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Santa Cruz decriminalizes psychedelic mushrooms
- krohling 7y agoSuper excited to see this. If you live in California please head on over to http://www.decrimca.org/ http://www.decrimca.org/ We're working to get state wide decriminalization on the ballot in November and we need signatures! If you buy a button ($5) they'll send you a petition sheet. There are also signature locations and volunteers in every county in the state.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y agoSorry for the cynicism. I'd love to donate to the cause, and want to make sure I'm not giving money to a scam or (less cynically) an inefficient effort. Anywhere I can see something to convince me this page and this group is legit and making real progress?
- krohling 7y agoI can say it's definitely not a scam. I have personally been to multiple meetings with organizers in Oakland and San Francisco and witnessed that it is both well organized and well staffed. To my knowledge there are over 700 volunteers across the state in every county working on this initiative. Obviously, that doesn't mean it's going to be successful. I hope you're willing to risk $5 and purchase a button or sticker so you can send in your signed petition form :)
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y agoThanks! I just donated and I'll sign the petition. I also found some news about it for anybody else interested/wary: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22decriminalize+california%22&tbm=nws https://www.google.com/search?q=%22decriminalize+california%...
- pmoriarty 7y agoThis strategy is taking a page out of the very successful cannabis legalization movement. First there are decriminalizations at the local level. This makes decriminalization at the state level much more palatable for politicians, who see there's political will at the local level to make it happen. Once the first state decriminalizes it, others states will find it easier to follow suit. Apart from voting, you can also donate and volunteer, but some of the best things you can do is educate yourself and others on the responsible use of psychedelics. If taking mushrooms or other psychedelics has helped you in some way, tell others about it. Seeing people who have their act together, who admit that mushrooms have helped them will open people's eyes to their benefits and make it less likely that they'll react with dismay or disgust at the suggestion that "drugs" be legalized because they equate use with abuse. Stepping out of the psychedelic closet is not always easy, but it has to happen (as it did with admitting cannabis use) before there's widespread acceptance of psychedelics.
- mirimir 7y agoPACs have been a key part of the cannabis legalization movement. So it's not just that you make decriminalization more palatable for politicians, you aim for politicians who find decriminalization more palatable. However, contributions to PACs are public.
- samvher 7y agoI am all for decriminalization, but both with cannabis and mushrooms I feel worried about the amount of "it's actually good for you!" that comes with it. I have used both (legally, in the Netherlands). As a student I enjoyed cannabis quite a bit but when I used a lot less later I did come to feel like (looking back) the usage came with some depression symptoms. With mushrooms I feel in general that they were good experiences but I've heard enough stories (first and second hand) of people experiencing long-term effects from psychedelics that I don't think it should be encouraged (at most for specific people with a therapist or so). Personal responsibility and liberty are great but these products should come with warnings and guidance.
- Fnoord 7y ago
- tayo42 7y ago> SEC. 3. PURPOSE AND INTENT. > > The purpose of this article is to decriminalize the personal possession, storage, use, cultivation, manufacturing, distribution in personal possession amounts without profit, transport, and consumption of psilocybin mushrooms and the chemical compounds contained in them for any person over the age of 18, or for any person younger than 18 with parental or guardian consent by amending California Health and Safety Codes HSC § 11 390 & 11391. I'm confused, whats the difference between legalization and decriminalization then. This sounds like legalization to me? Decriminalizaton i thought was making it a low priority to law enforcement which some places already did?
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y agoFrom an article I found[0]: > As such, Topley, explained then, it is “very close to legalization, however, without psilocybin being rescheduled or descheduled at the federal level, it seems more appropriate to refer to it as decriminalization.” [0] https://filtermag.org/decriminalize-california-signature-drive/ https://filtermag.org/decriminalize-california-signature-dri...
- awb 7y agoCorrect, decriminalizing doesn't mean that it's legal, just that the police won't use resources trying to stop it. Legalizing at the city or county level would run into conflict with state & federal laws that prohibit it. This is a way of getting around that conflict.
- ac29 7y agoThis allows "distribution in personal possession amounts without profit". Legalization would imply that some entity or entities were legally allowed to sell at commercial scale to the general public at a profit.
- awb 7y agoAlcohol is legal, but you can't sell it legally without a liquor license and those can be restricted in number and limited in scope (in MA you can't sell liquor on Sundays).
- tempsy 7y agopersonally I'm not that excited by exerting a lot of effort in decriminalization vs legalization. realistically how many people who are most susceptible to prison time for illegal drug possession in California are being jailed for...shrooms? at this point saying it is decriminalized state wide is not much more impactful than just a symbolic move.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoWhy would they ask for my employer information in order to make a donation? My employment has nothing to do with this. Are we now owned by our employer who needs to know everything we do?
