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I don't understand the controversy. We know full well the natural world is full of substances with significant impact on our bodies. Many such substances can ev

I don't understand the controversy. We know full well the natural world is full of substances with significant impact on our bodies. Many such substances can even on average be harmful, but when used correctly, they are beneficial. Opioids come to mind first and foremost. It's not controversial to give e.g. serious accident victims a shot of morphine. Why are investigations into medicinal use of shrooms or marijuana controversial? Is it the picture of a sick old lady smokin' a massive spliff?

colechristensen 6y ago
Some of it is basically racist propaganda that entered the public consciousness and became "true". Hallucinogens though... aren't just drugs that change something a little. They can give people profound religious experiences. Some people become an unsettling kind of prophet for a religion of the drug. In the 60s-ish era there were people that wanted to change the world with the drugs with plans to dose populations and leaders to effect major changes. They are very powerful things and with them minds can be rewritten... any sufficiently powerful tool is dangerous. Some early signals and bad actors (basically parts the drug culture that separated from the early scientists studying the drugs) scared the shit out of many in the established society and the propaganda machine turned on and turned them and drugs in general into an evil. Sort of a knee-jerk stupid reaction that had some basis in real issues but was distorted and exaggerated by people who didn't know much of anything and just got on the bandwagon. (remind you of any other societal issues?)
- coldtea 6y ago
  >They can give people profound religious experiences. Some people become an unsettling kind of prophet for a religion of the drug. Like 0.01%? For every McKenna, Timophy Leary, etc, there were millions doing LSD in the 60s. And the "prophets" were mostly a fashion of the era too. When that died, in the 80s, and 90s and so on, you still had LSD, and shrooms, and Ecstasy, and others, but no "prophets".
  - colechristensen 6y ago
    I don’t know, I have met plenty of people that revolve their lives around their favorite drug and talk about them like a kind of religion. Most of them are rather low grade, but as i take it, it is a characteristic of hallucinogenic drugs not just a passed fad.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
      I don't think it's (just?) the drugs. We can observe the behaviour in many types of interests. This being HN, the obvious example is programming language zealotry. Other common examples are sports and cars. We see people walking down the street covered in car brand livery and think approximately nothing of it, and some of them will bang on about their chosen interest endlessly. I tend to think it's more like a flaw in human psychology. Or maybe a strength of our inquisitive nature that sort of gets hijacked by an almost neurotic obsession.
    - coldtea 6y ago
      On the personal level, that's the same with startup life, programming, gaming, veganism, cars, PC/Alt-right, environmentalism, body building, nerdery, sex, drink, sports, the stock market, politics, religion, and tons of other things besides, all the way to D&D. But that doesn't mean psychedelics are especially prone to that.
    - rStar 6y ago
      hallucinogenics, for those that have a positive experience, are so foreign and outside the bounds of normal life, while making you feel like you have new insight into your own life, that people just want other people to have that experience. kind of like the first time you see the ocean or the grand canyon or a sequoia.
      - scottlocklin 6y ago
        It's incredibly creepy, like people insisting you join their religious or sexual cult. It's definitely beyond "hey the grand canyon is cool to look at" or "motorcycles are fun" and is way out there next to "wild eyed moonies handing out flowers at the airport." I'm always creeped out by HN threads on the subject, along with the ones on depression and the collection of fruit salad antidepressants/speed some people need to get through the day. Mind you I have had positive experiences with psychedelics; I wouldn't push them on anyone, and think it both creepy and unwise to do so.
- boraoztunc 6y ago
  Governments and regulations. They've even created poster designs to make it visually evil. https://mashable.com/2016/04/18/anti-weed-film-posters/ https://mashable.com/2016/04/18/anti-weed-film-posters/
  - cinntaile 6y ago
    Some of those old posters have "its" spelled as "it's", was this how it was spelled before or is this a spelling error?
    - sudasana 6y ago
      Still an error - just poor copyediting.
  - cies 6y ago
    Wow. That's tax payer money at work?
    - pjc50 6y ago
      The notorious film Reefer Madness was actually privately financed by a church group. As an example of how forbidding something can make it attractive, it was re-cut into an "exploitation" film...
      - cies 6y ago
        > privately financed this means we have no clue who paid right? as in: it could still be tax money through the CIA or smth.
        bigbubba 6y ago
        Privately doesn't mean secretly in this context, and the CIA did not exist in 1936. I don't know who precisely funded the film, but I've never seen anything that calls into doubt its purported source of funding.
- rich_sasha 6y ago
  Right. So these are some very good reasons to be _careful_ about any research you do with this stuff. But to ban it, say no, never, crazy stuff, is incomprehensible to me.
heavenlyblue 6y ago
Playing the devils advocate, and I think this is a pretty strong point against shrooms: while opioids cause harm, their harm is incredibly mechanical (it’s just addiction) and can be managed well. Shrooms play with your brain. We barely know how that works and quite frankly a lot of the research into managing the depressive episodes with shrooms may just be that you become more stupid and therefore less prone to thinking in the first place.
