In the US you guys have incompetent people running the show and despite throwing enormous amounts of money you still get abysmal results. You can't be seriously talking that USA has honestly tried to deal with drugs when you have whole genre of stoner movies (Pineapple Express, etc) and when Snoop Dogg alone smokes weed like a chimney. The incompetence in dealing with this is stunning. It's akin to homelessness problem in San Francisco. SF spends ~$30k per homeless per year and the problem only gets worse. Maybe, just maybe, those who are in charge are complete morons? At 30k per year you could rent everyone a room in a nice place. But currently it sure as hell doesn't look like homeless people have 30k worth of goods and services provided to them.

ravenstine 9y ago

After this, I hope that legalizing home distilling is next on the docket. I know it'd still be illegal federally, but you're much less likely to have the ATF bust down your door if the state law enforcement isn't interested in it.

umanwizard 9y ago
I hope they don't. It's much easier to kill yourself and others by home distilling than by taking shrooms.
- ravenstine 9y ago
  Why, because fires? But people who are interested in home distilling are already doing it. I don't believe significantly more people would start distilling at home because it's pretty costly and it's much easier just to buy hard liquor. Admittedly, I don't know the numbers on how many fires are started by distilling every year. Regardless, you can legally distill for fuel purposes, which tells me that the government isn't terribly concerned about potential fires. If you mean that people are going to go blind, well that doesn't happen unless you adulterate your own moonshine with industrial methanol, which would be idiotic. People don't get methanol poisoning from homemade alcohol; that's very hard to do when ethanol is a methanol antidote.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - trhway 9y ago
    > I don't believe significantly more people would start distilling at home because it's pretty costly what is costly here - water, sugar or yeast? or 4 typical cooking pots needed to perform actual distillation? (an old USSR way where non-government distillation was illegal, and thus you couldn't have at home any special hardware for distillation :) >and it's much easier just to buy hard liquor. completely agree. Back in the USSR it was done only because where was an issue with getting the liquor - not available and/or government would price it too high. (Because of tight availability and high price the hard liquor - a bottle of vodka - was basically "liquid money/gold" widely used as payment/barter for various services/goods.) >If you mean that people are going to go blind, well that doesn't happen unless you adulterate your own moonshine with industrial methanol, which would be idiotic. unfortunately happened a lot during the USSR "almost Prohibition" in the mid 198x. Methanol, insecticide, whatever other killer chemicals - just to increase the "kick" per given volume - really reminds the today's situation with added fentanyl in heroin in US. That craziness was pretty much gone once the "almost Prohibition" was lifted.

calebgilbert 9y ago

I live in California and this is the first I've heard of this. Legal shrooms not happening this year or any other year soon, imho.

setgree 9y ago

I think this is a sign of civilization advancing. More on the subject would be difficult to add without creating a throwaway account.

dwaltrip 9y ago
I share both sentiments expressed in this post... I've had powerful, formative experiences that pushed me in new directions such that my values, viewpoints, and knowledge of the world were shaped in ways that feel increasingly significant as I grow older and pursue a fundamental understanding of the world around me. Much of this stems from endeavors that occurred entirely separately from any psychedelic experience, but I find it hard to imagine that I would have explored certain topics and ideas with the same enthusiasm, without those formative experiences. A few of the topics that I'm referring to are the nature of consciousness and identity, theories of the mind, cognition, the structure and relations of ideas and concepts in the brain, and how such things change over time. I believe it has also had other significant positive personal effects in terms of how I relate and empathize with others as well as process difficult personal issues, but this is harder to describe. I don't think these effects happen automatically -- rather, psychedelics are a powerful tool that, with great care and responsibility, can likely be very beneficial for many individuals. Like any powerful tool, it can be misused or abused, but as humans it is our job to make the most of the positive benefits while safeguarding and being responsible about the negative effects. I do think that many people today don't realize the extent of the positive benefits, and have an exaggerated view of the potential harms. Ideally, society can carefully and judiciously integrate the positive benefits these substances provide, as we learn more about them in the coming decades.

SCHiM 9y ago

I think this is great. Like many other things in life, when taken in moderation and responsibly, psychedelic drugs can be a great heap of fun!

garyclarke27 9y ago

Sensible Move - Magic Mushrooms are a truly wonderful very safe natural drug which does not harm others, like violence inducing Alcohol. Some suffer bad trips especially Women, but like a bad dream soon passes, with no harm done. One positive of the damp weather in Wales UK is abundant Magic Mushrooms in the Welsh Valleys in September to October. I took tens of thousands age 17 to 21 then grew out of them, fond memories though. The most I laughed in my entire life was watching Airplane on MM literally rolling on the floor creased up, Steve Martin films like the Jerk were also good on MM. Idiotic UK government made them an illegal Class I drug.

palimpsests 9y ago
Citation needed on women suffering more "bad trips" than men.

overcast 9y ago

This would actually make me want to live in California. Everyone should experience hallucinogens in the life, particularly magic mushrooms. It's truly a life changing experience, for the better. Some of the best nights of my young life were spent with friends, and mushrooms.

intrasight 9y ago
I'm in too!

dr_bloodmoney 9y ago

Which is good to hear, because currently it is one of a handful of states where ordering spores is illegal.

devdad 9y ago

Asking as someone not living in the US. Are mushrooms common and generally seen as ok for consumption in California?