- pixl97 7y agoI'm thinking the opposite, making sure an employer is not demanding the employees donate, or giving money to the employees to donate by proxy.
- awb 7y ago> making sure an employer is not demanding the employees donate, or giving money to the employees to donate by proxy That scenario seems extremely unlikely.
- mirimir 7y agoNope, it's happened frequently, which is why they ask.
- awb 7y agoWhen?
- mirimir 7y agoThat's a good question, because I've had no luck finding an example. I do recall reading about it, but that could have been decades ago. And it's hard to find old stuff. What I find is about contributions from employees of government contractors, and from government employees. So maybe that's been the driver for the requirement.
- closeparen 7y agoHere's somebody going to prison in 2014: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/investigations/2014/03/13/arizona-john-junker-fiesta-bowl-sentencing/6377447/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/investigations/...
- refurb 7y agoAnd for anyone thinking “it will never happen”, let me tell you back in the 1990’s I thought the exact same thing about cannabis legalization. Ridiculous, waste of time, a pipe dream. And here we are.
- mirimir 7y agoAlso, it's not that far from religion, which is constitutionally protected. Far more so than for cannabis, anyway. As I vaguely recall, that's already the case for peyote and ayahuasca, at least in some jurisdictions.
- whyenot 7y agoa pipe dream Opium poppy (Papaver somniferous) is actually kind of an interesting case. At least in the US, it's OK to grow the plants, the flowers are showy and many seed catalogs sell the seeds. It's also OK to harvest the pods and consume the seeds (poppy seeds, have them on a bagel). But, if you scrape off and collect the latex on the outside of the pods, you are committing a felony.
- mirimir 7y agoI thought that varieties currently sold have little morphine. Or at least, I recall that one ex wife had an heirloom variety from her mother. Which supposedly had lots of morphine. Not that I ever tested it.
- xkcd-sucks 7y agoTry buying a bag of poppyseeds from the baking aisle, shake it up in a liter of room temperature water and drink a few cups of that water.
- krispyfi 7y agoThe resulting potency is difficult to estimate, and people have died from getting it wrong. Please don't recommend for people to do poppy seed tea without warning them of the danger.
- rewritteninrust 7y agoI'm 100% in support of legalization, but as someone who has never lived in a country with decriminalized psychedelics, I'm very interested to see how this is regulated. The potential for chaos seems much higher with mushrooms than cannabis.
- minikites 7y agoAlcohol is legal and causes tons of chaos. Do you really think magic mushrooms would be more harmful to society than alcohol already is?
- csallen 7y agoI support decriminalization of mushrooms, but I think your question is somewhat irrelevant. When considering a new law, the thing people discuss is, "Will this have terrible side effects?" rather than, "Will this have worse side effects than alcohol?"
- asdff 7y agoThere are side effects from the status quo, too. Having a regulated safe source of product is better than allowing amateur mycologists to go out in the field and poison themselves as they do now. It doesn't matter what the law says, people who want to do drugs will find and do drugs, so we might as well make it a little safer.
- XPKBandMaidCzun 7y agoI just wished their was fairer representation online of impact on people's lives when drugs get brought up. I never done drugs. But still, I suffered thanks to people who chose drugs as a way cope - and it's soul sucking. The problem with decriminalizing/legalizing recreational drugs is its interpreted as officials of the state validating drugs as a coping skill. In almost all cases, getting high is maladaptive coping style. My anecdote from being raised by substance abusers: Makes you think you're smart, maybe even makes you look competent to other people. Until you don't have the drug anymore, in which case you're left with an anxious person who can't cope with difficult circumstances. It's excruciating to have to endure loved ones who become dependent on substances. It saps the energy out of you to deal with. Their brain is rewired to get high - at the expense of their social connections, family, reputation, and so on. Suffering and enduring a drug abuser is a silent pain. The incentive for users to get high and for rehab clinics to make money show why the conversation is so lopsided.
- lowdose 7y agoProblems with mushrooms?
- kleer001 7y agoA problem with complex categories and propaganda and probably personal experience lumped in there too.
- rollo 7y agoThis article is about psilocybin mushrooms though, not whatever abusable substances you're talking about.
- DanBC 7y agoTo support your point there's this bit of survey work. https://www.globaldrugsurvey.com/wp-content/themes/globaldrugsurvey/results/GDS2017_key-findings-report_final.pdf https://www.globaldrugsurvey.com/wp-content/themes/globaldru... > Out of almost 10,000 last year magic mushroom consumers only 0.2% (n = 17, 13 men and 4 women) reported seeking emergency medical treatment. Magic mushrooms were the safest drugs to take in terms of needing to see emergency medical treatment according to GDS2017. There was no significant different in rates between male and females. > The rate is considerably lower than with LSD presumably because of intrinsic safety of magic mushrooms ( the greatest risk is picking the wrong type), the smaller dosing using units (a single mushroom v an LSD tab) and greater understanding of how many mushrooms may constitute atypical dose for a desired effect in your region. People who use psychedelics are generally very sensible and show some of the best preparation and adoption of harm reduction practices of any drug (see the Global Drug Survey highway https://www.globaldrugsurvey.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/The-High-Way-Code_LSD.pdf https://www.globaldrugsurvey.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/...
