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For some reasons the feds in the 90s were unusually interested in prosecuting psychedelics. I'm of the opinion that all drugs should be legal, but even if I was
by smabie 6y ago
For some reasons the feds in the 90s were unusually interested in prosecuting psychedelics. I'm of the opinion that all drugs should be legal, but even if I wasn't, I think I would still question why LSD manufacturers were getting such long sentences around that time. Never really made sense to me.
- kitteh 6y agoFriend of a friend got caught with two sheets in the 90s and I think he got 20 years for each one. Downstate Illinois. My recollection was the weight of the blotter paper was considered as the drug itself and that easily increased the federal sentencing guidelines.
- rapsey 6y agoJust how the feds when weighing pot plants weighted them with pots and all.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoWhen I was arrested and searched the police didn’t even find the 200 tabs I had on me. They found everything else, but LSD is incredibly easy to hide from regular law enforcement. They found everything else, but in typical stupid-police fashion, they ballsed that up too and ended up entering a nolle prosequi (do not prosecute) at the district court level. The police prosecutor was sufficiently annoyed, and I was sufficiently elated and thankful for the woman who went before me (case unrelated) and set a strong precedent. Any chance I get to gloat. Edit to add: this happened in Australia in 2012. Not keen to repeat the experience.
- h0l0cube 6y ago> and set a strong precedent Which was?
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoI can't respond extensively at the moment, come back in 10hrs or so. My time zone suggests I should go to bed :)
- MayeulC 6y ago> but LSD is incredibly easy to hide from regular law enforcement Not that I intend to leverage that knowledge, but you can't just write this and leave it at that. Why so? I've never seen any LSD, so I am not sure why that would be.
- worldsayshi 6y ago> 20 years for each one That is incredible. For a crime that harms noone.
- HenryKissinger 6y agoI mean, the organized crime groups that sell these drugs do harm people, by way of murders, human trafficking, violent crimes and property crimes. Funding criminals and terrorists is surely worthy of punishment, do you not agree? But I agree that twenty years is excessive. A week of prison or two would be enough.
- jakemal 6y agoThe only reason such an inhumane black market can exist is because no one is allowed to produce it legally. I would argue regulators are responsible for the harm caused by the trade.
- grayhatter 6y agoNo, you have your logic backwards. The conclusion that with lax drug laws, there'd be less violence associated with drug manufacturing and selling is correct. But the laws don't cause the violence, they make it so violent individuals are the only one's willing to fill the supply. If I outlaw [drug], I'm not responsible because you kill someone trying to sell [drug].
- theptip 6y agoI disagree. If you take [action], and it was a necessary and sufficient condition for [consequence], then you are morally responsible for that consequence. (Sure, the individuals committing crimes in this concrete case are also morally respoinsible). In this case, I think it is correct to say that the laws cause violence, since that violence would not be happening otherwise. There is a common trope that criminals sit down and decide what crime they will commit, and decide that drug dealing is the best one. In fact, that is backwards; if the TAM of crime is cut by 10x, then there are fewer jobs, and at the margin some will stop. And in the other direction, if there is no longer easy money to be made by selling drugs, then fewer would find their way into the drug business in the first place. See prohibition in the USA for a natural experiment that supports my claims here.
- peroporque 6y agoI will never understand how people in the US are okay with this. Don't people care about justice at all over there?
- vikramkr 6y agoYou see giant protests occupying cities for weeks and your first thought is that americans are totally OK with the state of things? All those folks on the street in Hong kong - they must just be out there celebrating their loss of liberties! It's a big party!
- rabite 6y agoYeah but the giant protests occupying cities for weeks are not about psychedelics sentences at all. They are generally in support of the state of things, funded by hostile billionaires in hopes that small businesses will be destroyed and that any potential competition in the middle class will disappear with them. People aren't asking for lower LSD sentences, they are demanding an end to "racism" and some kind of penance because a career violent criminal with heart disease passing counterfeit currency overdosed on fentanyl while being arrested.
- devenblake 6y agoThere may be giant protests, but Americans continue to elect leaders that refuse to serve their interests.
- Doxin 6y ago> My recollection was the weight of the blotter paper was considered as the drug itself and that easily increased the federal sentencing guidelines. Which is of course the entire reason for switching away from using sugar cubes and to blotter paper as delivery media.
- zelly 6y agoTo make an example out of them and discourage others, prevent a cottage industry from forming. LSD manufacturing scales immensely. One lone wolf could create enough LSD to serve the whole United States demand, maybe even the global demand. LSD is also harder to manufacture. You generally need at least a MS degree and lab experience. The people who fit that profile tend to think about the future enough to respond to the possibiliy of a life sentence.
- voldacar 6y ago> LSD manufacturing scales immensely ergotamine doesn't grow on trees lol
- freeone3000 6y agoNo, it grows on rye.
- zelly 6y agoWith some "seed money" I'm sure you could get a lot of it in India or China. The people who work in those factories are the same people who put lead paint on children's toys to save a few dollars. Its precursor literally does grow on wheat plants but I digress.
- kitteh 6y agoYou also need precursors (like ET) which is difficult to get. Though China is a pretty good source if you can pull it off (and for other things like safrole, etc.).
- lvturner 6y agoPossibly fall out from the MK Ultra program - take a zero tolerance stance on LSD to make it look like changes have been made.
