6 ms·

The Netherlands backpedaled after a couple of very serious incidents regarding many psychedelics. Public suicide, animal sacrifice, crime etc. I don’t see how i

by rideg 4y ago

The Netherlands backpedaled after a couple of very serious incidents regarding many psychedelics. Public suicide, animal sacrifice, crime etc. I don’t see how it will be different in SF.

FredrikMeyer 4y ago
So silly, considering all the noise and accidents alcohol directly causes. But then a single bad case after someone taking psychedelics, and they reverse.
- nathanaldensr 4y ago
  Textbook whataboutism--and I hate that phrase. Yes, and both substances should be controlled. Uncontrolled hard drugs are harmful to society, but it seems like the ignorant, naive youth of today are going to have to learn some hard lessons on the topic from first principles.
  - JamesBarney 4y ago
    This isn't whataboutism, it's very specifically comparing the societal consequences of two drugs and the possible consequences. It's not whataboutism bring up other risks that as a society we tolerate, when we are thinking about restricting one.
    - bko 4y ago
      One drug is possibly more harmful but is already legal almost everywhere, deeply ingrained in many aspects of Western society and has a history of issues regarding criminalization The other is possibly less harmful but it is currently illegal/controlled pretty much everywhere and has a niche demand. I think its entirely reasonable to think that we should not open up a whole new can of worms.
      - kortex 4y ago
        How is the can of worms not already open? The War on Drugs has failed to put a dent in drug consumption habits. My suspicion why there was an uptick of incidents in NL/Amsterdam was the influx of people specifically seeking those substances out, with little safety education or experience. If they were more widely available, the incidents would be far more diffuse, and likely fall below the noise floor. Plus, wider awareness means better overall substance education and understanding, meaning fewer folks getting in over their heads and acting a fool. The same "can of worms" argument was leveled against cannabis legalization, and turned out to be overblown, there was no outbreak of reefer madness.
      - gopher_space 4y ago
        Another way of looking at it is that right now only the kids buy and consume shrooms, and they do so completely unsupervised.
  - loeg 4y ago
    Crying "whataboutism" isn't a rhetorical shortcut to dismiss a reasonable argument. It's hypocritical and silly to allow alcohol and not other recreational drugs with similar safety profiles. It's also untenable to completely restrict alcohol.
    - dshpala 4y ago
      Similar safety profiles? I'm not a drinker, but I think you need to drink a LOT of alcohol to state hallucinating? I.e. most people don't do that.
      - nonasktell 4y ago
        Yes, but hallucinations aren't the main problem. Assaulting people and zigzaging on the road after just a few drinks is a bigger problem than having blurry vision and seeing weird colors. I took a shitton of psychedelics, I never saw anything that wasn't there. Psychedelics never made me black out, piss on the floor/all over the room, never made me want to assault someone, or made me act like an asshole, but alcohol on the other hand....
      - LargeWu 4y ago
        To start hallucinating? Sure. To engage in dangerous behavior? Hardly. That said, alcohol is a lot more predictable in its effects for a given dosage. And also the dosages are a lot more reliable. There's a reason it's perceived "not as bad" as hallucinogenic drugs.
      - welshwelsh 4y ago
        You might be overestimating the effects of hallucination. Someone who's hallucinating is not necessarily more impaired than someone who is drunk. Imagine this- you hear something behind you (a real sound), and for a moment you are startled, thinking someone else is in the room. You soon realize that this isn't the case. Someone on hallucinogens might take a moment longer to realize that there is nobody there. They imagine the intruder a little more vividly, their heart rate goes up a bit more. But just for a moment. In contrast, if there actually is someone there, a drunk person might not realize it. Their senses are dulled. Instead of seeing things that aren't there, they fail to notice things that are there. It's the opposite.
  - 8note 4y ago
    Specifically for the psychedelics, the danger is that people will see capitalist structures for how ridiculous they are They aren't dangerous to individuals, only rent seekers
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      That's the worst argument for socialism I've ever encountered.
      - captainredbeard 4y ago
        It’s not an argument, it’s a drug-induced psychotic musing…
      - breakfastduck 4y ago
        There was no argument for socialism.
        WalterBright 4y ago
        Such statements are never made in a vacuum. There's always context, even if unstated.
    - deemster 4y ago
      Good time to quote the cosmic bard, Terence McKenna. "Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behavior and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong."
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - nonasktell 4y ago
    Controlled hard drugs are harmful to society, the only country that has decriminalized everything is doing very good in that regard.
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    > Yes, and both substances should be controlled. We tried that here in the US. The result was a a proliferation of organized crime.
    - tsol 4y ago
      Yes we made murder illegal and organized crime engages in that too. Guess laws are just pointless
      - yellowapple 4y ago
        Organized crime doesn't profit from murder to anywhere close to the same degree it did from illicit alcohol sales or still does from illicit drug sales.
- subsubzero 4y ago
