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California bill would decriminalize psychedelics
- tomComb 6y agoVery sensible initiative, but nothing about whether it has any chance of becoming law.
- alsetmusic 6y ago> Very sensible initiative, but nothing about whether it has any chance of becoming law. It has already happened in two cities. I live in Oakland and didn’t even realize. I already loved my city, but I’m really proud to have learned about this. From TFA: > Scott Wiener, the state senator who authored the bill, hopes that in following the lead of places such as Oakland, Santa Cruz Change usually happens slowly. But California is inching towards what I hope is inevitable.
- internetslave 6y agoI think psychedelics will ruin the minds of many teenagers. They should never be legalized. Anyone who has spent time around people who used them in their youth knows this, we don’t understand how they affect brains
- adfm 6y agoConsider that teenagers can already acquire psychedelics regardless of legal status. More kids are killed by alcohol every year and it's a legal drug. Changing the legal status of psychedelics will help research into these amazing materials and hopefully change the world we collectively experience in real and meaningful ways.
- notsureaboutpg 6y agoEverything isn't about whether people die or not. I have some stoner friends from high school who were really smart and gave up in college and now work mediocre dead end jobs and live in really low cost of living areas. They don't have unforeseen burdens like family to take care of, no mental / health problems, no debts, nothing is holding them back. They're happy. They're far from dead. But that potential they had is completely gone at this point. Maybe we shouldn't use the law to force people to live up to a materialistic ideal, I get that, but the idea that all that matters when thinking about social standards is whether people die from X or Y is silly and not a holistic way of thinking about anything.
- 1996 6y agoThe dead comment below you says: > I have some stoner friends from high school who were really smart and gave up in college and now work mediocre dead end jobs and live in really low cost of living areas. > They're happy. They're far from dead. But that potential they had is completely gone at this point. What entitles you to their potential? People may want to change the world, or may just want an entry level job that keeps them fed and housed while spending their time on drugs/videogames/what-the-hell-they-damn-want-its-not-my-problem If really smart people decide that working in construction and smoking weed is their call, who am I to say otherwise?
- fakename11 6y agoSorry, but construction is a serious job. I don't want people that are high building bridges and homes.
- sircastor 6y agoThe same applies to construction and alcohol. It isn’t inherent that someone who works construction and uses a narcotic world do so while working.
- heavyset_go 6y agoYou'd be hard pressed to find anyone that supports decriminalization and thinks people should be getting high at work, especially people who do dangerous work.
- jackson1442 6y agoThe same could be said about alcohol. It’s none of my business what people do in their free time at home, as long as they can safely and effectively do their job when they’re on the clock.
- LocalH 6y agoLegalization or decriminalization doesn't necessarily lead to "everyone's getting high at work"
- cageface 6y agoWhen I was in high school it was very difficult to get alcohol. LSD on the other hand was readily available and very cheap. And this was in Utah.
- devin 6y agoHa! I lived in a small town in WI, and LSD was more available than any drug. Not only available, but available in exotic forms: microdots, gel tabs, fancy printed blotter. Sometimes I wonder if it was a government experiment, that's how remarkably available it was relative to other drugs. Consider for a moment it is pretty easy to grow mushrooms or pot, and then consider that a bunch of small-town kids in WI had easier access to a difficult-to-synthesize psychedelic. Wild.
- cageface 6y agoYeah we had all those too. Not sure where it was coming from but it was abundant in all varieties and as cheap as $1 a hit.
- skissane 6y agoIn high school in Australia, it was easy to find alcohol. Don't think there was much LSD going around (some marijuana and MDMA). I think one difference is when you have 18 as the legal drinking age, a significant chunk of kids turn 18 while still in year 12. They could then legally buy it and then (illegally) on-sell it to their school friends who weren't of legal age yet. In some cases parents would even buy alcohol for their teenage children. Parents supplying other drugs to their children is not totally unheard of but far less common.
- gweinberg 6y agoProbably for the best, but I'm not sure what it means. I would think Utah would be unusually difficult to get alcohol, since (most) kids couldn't just raid their parents' liquor cabinets. Not sure how Utah's rather unique culture would affect availability of LSD.