- teataster 6y ago
  James Farina has spent decades doing non-clinical research on long term effects of psychedelics. For what is worth, the effects seem to go the other direction. Other than that, I think you are absolutely right tho, mushrooms can induce severe changes. I am not for legalization. And I believe your point is why most people under legal psychedelic treatment are terminal patients.
- Mordisquitos 6y ago
  I acknowledge you're playing devil's advocate, so don't take this too harshly, but the truism that "Shrooms play with your brain" is meaningless as an argument against shrooms—more so when contrasting it to "just an addiction". Where is an addiction anywhere but the brain? Of course opioids play with your brain. So do SSRI antidepressants for example, whose very name is based on their most commonly accepted mechanism of action. And it's not only strictly psychiatric drugs—ADHD medication also plays with your brain, influencing dopamine pathways. But then so do gambling, and physical exercise, and meditation! Heck, even social media plays with your brain. The mere fact that something has an effect on the brain is not in itself an argument against it—let alone when it is being proposed as a psychotherapeutic tool.
  - heavenlyblue 6y ago
    Opioid addiction is a clear mechanical fact. We know exactly what one needs to do in order to overcome opioid addiction (or how to avoid it on that matter).
    - 6y ago
fsloth 6y ago
I presume the main reason for the controversy is the prevailing dogma "Drugs are evil". This dogma has been used to enact countless bills of legislation in most rich countries, which in turn have encumbered the justice and police system, which in turn have put thousands upon thousands of people into to the correctional system for years. After all that busywork, lives destroyed and taxpayer money wasted, it is really hard to suddenly jump ship and say "Nah, you know what... after all these lives destroyed and billions of tax money spent ... you know, we were wrong, let's rethink this". Drug abuse should be handled as a public health issue, not a criminal issue. And it takes time and effort to rebalance the current status quo to a more humane and sane approach. This vox article discsusses the political history of war on drugs: https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325750/nixon-war-on-drugs https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325750/nixon-war-on-drugs
- teataster 6y ago
  I believe there is some sort of nonsequitur on the proposed argument. You can stop the war on drugs and keep the "drugs are evil" narrative. It's called decriminalization. Stop bothering people for possessing, producing or using drugs, do as you want with those trafficking, and keep them illegal. This could be done progressively without loss of face by government. Oh wait, that's what the article is about! Drugs, including alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceuticals are dangerous, and utmost caution should be had if using. If you can brew your own beer or grow your own cannabis, you probably have learnt a thing or two about caution. Either that or a professional cautious-person (doctor) will do the administration.
  - john_minsk 6y ago
    I like it;-) DIY or nothing.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    do as you want with those trafficking, and keep them illegal. If you keep them illegal then you lose control. If they are made available from your local chemist then you can legislate for quality and strength. Keeping them illegal also has a massive unwanted side effect in terms of encouraging criminal gangs and violence. All that would go away if customers could just stroll down to their local Boots and buy a packet of spliffs.
qwerty456127 6y ago
I completely agree to you: a terminally ill person should be given whatever substance they want and even advised to take whatever a drug if it can make their last moments happier. Even if it's addictive or harms health - they don't need to maintain healthy living and society integration any more so why not? I wouldn't even limit this to patients which are actually going to die soon and have no choice. Any patient eligible for euthanasia should be allowed to take any substance they want. It is absurd to let a person die but forbid them to take a shot of a substance "because it can harm their health" or whatever. I would even suggest them to take psychedelics - this may (or may not - a proper setting can be important) bring peace of mind and even sense of meaning in both dying and living, they pretty much may even change their mind.
- C19is20 6y ago
  I'm dying, can I have....? No, it'll make you sick. I'm dying for a cigarette. Oh, ok, no problem.
netcan 6y ago
It's almost like asking "why are sex scandals controversial." You could come up with all sorts of arguments for or against the controversy in any specific case... but it kinda doesn't matter. When something is controversial, people argue for and against it by definition. Sex scandals have always been. Some of the oldest writing we have is basic law codes. Sex just seems to always attract controversy, even if taboos differ between cultures. Mid altering substances are taboo, have been throughout modern times. Shrooms & grass are established recreationally, so controversy. Enough controversy to trump the normal medical exception from the taboo. So yes, basically. It is really the picture of a sick old lady smokin' a massive spliff. That's the problem. Smoking spliffs is taboo. If old ladies do it, the taboo can't hold. Taboos have two parts: the thing that's taboo and the ways a culture maintains it.... ie the controversy. Taboos dissipate unless they're forcefully guarded. Someone does a thing. No one makes a big deal. Someone else does the thing. It quickly becomes normative. If you're old enough, think of the homosexuality taboo. How important it was (when I was a kid) to make sure no one thought you were a homo. Now it isn't, at least in my surrounds. We enforced the taboo on each other. When we stopped. It stopped. The old lady with a spliff is like the supreme court of literal common law.