  Its not silly, for some psychedelics are fine and they can handle them ok. But others have psychotic breaks that are irreversible. I feel like SF is already a city that is very dysfunctional with crazies screaming at nothing, why make a really bad situation worse?
  - borski 4y ago
    Some people who drink alcohol are fine and they can handle it okay. Others drink and drive and kill people, or become addicted and/or kill themselves. Should we go back to prohibition?
    - subsubzero 4y ago
      This is a straw man argument, having a permanent mental change after having a "bad trip" on psychedelics is not analogous to drinking a beer or too much whisky and doing something dumb(or worse). There is not evidence that a person consumes one drink and goes into psychosis or has permanent mental changes like with psychedelics. I am not against having psychedelics for certain situations(under controlled situations) but you are playing with fire and your mind and sanity are the tinder and are rolling the dice so to speak.
      - borski 4y ago
        Citation required. I have yet to see a single reputable paper or study that describes a 'permanent mental change' for the worse, like psychosis, after a single encounter with psychedelics.
      - acchow 4y ago
        What are the negative permanent effects of a "bad trip"?
        drak0n1c 4y ago
        Perhaps not a single bad trip, but a couple years of bad drug habits can lead to permanent brain damage among those who aren't careful and knowledgeable about what they ingest and the dosage. It is a factor in the homelessness crisis.
BoorishBears 4y ago
You can already get hard drugs in the open here, the serious incidents would already be happening
jobs_throwaway 4y ago
No different than reefer madness. People do all that shit without psychedelics
Nifty3929 4y ago
I'd love to read a bit more about this. Do you have any interesting reading on how psychedelics were legalized or decriminalized in the Netherlands and the resulting affects on society? I'll Google it, but maybe you would know better :-)
rr888 4y ago
> Public suicide, animal sacrifice, crime etc. That's just normal in SF streets already lol.
pageandrew 4y ago
Psychedelics still can’t legally be sold in SF. What good is criminalizing simple possession? Besides, for every animal sacrifice on LSD there are 100 (probably more) drunk drivers crashing into trees, parked cars, oncoming traffic, and pedestrians, and alcohol is totally legal and widely used.
- NullPrefix 4y ago
  Unsure if by "parked cars" you've meant crashing into parked cars or parked cars by themselves being a bad thing
  - chihuahua 4y ago
    I think they meant "crashing into parked cars". Because if you interpret it the other way, it implies that they also consider the mere existence of oncoming traffic and pedestrians a bad thing.
    - NullPrefix 4y ago
      >it implies that they also consider the mere existence of oncoming traffic and pedestrians a bad thing Why not?
- autoexec 4y ago
  > Besides, for every animal sacrifice on LSD there are 100 (probably more) drunk drivers crashing into trees, parked cars, oncoming traffic, and pedestrians, and alcohol is totally legal and widely used. That seems to ignore the fact that there are far more people drinking than tripping. I'm not saying that with an equal numbers of users the math wouldn't still make drinking more dangerous, I really don't know, but it's an unfair comparison.
ch4s3 4y ago
This is ridiculous. A single French teenager(17yo) jumped off the Nemo Building[1], which lead to mushrooms being banned. There are several problems here. This building has a low railing around the tall publicly accessible portion, and no real safety features to prevent jumping. Teens this age are notorious for impulsively jumping from these types of structures, it's why The Vessel in Hudson Yards in NYC was closed. There's no real reason to suspect the mushrooms caused the incident given the previous two factors. As for the animal sacrifices, I couldn't find a single news article from 2000-2007 referencing this. I also couldn't find any good crime numbers. The whole illegalization push in 2007 from available news sources was tied to this one suicide and damage to French-Dutch relations. [1]https://www.google.com/search?q=nemo+building+amsterdam&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS858US858&sxsrf=ALiCzsaZnw1PxD1ifCeLzAaCSMhVtcT2UA:1662665130372&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjcm-ej9oX6AhXIFlkFHYVwAO4Q_AUoAXoECAIQAw&biw=840&bih=946&dpr=2 https://www.google.com/search?q=nemo+building+amsterdam&rlz=...
- borski 4y ago
  Having stayed on a crane in Amsterdam (Faralda crane hotel) which was absolutely thrilling and simultaneously insane, I can vouch for the fact that 'safety standards' in Dutch buildings are far lower than those in the US. I actually found it refreshing, to be honest, from the railings and gates I'm used to in the US, but there was nothing that was going to stop me from even accidentally taking a dive off the crane. The upshot of that is a rooftop crane hot tub, though, so I mean...
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    It's a cool place for sure. It seems like the US at 14 per 100,000 and The Netherlands at 11 per 100,000 have similar suicide rates. Jumping makes up a far higher share in the Netherlands at 3rd or 4th most common depending on the year (per statista.com), and barely registers in the US. Gun availability may be the reason here, but I wouldn't count out the total lack of safety infrastructure around heights as a factor.
    - borski 4y ago
codyb 4y ago
Lol, these stories are like bringing up some horrific accident every time someone talks about cars. Things happen, that's life, but it's really important to put things into proportion at some point.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by rideg 4y ago

The Netherlands backpedaled after a couple of very serious incidents regarding many psychedelics. Public suicide, animal sacrifice, crime etc. I don’t see how it will be different in SF.