- liversage 6y agoI came here to make a comment about CIA's Project MKUltra so I'll just add a quote about the use of LSD from the Wikipedia article: > [...] experiments included administering LSD to mental patients, prisoners, drug addicts, and sex workers—"people who could not fight back," as one agency officer put it. In one case, they administered LSD to a mental patient in Kentucky for 174 days. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra
- thelittleone 6y agoThe one thing powers fear most is losing said power. Open minds present a threat to power structures. LSD has the ability to open minds. So does meditation... just that it typically takes way longer :)
- dontcarethrow2 6y agoI agree, just to add in my own words -- it gives you a fresh perspective, as if your staring at the world from the eyes of a tree. But is it really that important for those in power to maintain a certain narrative/perception? These sentences sound too rough..
- solaceb 6y agoIMO, yes, because there is nothing holding the country together besides the perception that the US constitution protects & ensures our freedom. If that perception falls, then there could substantially greater political unrest, even moreso than what we have experienced this summer And LSD and other psychedelics definitely make you rethink the validity of government, period. Let alone the efficacy of the powers that be to ensure safety and prosperity
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago> IMO, yes, because there is nothing holding the country together besides the perception that the US constitution protects & ensures our freedom. What holds the country together is a lot of people have a lot to lose. > And LSD and other psychedelics definitely make you rethink the validity of government, period. Let alone the efficacy of the powers that be to ensure safety and prosperity But this is just the crux of it - it is an illusory experience that has some impact on the user. It isn't any arbiter of truth or knowledge.
- mistermann 6y ago>> IMO, yes, because there is nothing holding the country together besides the perception that the US constitution protects & ensures our freedom. > What holds the country together is a lot of people have a lot to lose. There are many things that "hold a country together" - some of them are known (here we have two examples), and others are unknown. > it is an illusory experience that has some impact on the user. It isn't any arbiter of truth or knowledge. It is surely illusory to a very large degree, but "what it is", really, is far beyond mankind's ability to judge such things. I really like how Jordan Peterson describes what psychedelics "are": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaY0H9DBokA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaY0H9DBokA
- say_it_as_it_is 6y agoThe Government is very familiar with LSD, having used it for a wide variety of research over an extended period of time. LSD has proven exceedingly effective at behavior modification, and has already been put to use by the wrong hands. So, they know better than anyone as to how dangerous it is: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-ONeill-ebook/dp/B07K6J273Q https://www.amazon.com/Tom-ONeill-ebook/dp/B07K6J273Q This is why the sentencing was so harsh.
- quickthrowman 6y ago> LSD has proven exceedingly effective at behavior modification, and has already been put to use by the wrong hands. Please provide evidence for this claim.
- say_it_as_it_is 6y agoWhat do you think I cited the book for? That's how one backs a claim.
- quickthrowman 6y agoI’m dismissing the book as pure speculation and horseshit, because it is. Charles Manson used tactics that have been used to control people throughout history: fear, abuse, intimidation, isolation from society, and violence. He’s not the first or last person to develop a cult of personality. I’m well aware of MKULTRA and the CIA’s involvement in that program. Please provide a source that shows mind control is possible with LSD.
- masklinn 6y ago> For some reasons the feds in the 90s were unusually interested in prosecuting psychedelics. Psychedelics = hippies = anti-war left. A well-known and somewhat similar "unusual interest" was in prosecuting crack versus coke.
- Bootwizard 6y agoOh it wasn't unusual. It was intentional. A war on poor and minority (mostly black) communities starting with Reagan's "War on Drugs"
- jschwartzi 6y agoYeah the whole point of the war on drugs for the most part was to punish people who wanted to see things differently. There are only a few scheduled drugs that are actually harmful. If alcohol were discovered today it would certainly be scheduled because its side effects and potential for addiction are far worse than EG todays normal dosage of MDMA or LSD. The whole notion of jailing drug users actually made their lives far worse than the drugs themselves ever did. And the aggressive prosecution created openings for the modern drug cartels by eliminating competition.
- rurban 6y agoNope, much earlier. MKULTRA, the secret CIA program to administer LSD to do mind control and other stupid shit, started in the 50ies under the Dulles bothers already. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra They also did lots of public advertising for LSD via popular figures like Timothy Leary, besides frying a lot of innocent brains with it.
- masklinn 6y ago> Oh it wasn't unusual. It was intentional. I know that perfectly well, hence the scare quotes. I was referencing the term used by the person I replied to in order the draw a parallel between the two.
- hnlurker 6y agoCrack and cocaine aren't really all that similar. Crack and meth are tho. Guess what, they both have the same mandatory mins too. When you look for racism everywhere, you find it everywhere. Let's be more objective, eh?
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoIn the 90s the feds tried to go hard on gun crime and that just got them a bunch of pictures of crispy children on the news, not exactly the look they were going for. In the world of use it or lose it budgets cracking down on psychedelics seems like a pretty safe way for the DOJ to keep burning money without incurring too much negative publicity.
- aeternum 6y agoThere was definitely unreasonable fear around LSD. I remember my parents not allowing us to use temporary tattoos because they were concerned they might be laced with LSD.
- MiroF 6y agoSuburbia is full of anxious white people like this.
- bitexploder 6y agoLike most people using LSD are going to waste it to send a kid on a trip. One of the sillier things that swept America.
- melq 6y agoOne reason was that the government didn't like the people using the the psychedelics in the first place, and drugs were a convenient justification for going after those people. Marijuana prohibition in the US is the same story.
- defnotashton2 6y agoMoney in the dorm of funding.