varispeed 6y ago
The problem is that in many western cultures suffering is being regarded as a virtue and happiness as a great sin especially if achieved by using substances rather than through other actions. You can glaringly see that where people with chronic pain are denied access to medicinal cannabis, for example here in the UK. You can only receive treatment through a private medical clinic which costs hundreds and sometimes thousands per month, so it is only reserved for the wealthy. NHS says there is no evidence it works, so they will not refund any treatment and in the meantime thousands have to resort to asking gangs for supply. If it doesn't work then why people take it? Do they fake chronic pain to get high?
- viraptor 6y ago
  > Do they fake chronic pain to get high? Not trying to undermine the other part, which is true and I wish more countries would move faster. But this may be part of the problem officially. Yes, people routinely seek regulated drugs from doctors by faking symptoms. Enough to create systems where you can register people receiving prescriptions so that other doctors know not to prescribe multiple overlapping doses.
  - varispeed 6y ago
    Are there any data what "routinely" means? It took me a couple of years of going from doctor to doctor and being treated as one of those drug seekers to get help. It was extremely painful experience and I had to go through it just so that a drug seeker won't get drugs prescribed if they could just get them on the street with much less effort? It makes no sense to me.
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    The company that produced Oxycontin, Purdue, gets to pay a $8.3 billion penalty for pushing addictive opiates, and encouraging doctors to over-prescribe these: https://apnews.com/article/purdue-pharma-opioid-crisis-guilty-plea-5704ad896e964222a011f053949e0cc0 https://apnews.com/article/purdue-pharma-opioid-crisis-guilt...
- pjc50 6y ago
surfsvammel 6y ago
I think it's a left over from the eighties, as a response to the hippie areas romantic view of such drugs. I also believe that is why, for example, LSD is so stigmatized.
- Rillen 6y ago
  Imagine being a parent, never done LSD, not having a single clue what it can do and seeing your child becoming crazy, different, telling you things you can't comprehend and never had an desire to do so. I can see why it is frightening to many 'normal' people who are just living their lives, wanting to have a house, family, job, holidays and perhaps partially overwhelmed by all of that already anyway. I brought weed brownies to a birthday party for me and also for good friends to try if they wanted to. They live in 'rural' areas. Its common for them to drink alcohol, a lot. Drugs? no never no interest don't care. While i already had ~5 year of experience with weed, they didn't even see it once. why would they? They have alcohol, it works for them, its common, easy and fun. They had a really really hard time of even trying a brownie. They didn't even get why i would smoke weed if the effects are shallow. They didn't knew that you will not see halluzinations. i think i'm over curious. This leads me to not being happy about what i have and looking for new. They are under curious and they are happy with that they have. Is that a problem? No its just different balanced.
  - andai 6y ago
    I'd say a small dose of mushrooms (or LSD, but less experience there) is actually more likely to be a positive experience than weed edibles. Most people I know who have had bad experiences with drugs had it with edibles (or even just weed). Of course, due to the culture, weed is considered more "normal" in most countries than psychedelics, which is somewhat ironic in my experience. To be clear, not implying that weed can't be wonderful or that you can't have a bad trip on psychedelics, just speaking from what I've experienced, seen and heard from others.
    - Rillen 6y ago
      I tried both. A psychedelic is in my opinion not an easy drug at all. I don't think it is a normal experience for anyone, for the first time, to realize that what you see or what you believe can be influenced that easily. While halos around light with lsd is nice to watch, its still a crazy thing. I never had visual impairment on that level from weed or alcohol. Or when you see moving patterns on a wall, it does break one sence you as a human have a lot of trust for. Our neighbor is an old lady who had cancer and apparently smells sometimes things which are not here. She doesn't want to be crazy and doesn't even accept that it can easily be nerve damage or whatever which makes her sometimes smell things which are not here. Instead she thinks we and neighbors above her are trying to get her out of her flat. We are living in a very stable modern building, there is no realistic benefit of anyone to boot her out and walls are so thick, there is no noise issue at all. She still called the policies at least twice, had an expert here and was standing in our door twice angry and pissed of because we are creating that smell. It was 2 am in the morning and i was asleep. Getting tired, not being able to walk well anymore, loosing concentration or forgetting things are apparently easy to understand and to accept as a human.
soulofmischief 6y ago
I highly recommend The Emperor Wears No Clothes by the late Jack Herer for a comprehensive insight into the history and reasons for drug prohibition. It doesn't touch just on the social implications like fueling police states and for-profit prisons while enabling a new form of slave labor, but also largely on the economic and industrial factors which came into play as well. An old edition available for free online on Herer's website, and there is a link to a more recently updated edition on Amazon. https://jackherer.com/emperor-3/ https://jackherer.com/emperor-3/