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- daenney 6y agoPeople will always find ways to get drugs one way or another, even just to experiment once or twice. It being illegal has an allure of its own. It's better if they can acquire it legally, and try it out with friends in a safe environment and don't have to hide it. Making it legal also helps remove stigma, lowering the barrier for people to seek help and care. Some further reading: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radical-drugs-policy-is-working-why-hasnt-the-world-copied-it https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radic... > Anyone who has spent time around people who used them in their youth knows this, No actually, not anyone. I have plenty of friends that have experimented with various psychedelics during different stages of their lives. They're perfectly healthy and productive members of society. It's also perfectly possible to make something not be illegal, and still not sell it to teenagers.
- pengaru 6y ago0-karma troll conflating use and abuse, why don't you link us some reefer madness videos while you're at it.
- vulcan01 6y agoHN doesn't tolerate personal attacks. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=attack%20by%3Adang&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- pengaru 6y agoHow does one perform a personal attack on a throwaway account created specifically for the purposes of writing a shallow propaganda comment? There is zero forum persona of any persistent form here being attacked, it's trash upon trash. Except I'm actually highlighting that use != abuse, which this troll willfully ignored.
- jackson1442 6y agoAnecdotally, as a college student in a state where marijuana is still extremely illegal, it is comically easy to obtain it while alcohol, a legal drug, is significantly more difficult to obtain (though still easy). Following this pattern, from what I've seen psychedelics are relatively simple to get (albeit harder than weed), therefore legalization might actually make them more difficult to illegally obtain because dealers will be replaced by controlled medical practices in many markets. Decriminalization will also open doors for people to study _how_ they affect the brain.
- notsureaboutpg 6y agoA lot is made about how regulation makes it easier to determine who can and cannot use substances, but not much is made about the amount of people willing to try something based on its legality or otherwise. I can guarantee you more college students under the drinking age want to try alcohol than want to try marijuana or psychedelics, and that's because the former is legal and thus a mainstay in our cultural lexicon. Alcohol ads are the most prominent in the most watched television event every year in the US (Super Bowl). Alcohol-fueled parties are seen as quintessentially college. Marijuana is gaining such a cultural status now (has been for the past 2 decades). Psychedelics will gain such a status as well, and that will lead to more people wanting to use them. Don't take this as an argument for or against legalization, but do consider why this isn't mentioned much in the discussions surrounding this topic.
- ashtonkem 6y agoIllegal drug dealers have very little incentive not to sell to underage kids, while legal ones have a license and livelihood that could be taken away. Of course legal drugs always have “cool” adults willing to be straw purchasers for underage kids. It’s complicated, and the relationship between the law and underage usage are non linear.
- rtkwe 6y agoIt'll probably remain at least slightly easier to get drugs than alcohol even if/when both are legal to 21+ just because drugs are so much smaller and easier to deal with. A trunk full of Alcohol isn't much but a trunk of any drug is a lot.
- ub99 6y agoI have spent time around many young and old people who used and continue using psychedelics. These are absolutely normal people. In addition, there is ton of research into the effects of these substances on the human brain, just look it up.
- gchamonlive 6y agoyou do realise alcohol is legalized, but teenagers don't have easy access to it, right? Legalization is not the same as free distribution. It is not like you would see Psychedelics available in every store for everyone to buy, regardless of age or without prescription.
- hertzrat 6y agoDefine easy access. I never knew anybody who had the slightest trouble getting alcohol when they were teenagers
- devin 6y agoI used them judiciously when I was a teenager and in my early 20s. Use is one thing, abuse is another. Your comment about how "we don't understand how they (psychedelics) affect brains" holds true for pretty much anything we put in our bodies, so there's no real reason to draw the line at psychedelics. That said, it's not entirely true to say we don't understand _any_ of the action, because we do. If you want to know the answer to deeper questions like the effect on long-term development and so on, lower the barrier to studying the effects, and go from there. I can't think of any good reason why psychedelics cannot be prescribed, but Oxycontin or Adderall or whatever can, and you can go buy alcohol and cigarettes at the store.
- hntrader 6y agoThis is predictably getting downvoted but the available science is tentatively supportive of this view. Marijuana usage as a child or teenager is significantly correlated with declines in IQ by adulthood. Whether it's causal is up for debate, but avoiding it as a teenager is a good idea given extant knowledge.