- alasdair_ 7y agoI used to live in London at a time when the fact that mushrooms were technically legal seemed to suddenly come to light. Oxford street was full of places selling them, as were various markets. There was lots of branding and marketing that appeared as if from nowhere. Honestly the kind of overnight switch from not being visible anywhere, to seeming to be on every street corner reminds me of being in SF when Lime and the other scooter startups blanketed the city seemingly overnight.
- randcraw 7y agoAll I can say is, self driving cars can't get here quickly enough. Why? 1) Stupid people will drive cars while on hallucinogens, which famously distort perception and judgement. 2) No sobriety field test is available for hallucinogens. Probably none will be for years. 3) Patrol officers will get poor and inconsistent training for misbehavior-based sobriety field tests for hallucinogens. What could go wrong?
- thatswrong0 7y agoAre you arguing that dumb people _today_ can't eat mushrooms and drive? That being decriminalized will mean people will suddenly think it's okay to drive under the influence? That decriminalizing it will make a lot more people take mushrooms, thus increasing the number of people dumb enough to drive under the influence of them? You can be impaired by all sorts of other, legal drugs today. Is there an epidemic of say, ambien impaired drivers? Oxy? Etc. Regardless, even if there is a slight uptick (which I doubt will happen) in the number of mushroom-impaired drivers, I think we're still much better off as a society than imprisoning people who use them responsibly.
- RosanaAnaDana 7y agoRelevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyv21qW7SQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyv21qW7SQo
- strbean 7y agoMost hallucinogens cause extreme pupil dilation. This + general demeanor is probably enough to justify a blood test.
- zelly 7y agoA lot of medically necessary prescriptions cause pupil dilation too. Also some genetic conditions. I'm more worried about giving police the right to take blood out of your body than I am about tripping drivers.
- webkike 7y ago
- earthwrldshaman 7y ago"Psychedelic capital of the world decriminalizes psychedelic mushrooms"
- elevenoh 7y agoThere's certainly some ambient magic in the air in SC.
- KhoomeiK 7y agoOne of the volunteers at Decrim Santa Cruz here. AMA!
- krohling 7y agoDecrim SF here! Thanks for your support :)
- KhoomeiK 7y agoThanks and good luck!
- TallGuyShort 7y agoWhat are your thoughts on the layered nature of our government and how such efforts could do better with the many layers? Take marijuana for instance. I think it should be decriminalized, and in many states we talk about it like it is, but in reality it depends on which law enforcement officer catches you. Where I live you'll be arrested by the sheriff (county), but not the police (town), depending on which officer catches you and if they like you or not, and not state patrol. And you won't be prosecuted by the feds, but the businesses you bought it from, which pay local and state taxes, can't use federally insured banks because it's still illegal even though it's not enforced. But state law might forbid the bank from making a hiring decision on someone's marijuana usage. In some ways it feels like we've made progress, but I'm still afraid to use it myself. How do we deal with this mess of rule-of-law moving forward? I would like the idea of proving an idea on a small scale to make it easier to sell at larger scales. But honestly, being one of the first places that legalized it, we got a large influx of "undesirables" from other places that hadn't legalized it, causing problems we wouldn't have had if we weren't one of the first states to legalize it.
- KhoomeiK 7y agoI think the decentralized/layered structure of American government is great, because as you said, it allows smaller polities to test out new ideas before growing to a larger scale. I haven't heard of that phenomenon where people migrate to a new city in pursuit of the substance, and that could definitely be a valid issue. What makes them "undesirable" though? Are they not contributing to the local economy or something else? I don't think it's a problem intrinsically linked to substance decriminalization, and might even be a benefit of decentralized government. Delaware's lax incorporation laws, for instance, encourage people to do business there, which benefits the state.
- salgernon 7y agoUC Santa Cruz is home to the Greatful Dead archive[1] and more recently for Hunter S. Thompson[2]. And they do, like, engineering too, man. [1] https://guides.library.ucsc.edu/gratefuldeadarchive https://guides.library.ucsc.edu/gratefuldeadarchive [2] https://news.ucsc.edu/2018/11/hunter-thompson-collection.html https://news.ucsc.edu/2018/11/hunter-thompson-collection.htm...
- asdff 7y agoucsc is the only college I know that will let you live as an unrestricted hippy in an RV on a lot on campus, or just in a tent off in the woods.