ojr 6y ago
To be honest it is more harmful than beneficial, these drugs can have a short term side effect of racing thoughts, distorted reality, increased heart rate, paranoia, etc, these effects are well known but people like riding rollercoasters. Long term harmful side effects include onset of schizophrenia, bipolar and psychosis, lung cancer, etc. More people are using drugs like shrooms and weed recreationally than medicinally and at an age where the brain isn’t fully developed. Considered yourself lucky not being exposed to anyone with problems caused by these substances.
- matthewdgreen 6y ago
  Are these long term side effects as common with a single dose of psilocybin? Or are they mainly the result of stronger psychedelics given over multiple doses.
  - ojr 6y ago
    My friend developed a chronic mental illness after one bad trip. It is like playing Russian Roulette with your brain chemistry.
    - lsiebert 6y ago
      Chronic mental illness, for those predisposed, can be brought on by a variety of stressors, of which bad trips can be one. You can look up the stress-diathesis model (1). Of course stone cold sober people can also be at risk of chronic mental illness from stressors; Look at mental health in followers of the LDS church, who abstain from alcohol, tobacco and caffeine. (2) That means that people who are more predisposed to mental illness or under stress should be cautious around drugs (whether legally available or not), just like people with diabetes should be cautious about their blood sugar. It doesn't mean that drugs can't have beneficial effects and be used safely. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diathesis%E2%80%93stress_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diathesis%E2%80%93stress_model (2) https://universe.byu.edu/2018/02/05/mental-illness-1/ https://universe.byu.edu/2018/02/05/mental-illness-1/
etripe 6y ago
I think a lot of the controversy dates back to the anti-war and civil rights movements. Psychedelics were outlawed to tackle the first, opioids to address the latter. Now there were "legitimate" charges to ring them up for instead of civil disobedience. Result: fewer challenges to the status quo when fundamental change at near-revolutionary levels seemed a real risk for those in power. Turns out society's elite were a bunch of squares.
hourislate 6y ago
There is multi-billion dollar industry to support. It's comprised of the Prison Industry, Police/Police Unions, Judicial System/Prosecutors/Administrators, etc. As crime has fallen and society has become less violent, Politicians have to look for ways to keep the steady flow of Meat into the Prisons since they don't fill themselves and billions of dollars at stake, 10's of thousands of jobs, generous campaign donations, etc. So these Politicians have to make the door as wide as possible to keep the game going, Marijuana, psychedelics, etc, keep that door wide. Throwing kids in jail for being late, missing school, having a joint or prosecuting sick or dying patients who need help (that Morphine shot costs how much in the Hospital?). It's a game being played on the American People and year after year they keep voting/electing the same people who are running the game.
- oops 6y ago
  There is another multi-billion dollar industry who probably would rather people keep paying them for their antidepressants than growing some cheap shrooms in their yard.
occamrazor 6y ago
I suspect that one of the reasons is the experience with medical marijuana in some states, in particular California. There getting a marijuana prescription was so easy that dispensaries became a large distribution channel for recreational users. This process provided arguments to opponents of medical marijuana, who claimed that it is just a “pretext for stoners”. As a supporter of both medical use of marijuana and derived substances, and of legalization of recreational use, I think that a clearer separation between the two would benefit all users and provide a better legal environment.
tyingq 6y ago
Agreed. Especially when the current common palliative treatment is to load them up with opiates such that they are asleep, high, or massively in pain and also constipated in the rare lucid moments.
voisin 6y ago
The cynic in me believes the controversy is manufactured (“war on drugs”) rather than based on logic and due only to the fact that corporations make money on prescriptions, but not on things you can grow or forage on your own.
trilinearnz 6y ago
> "They’re afraid that there’s more to reality than they have ever confronted. That there are doors that they’re afraid to go in, and they don’t want us to go in there either, because if we go in we might learn something that they don’t know. And that makes us a little out of their control." - Ken Kesey, 1966
janoside 6y ago
Culture evolves slowly, often only changing dramatically across generations. Multiple generations in USA (which is a dominantly exported culture globally) have adopted the "drugs"-are-bad idea as a core belief (it's also worth noting that core beliefs tend not to be very nuanced or discerning, as in this case there's very little ability to discern between different types of "drug" substances). Culture evolution slows further when large institutions (primarily "the state" here) adopt the same beliefs and make them concrete (by being codified in many laws in this case). This particular effect worsens when the core belief is that some thing is bad and can be outlawed/fought because you get droves of self-righteous politicians who want to make a name for themselves piling on against this Bad Thing. Those processes need to be reversed and unwound to move past the erroneous core belief. Bad ideas do die, but they almost always survive much longer than they "should" because of a litany of flaws in human nature/culture/information-flow.