- sebmellen 6y agoI'd be interested to see the data on this, because I suspect occasional use (i.e. less than once every 2 weeks to one month) is not as damaging, if at all. Occasional use is very different from the "wake and bake" style of using marijuana every hour or so. I fell into the former category, as did some friends of mine, but I knew many who were in the latter. The differences a few years on are quite profound.
- dwaltrip 6y agoThis is a bit of a tangent. The issue at hand is the use of psilocybin, MDMA, and LSD, among others, by adults -- especially for healing and self-betterment. I'm not sure if you have seen the incredible research results that have been piling up. These substances are capable of relieving immense suffering and greatly improving people's lives. Of course, they are quite powerful and should be used with great care.
- hntrader 6y agoI have seen the incredible results of psilocybin, but these results are on adult brains. MDMA I'm less sure about due to possible neurotoxicity, I'd need to do more research on it, but my mind isn't closed to it.
- dwaltrip 6y agoLook into the research that MAPS (and others) is doing with MDMA. Amazing results with people who are suffering from severe PTSD. I expect it will be a powerful tool that can help people suffering from a wide variety of traumas. Side note, but we don’t understand nearly enough about trauma. Unresolved trauma is an enormous driver of human suffering. I think it may far more widespread and take many more forms than what the textbooks say.
- anonuser123456 6y agoSelection bias?
- alsetmusic 6y ago> I think psychedelics will ruin the minds of many teenagers. They should never be legalized. Anyone who has spent time around people who used them in their youth knows this, we don’t understand how they affect brains Funny how I took huge amounts of LSD and mushrooms as a youth and then made a successful living as a productive member of society. People are surprised to learn that aspect of my past because when it comes up. If anything, my world view and appreciation for differing viewpoints is broader because of it.
- chronofar 6y agoWe don’t understand the effects because of the stigma around their illegality. Only recently has progress been made there, and further understanding from legality could only be a good thing. Use is already happening and will continue to happen. Increasing our understanding of the effects and regulating production and distribution accordingly are the path to safety.
- LocalH 6y agoPsychedelics have helped my ADHD. You need to open your mind. Have you ever tripped?
- sneak 6y agoNothing that states do with respect to drug decriminalization is very important, in my view, as operating any business in that space is painting a target on your back for federal enforcement. Operating a business committing federal felonies is not my idea of a sane or safe undertaking. One wrong statement to piss off the wrong people, and they can put you, your entire staff, and your entire bank account on ice for hundreds of years.
- joe_the_user 6y agoI live in one of California's Marijuana production centers. The Feds aren't crawling around here harassing people or anything. Marijuana is effectively legal in California - sad we don't have Amsterdam style bars but that's not the main thing. Supply meets demand, easily and production is local. Sure, it's not a great business but that's not the main thing.
- t-writescode 6y agoIt'd be nice for a legal business to be allowed to have a bank account, no?
- joe_the_user 6y agoIt's secondary (even if I'd indirectly benefit from this). Having cultivation and consumption not harassed by law enforcement is primary. Eliminating the war on drugs overall would be a huge win (and I certainly wouldn't take it as a given).
- sneak 6y agoThe issue is not whether or not they are enforcing. The fact that they can, at any time, for any arbitrary reason (including political speech, which would otherwise be protected) is the issue. Doing something routinely and openly that is an unenforced federal felony is to voluntarily surrender your constitutional rights under the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and probably others. (Breaking the law openly like this means they can instantly jail you for speech, for protesting, for being inconvenient, for carrying, and obtain a search warrant at any time.) It is not "effectively legal", any more than driving 9mph over the limit is. It's just not enforced: it's still a huge felony.
- joe_the_user 6y agoEnding the war on drugs entirely would be a huge step. The degree to which drug-profits propel corruption on a global scale is vast, hard to describe - entire countries wind-up destroyed by this (Mexico, Afghanistan, etc).
- sneak 6y agoLet's not forget the millions and millions of American lives totally destroyed by this, too: often the most vulnerable people in our society, most in need of care and protection. America imprisons its ethnic minorities in inhumane conditions at a rate 17x greater than China, per capita, even counting China's 1M+ re-education camps. (China has A LOT of people, but the war on drugs has imprisoned a WHOLE LOT of American minorities.)