- Balgair 7y agoGo Slugs! The astrophysics PhD program is very good. Top 40 worldwide physics and earth sciences undergrad programs too. The forest hippies are mostly harmless, though they will try to expand your mind and sneak into the dorm showers from time to time. Is the totem pole still by the cat graveyard? What a great view up there of SC on Friday nights as the smoke, err, fog rolled in about the drum circles.
- chabes 7y agoAlso the image on the cover of the mushroom field guide All The Rain Promises And More was taken at UCSC. Heady place
- dekhn 7y agoI'm a UCSC grad. It was great for undergrad, I had a lot of great classes and professors (much more interaction with profs than a place like UC Berkeley) and it definitely help. my career long term because I did undergrad thesis with a well-known computer scientist. The campus is completely beautiful- at the time I attended, there was a large area of secondary redwood growth that students had turned into an area called "Elfland" that really was magical.
- bproven 7y agoCool! Denver legalized it May 2019 as well...
- itqwertz 7y agoafk brb... heading to Santa Cruz for ... research purposes.
- 01100011 7y agoGreat. Would also be great if we could just get the spores legalized at the state level. California, Georgia and Idaho prohibit possession of the spores of magic mushrooms. In CA this is especially ridiculous, given that the mushrooms have lived here longer than the state has existed. In many other states, you can walk into any head shop and buy a mushroom kit containing spores. Not in CA. It makes no sense.
- m463 7y agoI always wonder what unintended consequences measures like this will have. (I am not opposed to it) I remember a long time ago Montana fought the 55 mph (and later higher ones) imposed by federal pressure. Their laws favored "reasonable and prudent" over absolute limits. (How wonderful to choose personal responsibility) Then out-of-state drivers from car clubs started driving to Montana and doing high-speed drives across the state. Maybe that was why Montana enacted actual limits and fines later on.
- koboll 7y agoUnlike "high-speed drives", magic mushrooms don't typically endanger anyone. The worst that's likely to happen is a slight uptick in emergency room visits when people experience frightening but physically harmless bad trips.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Baeocystin 7y ago>Maybe that was why Montana enacted actual limits and fines later on. No one in Montana cared. 'reasonable and prudent' was struck down due to a simple court case where a defendant appealed his reckless driving conviction because he thought the law was too vague. https://law.justia.com/cases/montana/supreme-court/1998/b1822668-90ed-4f1f-9d46-cc9be810cf87.html https://law.justia.com/cases/montana/supreme-court/1998/b182... The Montana Supreme Court agreed with his assessment, and as a result, a numeric speed limit was instituted.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- elevenoh 7y agoLove this. Where's next?
- quirkafleeg3 7y agoTo quote Gene Hunt from Life on Mars: "Drugs eh, what's the point? They make you talk funny, they make you walk funny, they make you see things that aren't there. My nan got all that for free when she had a stroke." In all seriousness, I think people who use drugs like this have something missing in their life. Instead of getting hopped up on mushrooms, why not look at your life and work out what you are using mushrooms as a subsitute for.
- AndrewDucker 7y agoThey can be very useful: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/magic-mushrooms-lsd-psychedelics-mood-mental-health-recreational-yale-icl-a9294616.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/magic-mushrooms-ls... And they can be fun. And an interesting experience.
- javajosh 7y agoOkay, lets say you're right. What does that imply about all the other things people do? Why are you watching movies - what is that a substitute for? Why are you exercising so much - what do you have to hide from yourself? Given that you could (and should) ask these questions legitimately, why focus on recreational psychadelics? I think the answer is that you've internalized a particular cultural story about drugs, and you probably have Nancy Reagan to thank for that. Being against mushrooms seems particularly odd, since every human being on the planet involuntarily falls unconscious and hallucinates for hours every single night, including you. In the hierarchy of damaging escapist behavior, it's pretty low I think (far lower certainly than say, Facebook or Twitter usage).
- rofo1 7y agoI know a lot of drug users and they all do it to kill their pain. No exceptions. And they all progress towards harder drugs. They either progress or stop doing drugs. Nobody started doing drugs directly shooting heroin. Comparing psychedelics to sleep is just laughable.
- Infinitesimus 7y ago
- ptah 7y ago> "Entheogenic plants offer many in our community a way out of the addictive pharmaceuticals known as opioids. People came forward at last night’s meeting telling of the beneficial effects of how these plants changed their lives." that's an interesting take. could the opioid epidemic be tied directly to psychedelic prohibition?
- radiorental 7y agoI think the opioid epidemic is pretty much tied to the over prescription of opioids and the abusive practices of opioid manufacturers. Psychedelics have been banned long before the epidemic started, additionally, countries that also have a ban in place do not also have epidemics.