colechristensen 6y ago

Some of it is basically racist propaganda that entered the public consciousness and became "true". Hallucinogens though... aren't just drugs that change something a little. They can give people profound religious experiences. Some people become an unsettling kind of prophet for a religion of the drug. In the 60s-ish era there were people that wanted to change the world with the drugs with plans to dose populations and leaders to effect major changes. They are very powerful things and with them minds can be rewritten... any sufficiently powerful tool is dangerous. Some early signals and bad actors (basically parts the drug culture that separated from the early scientists studying the drugs) scared the shit out of many in the established society and the propaganda machine turned on and turned them and drugs in general into an evil. Sort of a knee-jerk stupid reaction that had some basis in real issues but was distorted and exaggerated by people who didn't know much of anything and just got on the bandwagon. (remind you of any other societal issues?)

coldtea 6y ago
>They can give people profound religious experiences. Some people become an unsettling kind of prophet for a religion of the drug. Like 0.01%? For every McKenna, Timophy Leary, etc, there were millions doing LSD in the 60s. And the "prophets" were mostly a fashion of the era too. When that died, in the 80s, and 90s and so on, you still had LSD, and shrooms, and Ecstasy, and others, but no "prophets".
- colechristensen 6y ago
  I don’t know, I have met plenty of people that revolve their lives around their favorite drug and talk about them like a kind of religion. Most of them are rather low grade, but as i take it, it is a characteristic of hallucinogenic drugs not just a passed fad.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
    I don't think it's (just?) the drugs. We can observe the behaviour in many types of interests. This being HN, the obvious example is programming language zealotry. Other common examples are sports and cars. We see people walking down the street covered in car brand livery and think approximately nothing of it, and some of them will bang on about their chosen interest endlessly. I tend to think it's more like a flaw in human psychology. Or maybe a strength of our inquisitive nature that sort of gets hijacked by an almost neurotic obsession.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    On the personal level, that's the same with startup life, programming, gaming, veganism, cars, PC/Alt-right, environmentalism, body building, nerdery, sex, drink, sports, the stock market, politics, religion, and tons of other things besides, all the way to D&D. But that doesn't mean psychedelics are especially prone to that.
  - rStar 6y ago
    hallucinogenics, for those that have a positive experience, are so foreign and outside the bounds of normal life, while making you feel like you have new insight into your own life, that people just want other people to have that experience. kind of like the first time you see the ocean or the grand canyon or a sequoia.
    - scottlocklin 6y ago
      It's incredibly creepy, like people insisting you join their religious or sexual cult. It's definitely beyond "hey the grand canyon is cool to look at" or "motorcycles are fun" and is way out there next to "wild eyed moonies handing out flowers at the airport." I'm always creeped out by HN threads on the subject, along with the ones on depression and the collection of fruit salad antidepressants/speed some people need to get through the day. Mind you I have had positive experiences with psychedelics; I wouldn't push them on anyone, and think it both creepy and unwise to do so.
boraoztunc 6y ago
Governments and regulations. They've even created poster designs to make it visually evil. https://mashable.com/2016/04/18/anti-weed-film-posters/ https://mashable.com/2016/04/18/anti-weed-film-posters/
- cinntaile 6y ago
  Some of those old posters have "its" spelled as "it's", was this how it was spelled before or is this a spelling error?
  - sudasana 6y ago
    Still an error - just poor copyediting.
- cies 6y ago
  Wow. That's tax payer money at work?
  - pjc50 6y ago
    The notorious film Reefer Madness was actually privately financed by a church group. As an example of how forbidding something can make it attractive, it was re-cut into an "exploitation" film...
    - cies 6y ago
      > privately financed this means we have no clue who paid right? as in: it could still be tax money through the CIA or smth.
      - bigbubba 6y ago
        Privately doesn't mean secretly in this context, and the CIA did not exist in 1936. I don't know who precisely funded the film, but I've never seen anything that calls into doubt its purported source of funding.
rich_sasha 6y ago
Right. So these are some very good reasons to be _careful_ about any research you do with this stuff. But to ban it, say no, never, crazy stuff, is incomprehensible to me.

heavenlyblue 6y ago

Playing the devils advocate, and I think this is a pretty strong point against shrooms: while opioids cause harm, their harm is incredibly mechanical (it’s just addiction) and can be managed well. Shrooms play with your brain. We barely know how that works and quite frankly a lot of the research into managing the depressive episodes with shrooms may just be that you become more stupid and therefore less prone to thinking in the first place.