- alsetmusic 6y agoWhat’s more, having for-profit prisons is a nice boost to the economy. Just think how many jobs are created by the “need” to round up, prosecute, and incarcerate people. Then charge them (or rather their loved ones) obscene rates for phone calls (look this up; it’s truly awful). We could reassign money to do community outreach, pay for jobs that provide mental health services, etc. But there are a lot of people who currently have a financial interest in maintaining the status quo.
- paulie_a 6y agoPrivate prisons while wrong are a tiny percentage of prisons
- A12-B 6y agoThey do this in public prisons too.
- sep_field 6y agoI wouldn't agree that 8.4% of the prison population is "tiny". "Statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice show that, as of 2013, there were 133,000 state and federal prisoners housed in privately owned prisons in the U.S., constituting 8.4% of the overall U.S. prison population. Broken down to prison type, 19.1% of the federal prison population in the United States is housed in private prisons and 6.8% of the U.S. state prison population is housed in private prisons. While 2013 represented a slight decline in private prison population over 2012, the overall trend over the preceding decade had been a slow increase." [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison
- dougSF70 6y agoTo understand California today requires psychedelics.
- sumedh 6y agoWhy?
- thepasswordis 6y agoMaybe this will help.
- msgilligan 6y agoThe Guardian headline reads: California BILL would decriminalize psychedelics... The Hacker News post omitted the world BILL, and is very confusing.
- us0r 6y agoThe exact headline is 6 characters too long
- msgilligan 6y agoBill is arguably the 4th most important word in the headline, I think there are better ways of shortening it.
- tus89 6y agoWhat is the alternative confusing interpretation that the omission creates? I don't see it.
- ro_bit 6y agoI personally thought, upon reading the headline, that it was talking about some poll of californians
- ipnon 6y agoIf life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness doesn't include willingly and responsibly putting whatever you want in your own mouth for whatever reason you want then I don't even want a country.
- thereare5lights 6y agoThe drug laws in this country are mostly a vestige of racist policies. For example, opium wasn't illegal until people started fearmongering about race mixing in opium dens with Chinese immigrants.
- iujjkfjdkkdkf 6y agoI'd say more generally, it's about control and having something police / government can hold over almost anyone, or any demographic, if convenient for whatever reason. That is the danger of these kinds of laws, they are a shortcut around other rules that are supposed to keep police power in check. And as pointed out elsewhere, local decriminalization doesn't really change this. It's a step in the right direction, but what it really needed is an explicit relinquishing of the power over people that these laws afford (in the US, perhaps an amendment even?) Until that happens, drug laws will still serve their purpose
- wxnx 6y agoThis, in my opinion, is closest to the truth - not to discount the issues of race that have historically propagated downward through the system and continue to affect people today. From John Ehrlichman, a Nixon associate: > You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did. Note: the veracity of this particular quote has been contested, but the story it purports to tell is compelling in my opinion regardless.
- hn_asker 6y agoThe decriminalization wave helped me find minds like Paul Stamets, Hamilton Morris, and Will Hall. Then I started asking more questions and found writers like Johan Harri, Michael Pollan, and Robert Whitaker. Following Whitaker's work after reading his Anatomy of an Epidemic, I also suggest watching the "Medicating Normal" movie.
- graaben 6y agoThis has been almost my exact same discovery path but I'm a few paces behind you. I would also highly recommend Carl Hart's "Drug Use for Grownups".
- oezi 6y ago"Drugs without the hot air" [1] by David Nutt was a great intro to science/harm-based drug policies. [1] https://www.uit.co.uk/drugs-without-the-hot-air https://www.uit.co.uk/drugs-without-the-hot-air
- Proven 6y agoHealthcare industry must be all over this... Once it becomes legal there will be so much business to be done with the state...
- f430 6y agoEnd the war on drugs. Period.
- barbacoa 6y ago>Wiener did not include peyote as one of the substances because of a shortage of the drug among indigenous practitioners, he said. Peyote is a sacred plant for many indigenous tribes, and at the behest of the native community, the bill will not decriminalize peyote, or mescaline when it is sourced from peyote. That is really disappointing.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- imesh 6y agoIt is already vulnerable list and if stopped being illegal it would be endangered in months. Synthetic mescaline is already a thing.