teataster 6y ago
James Farina has spent decades doing non-clinical research on long term effects of psychedelics. For what is worth, the effects seem to go the other direction. Other than that, I think you are absolutely right tho, mushrooms can induce severe changes. I am not for legalization. And I believe your point is why most people under legal psychedelic treatment are terminal patients.
Mordisquitos 6y ago
I acknowledge you're playing devil's advocate, so don't take this too harshly, but the truism that "Shrooms play with your brain" is meaningless as an argument against shrooms—more so when contrasting it to "just an addiction". Where is an addiction anywhere but the brain? Of course opioids play with your brain. So do SSRI antidepressants for example, whose very name is based on their most commonly accepted mechanism of action. And it's not only strictly psychiatric drugs—ADHD medication also plays with your brain, influencing dopamine pathways. But then so do gambling, and physical exercise, and meditation! Heck, even social media plays with your brain. The mere fact that something has an effect on the brain is not in itself an argument against it—let alone when it is being proposed as a psychotherapeutic tool.
- heavenlyblue 6y ago
  Opioid addiction is a clear mechanical fact. We know exactly what one needs to do in order to overcome opioid addiction (or how to avoid it on that matter).
  - 6y ago

fsloth 6y ago

I presume the main reason for the controversy is the prevailing dogma "Drugs are evil". This dogma has been used to enact countless bills of legislation in most rich countries, which in turn have encumbered the justice and police system, which in turn have put thousands upon thousands of people into to the correctional system for years. After all that busywork, lives destroyed and taxpayer money wasted, it is really hard to suddenly jump ship and say "Nah, you know what... after all these lives destroyed and billions of tax money spent ... you know, we were wrong, let's rethink this". Drug abuse should be handled as a public health issue, not a criminal issue. And it takes time and effort to rebalance the current status quo to a more humane and sane approach. This vox article discsusses the political history of war on drugs: https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325750/nixon-war-on-drugs https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325750/nixon-war-on-drugs

teataster 6y ago
I believe there is some sort of nonsequitur on the proposed argument. You can stop the war on drugs and keep the "drugs are evil" narrative. It's called decriminalization. Stop bothering people for possessing, producing or using drugs, do as you want with those trafficking, and keep them illegal. This could be done progressively without loss of face by government. Oh wait, that's what the article is about! Drugs, including alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceuticals are dangerous, and utmost caution should be had if using. If you can brew your own beer or grow your own cannabis, you probably have learnt a thing or two about caution. Either that or a professional cautious-person (doctor) will do the administration.
- john_minsk 6y ago
  I like it;-) DIY or nothing.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  do as you want with those trafficking, and keep them illegal. If you keep them illegal then you lose control. If they are made available from your local chemist then you can legislate for quality and strength. Keeping them illegal also has a massive unwanted side effect in terms of encouraging criminal gangs and violence. All that would go away if customers could just stroll down to their local Boots and buy a packet of spliffs.

qwerty456127 6y ago

I completely agree to you: a terminally ill person should be given whatever substance they want and even advised to take whatever a drug if it can make their last moments happier. Even if it's addictive or harms health - they don't need to maintain healthy living and society integration any more so why not? I wouldn't even limit this to patients which are actually going to die soon and have no choice. Any patient eligible for euthanasia should be allowed to take any substance they want. It is absurd to let a person die but forbid them to take a shot of a substance "because it can harm their health" or whatever. I would even suggest them to take psychedelics - this may (or may not - a proper setting can be important) bring peace of mind and even sense of meaning in both dying and living, they pretty much may even change their mind.

C19is20 6y ago
I'm dying, can I have....? No, it'll make you sick. I'm dying for a cigarette. Oh, ok, no problem.

netcan 6y ago

It's almost like asking "why are sex scandals controversial." You could come up with all sorts of arguments for or against the controversy in any specific case... but it kinda doesn't matter. When something is controversial, people argue for and against it by definition. Sex scandals have always been. Some of the oldest writing we have is basic law codes. Sex just seems to always attract controversy, even if taboos differ between cultures. Mid altering substances are taboo, have been throughout modern times. Shrooms & grass are established recreationally, so controversy. Enough controversy to trump the normal medical exception from the taboo. So yes, basically. It is really the picture of a sick old lady smokin' a massive spliff. That's the problem. Smoking spliffs is taboo. If old ladies do it, the taboo can't hold. Taboos have two parts: the thing that's taboo and the ways a culture maintains it.... ie the controversy. Taboos dissipate unless they're forcefully guarded. Someone does a thing. No one makes a big deal. Someone else does the thing. It quickly becomes normative. If you're old enough, think of the homosexuality taboo. How important it was (when I was a kid) to make sure no one thought you were a homo. Now it isn't, at least in my surrounds. We enforced the taboo on each other. When we stopped. It stopped. The old lady with a spliff is like the supreme court of literal common law.

varispeed 6y ago

The problem is that in many western cultures suffering is being regarded as a virtue and happiness as a great sin especially if achieved by using substances rather than through other actions. You can glaringly see that where people with chronic pain are denied access to medicinal cannabis, for example here in the UK. You can only receive treatment through a private medical clinic which costs hundreds and sometimes thousands per month, so it is only reserved for the wealthy. NHS says there is no evidence it works, so they will not refund any treatment and in the meantime thousands have to resort to asking gangs for supply. If it doesn't work then why people take it? Do they fake chronic pain to get high?

viraptor 6y ago
> Do they fake chronic pain to get high? Not trying to undermine the other part, which is true and I wish more countries would move faster. But this may be part of the problem officially. Yes, people routinely seek regulated drugs from doctors by faking symptoms. Enough to create systems where you can register people receiving prescriptions so that other doctors know not to prescribe multiple overlapping doses.
- varispeed 6y ago
  Are there any data what "routinely" means? It took me a couple of years of going from doctor to doctor and being treated as one of those drug seekers to get help. It was extremely painful experience and I had to go through it just so that a drug seeker won't get drugs prescribed if they could just get them on the street with much less effort? It makes no sense to me.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  The company that produced Oxycontin, Purdue, gets to pay a $8.3 billion penalty for pushing addictive opiates, and encouraging doctors to over-prescribe these: https://apnews.com/article/purdue-pharma-opioid-crisis-guilty-plea-5704ad896e964222a011f053949e0cc0 https://apnews.com/article/purdue-pharma-opioid-crisis-guilt...
pjc50 6y ago

surfsvammel 6y ago

I think it's a left over from the eighties, as a response to the hippie areas romantic view of such drugs. I also believe that is why, for example, LSD is so stigmatized.

Rillen 6y ago
Imagine being a parent, never done LSD, not having a single clue what it can do and seeing your child becoming crazy, different, telling you things you can't comprehend and never had an desire to do so. I can see why it is frightening to many 'normal' people who are just living their lives, wanting to have a house, family, job, holidays and perhaps partially overwhelmed by all of that already anyway. I brought weed brownies to a birthday party for me and also for good friends to try if they wanted to. They live in 'rural' areas. Its common for them to drink alcohol, a lot. Drugs? no never no interest don't care. While i already had ~5 year of experience with weed, they didn't even see it once. why would they? They have alcohol, it works for them, its common, easy and fun. They had a really really hard time of even trying a brownie. They didn't even get why i would smoke weed if the effects are shallow. They didn't knew that you will not see halluzinations. i think i'm over curious. This leads me to not being happy about what i have and looking for new. They are under curious and they are happy with that they have. Is that a problem? No its just different balanced.
- andai 6y ago
  I'd say a small dose of mushrooms (or LSD, but less experience there) is actually more likely to be a positive experience than weed edibles. Most people I know who have had bad experiences with drugs had it with edibles (or even just weed). Of course, due to the culture, weed is considered more "normal" in most countries than psychedelics, which is somewhat ironic in my experience. To be clear, not implying that weed can't be wonderful or that you can't have a bad trip on psychedelics, just speaking from what I've experienced, seen and heard from others.
  - Rillen 6y ago
    I tried both. A psychedelic is in my opinion not an easy drug at all. I don't think it is a normal experience for anyone, for the first time, to realize that what you see or what you believe can be influenced that easily. While halos around light with lsd is nice to watch, its still a crazy thing. I never had visual impairment on that level from weed or alcohol. Or when you see moving patterns on a wall, it does break one sence you as a human have a lot of trust for. Our neighbor is an old lady who had cancer and apparently smells sometimes things which are not here. She doesn't want to be crazy and doesn't even accept that it can easily be nerve damage or whatever which makes her sometimes smell things which are not here. Instead she thinks we and neighbors above her are trying to get her out of her flat. We are living in a very stable modern building, there is no realistic benefit of anyone to boot her out and walls are so thick, there is no noise issue at all. She still called the policies at least twice, had an expert here and was standing in our door twice angry and pissed of because we are creating that smell. It was 2 am in the morning and i was asleep. Getting tired, not being able to walk well anymore, loosing concentration or forgetting things are apparently easy to understand and to accept as a human.