- LocalH 6y agoYou mean if it stopped being illegal there wouldn't be people who start producing their own peyote? I find that hard to believe.
- olivermarks 6y ago'“People should not be going to jail for possessing or using drugs,” Wiener told the Guardian. “It’s a health issue, not a criminal issue, and I hope that we get all the way there.” Unfortunately California's homeless population is absolutely exploding in size, and many of the tent dwellers are openly being dealt (decriminalized) and using drugs of all types. This is not a viable social situation for anyone.
- to1y 6y agoThe difference is they will be using the same substances but potentially much more harmful and you will have more people needlessly in prison. I don't see the positive to your argument.
- olivermarks 6y agoThere is no positive. It's a massive humanitarian crisis. Half the US homeless are in California, which spends 13 billion a year with no measurement, goals, metrics or evidence of positive results. Add in the opioid crisis, economic depression and housing shortages and you have a squalid pressure cooker of tents , crime and sanitation dangers.
- redis_mlc 6y ago> Unfortunately California's homeless population is absolutely exploding in size There's an interview on Youtube with a former police officer from either Portland or Seattle who was asked what percentage of homeless people that he talked to were on drugs, and he answered, "100%." It's important to understand that, since it increases the difficulty of responding to this issue - almost none of those people are ready to transition back to a job for a normal life. I don't have strong feelings on legalization either way, but note that mentally ill people self-medicating are in a different category than recreational users. Bipolar alcoholics are lucky to make it to 55 yo, so something to consider.
- imtringued 6y agoIf you want to make sure there are no homeless people then you simply give everyone a home. Shelters don't count because they are designed for homeless people. If you are in a shelter you are homeless, if you are not homeless you aren't in a shelter.
- DoreenMichele 6y agoOne of the things about decriminalization is that it gives people one less thing to worry about. People who are addicts are often desperately wanting off the drugs and the fact that they need to hide their use complicates their effort to get clean, an effort that is typically already enormously challenging.
- keiferski 6y agoI think a lot of people who want all drugs to be legalized haven’t spent time in a place where they functionally are. It’s not a pretty sight. Try parts of the Midwest and Appalachia. Industrial jobs went abroad and never came back, leaving large swaths of the population in poverty and without any real career outlook beyond low end retail. Enter fentanyl. It only made most of these problems worse. Decriminalization, not legalization, seems like a far better path to me for seriously addictive things like heroin. If it’s not combined with serious economic plans to help the unfortunate, you’ll just be further embedding an already disadvantaged underclass. Against billion dollar advertising campaigns (which will happen with full legalization), the average person doesn’t stand a chance.
- christphrdunder 6y agoheroin's not part of the bill. did you even read the article?
- keiferski 6y agoThe comments here are discussing drug legalization in general, as is normal for virtually every HN topic (ancillary issues to the actual link.)
- christphrdunder 6y agoyou're still attacking a straw man
- keiferski 6y agoConsidering that the top comment is arguing for exactly that, no, it’s not a strawman.
- imtringued 6y ago>I think a lot of people who want all drugs to be legalized haven’t spent time in a place where they functionally are. It’s not a pretty sight. >Try parts of the Midwest and Appalachia. Industrial jobs went abroad and never came back, leaving large swaths of the population in poverty and without any real career outlook beyond low end retail. Enter fentanyl. It only made most of these problems worse. That's why you let the government provide clean drugs at cost and let professionals administer the drugs. This saves on healthcare costs because cutting agents (such as brick dust in combination with a something stronger e.g. substitutes such as fentanyl) cause 99% of the health risks associated with drugs. The other 1% are caused by overdoses directly leading to death or mental decline. None of them will happen when you have professionals taking care of your dosage and tapering it off over time to reduce chemical dependence. Since people no longer have to engage in prostitution and theft to pay for drugs they are financially better off and you will see a reduction in crime at the same time.
- tim333 6y agoI'm not sure criminalization is the answer but there should be some controls on stuff like LSD - I've seen a few people mucked up by it. Maybe only supplied by licensed suppliers who have some responsibility for the results perhaps.