soulofmischief 6y ago

I highly recommend The Emperor Wears No Clothes by the late Jack Herer for a comprehensive insight into the history and reasons for drug prohibition. It doesn't touch just on the social implications like fueling police states and for-profit prisons while enabling a new form of slave labor, but also largely on the economic and industrial factors which came into play as well. An old edition available for free online on Herer's website, and there is a link to a more recently updated edition on Amazon. https://jackherer.com/emperor-3/ https://jackherer.com/emperor-3/

ojr 6y ago

To be honest it is more harmful than beneficial, these drugs can have a short term side effect of racing thoughts, distorted reality, increased heart rate, paranoia, etc, these effects are well known but people like riding rollercoasters. Long term harmful side effects include onset of schizophrenia, bipolar and psychosis, lung cancer, etc. More people are using drugs like shrooms and weed recreationally than medicinally and at an age where the brain isn’t fully developed. Considered yourself lucky not being exposed to anyone with problems caused by these substances.

matthewdgreen 6y ago
Are these long term side effects as common with a single dose of psilocybin? Or are they mainly the result of stronger psychedelics given over multiple doses.
- ojr 6y ago
  My friend developed a chronic mental illness after one bad trip. It is like playing Russian Roulette with your brain chemistry.
  - lsiebert 6y ago
    Chronic mental illness, for those predisposed, can be brought on by a variety of stressors, of which bad trips can be one. You can look up the stress-diathesis model (1). Of course stone cold sober people can also be at risk of chronic mental illness from stressors; Look at mental health in followers of the LDS church, who abstain from alcohol, tobacco and caffeine. (2) That means that people who are more predisposed to mental illness or under stress should be cautious around drugs (whether legally available or not), just like people with diabetes should be cautious about their blood sugar. It doesn't mean that drugs can't have beneficial effects and be used safely. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diathesis%E2%80%93stress_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diathesis%E2%80%93stress_model (2) https://universe.byu.edu/2018/02/05/mental-illness-1/ https://universe.byu.edu/2018/02/05/mental-illness-1/

etripe 6y ago

I think a lot of the controversy dates back to the anti-war and civil rights movements. Psychedelics were outlawed to tackle the first, opioids to address the latter. Now there were "legitimate" charges to ring them up for instead of civil disobedience. Result: fewer challenges to the status quo when fundamental change at near-revolutionary levels seemed a real risk for those in power. Turns out society's elite were a bunch of squares.

hourislate 6y ago

There is multi-billion dollar industry to support. It's comprised of the Prison Industry, Police/Police Unions, Judicial System/Prosecutors/Administrators, etc. As crime has fallen and society has become less violent, Politicians have to look for ways to keep the steady flow of Meat into the Prisons since they don't fill themselves and billions of dollars at stake, 10's of thousands of jobs, generous campaign donations, etc. So these Politicians have to make the door as wide as possible to keep the game going, Marijuana, psychedelics, etc, keep that door wide. Throwing kids in jail for being late, missing school, having a joint or prosecuting sick or dying patients who need help (that Morphine shot costs how much in the Hospital?). It's a game being played on the American People and year after year they keep voting/electing the same people who are running the game.

oops 6y ago
There is another multi-billion dollar industry who probably would rather people keep paying them for their antidepressants than growing some cheap shrooms in their yard.

occamrazor 6y ago

I suspect that one of the reasons is the experience with medical marijuana in some states, in particular California. There getting a marijuana prescription was so easy that dispensaries became a large distribution channel for recreational users. This process provided arguments to opponents of medical marijuana, who claimed that it is just a “pretext for stoners”. As a supporter of both medical use of marijuana and derived substances, and of legalization of recreational use, I think that a clearer separation between the two would benefit all users and provide a better legal environment.

tyingq 6y ago

Agreed. Especially when the current common palliative treatment is to load them up with opiates such that they are asleep, high, or massively in pain and also constipated in the rare lucid moments.

voisin 6y ago

The cynic in me believes the controversy is manufactured (“war on drugs”) rather than based on logic and due only to the fact that corporations make money on prescriptions, but not on things you can grow or forage on your own.

trilinearnz 6y ago

> "They’re afraid that there’s more to reality than they have ever confronted. That there are doors that they’re afraid to go in, and they don’t want us to go in there either, because if we go in we might learn something that they don’t know. And that makes us a little out of their control." - Ken Kesey, 1966

janoside 6y ago

Culture evolves slowly, often only changing dramatically across generations. Multiple generations in USA (which is a dominantly exported culture globally) have adopted the "drugs"-are-bad idea as a core belief (it's also worth noting that core beliefs tend not to be very nuanced or discerning, as in this case there's very little ability to discern between different types of "drug" substances). Culture evolution slows further when large institutions (primarily "the state" here) adopt the same beliefs and make them concrete (by being codified in many laws in this case). This particular effect worsens when the core belief is that some thing is bad and can be outlawed/fought because you get droves of self-righteous politicians who want to make a name for themselves piling on against this Bad Thing. Those processes need to be reversed and unwound to move past the erroneous core belief. Bad ideas do die, but they almost always survive much longer than they "should" because of a litany of flaws in human nature/culture/information-flow.