FredrikMeyer 4y ago

So silly, considering all the noise and accidents alcohol directly causes. But then a single bad case after someone taking psychedelics, and they reverse.

nathanaldensr 4y ago
Textbook whataboutism--and I hate that phrase. Yes, and both substances should be controlled. Uncontrolled hard drugs are harmful to society, but it seems like the ignorant, naive youth of today are going to have to learn some hard lessons on the topic from first principles.
- JamesBarney 4y ago
  This isn't whataboutism, it's very specifically comparing the societal consequences of two drugs and the possible consequences. It's not whataboutism bring up other risks that as a society we tolerate, when we are thinking about restricting one.
  - bko 4y ago
    One drug is possibly more harmful but is already legal almost everywhere, deeply ingrained in many aspects of Western society and has a history of issues regarding criminalization The other is possibly less harmful but it is currently illegal/controlled pretty much everywhere and has a niche demand. I think its entirely reasonable to think that we should not open up a whole new can of worms.
    - kortex 4y ago
      How is the can of worms not already open? The War on Drugs has failed to put a dent in drug consumption habits. My suspicion why there was an uptick of incidents in NL/Amsterdam was the influx of people specifically seeking those substances out, with little safety education or experience. If they were more widely available, the incidents would be far more diffuse, and likely fall below the noise floor. Plus, wider awareness means better overall substance education and understanding, meaning fewer folks getting in over their heads and acting a fool. The same "can of worms" argument was leveled against cannabis legalization, and turned out to be overblown, there was no outbreak of reefer madness.
    - gopher_space 4y ago
      Another way of looking at it is that right now only the kids buy and consume shrooms, and they do so completely unsupervised.
- loeg 4y ago
  Crying "whataboutism" isn't a rhetorical shortcut to dismiss a reasonable argument. It's hypocritical and silly to allow alcohol and not other recreational drugs with similar safety profiles. It's also untenable to completely restrict alcohol.
  - dshpala 4y ago
    Similar safety profiles? I'm not a drinker, but I think you need to drink a LOT of alcohol to state hallucinating? I.e. most people don't do that.
    - nonasktell 4y ago
      Yes, but hallucinations aren't the main problem. Assaulting people and zigzaging on the road after just a few drinks is a bigger problem than having blurry vision and seeing weird colors. I took a shitton of psychedelics, I never saw anything that wasn't there. Psychedelics never made me black out, piss on the floor/all over the room, never made me want to assault someone, or made me act like an asshole, but alcohol on the other hand....
    - LargeWu 4y ago
      To start hallucinating? Sure. To engage in dangerous behavior? Hardly. That said, alcohol is a lot more predictable in its effects for a given dosage. And also the dosages are a lot more reliable. There's a reason it's perceived "not as bad" as hallucinogenic drugs.
    - welshwelsh 4y ago
      You might be overestimating the effects of hallucination. Someone who's hallucinating is not necessarily more impaired than someone who is drunk. Imagine this- you hear something behind you (a real sound), and for a moment you are startled, thinking someone else is in the room. You soon realize that this isn't the case. Someone on hallucinogens might take a moment longer to realize that there is nobody there. They imagine the intruder a little more vividly, their heart rate goes up a bit more. But just for a moment. In contrast, if there actually is someone there, a drunk person might not realize it. Their senses are dulled. Instead of seeing things that aren't there, they fail to notice things that are there. It's the opposite.
- 8note 4y ago
  Specifically for the psychedelics, the danger is that people will see capitalist structures for how ridiculous they are They aren't dangerous to individuals, only rent seekers
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    That's the worst argument for socialism I've ever encountered.
    - captainredbeard 4y ago
      It’s not an argument, it’s a drug-induced psychotic musing…
    - breakfastduck 4y ago
      There was no argument for socialism.
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        Such statements are never made in a vacuum. There's always context, even if unstated.
  - deemster 4y ago
    Good time to quote the cosmic bard, Terence McKenna. "Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behavior and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong."
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- nonasktell 4y ago
  Controlled hard drugs are harmful to society, the only country that has decriminalized everything is doing very good in that regard.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  > Yes, and both substances should be controlled. We tried that here in the US. The result was a a proliferation of organized crime.
  - tsol 4y ago
    Yes we made murder illegal and organized crime engages in that too. Guess laws are just pointless
    - yellowapple 4y ago
      Organized crime doesn't profit from murder to anywhere close to the same degree it did from illicit alcohol sales or still does from illicit drug sales.
subsubzero 4y ago
Its not silly, for some psychedelics are fine and they can handle them ok. But others have psychotic breaks that are irreversible. I feel like SF is already a city that is very dysfunctional with crazies screaming at nothing, why make a really bad situation worse?
- borski 4y ago
  Some people who drink alcohol are fine and they can handle it okay. Others drink and drive and kill people, or become addicted and/or kill themselves. Should we go back to prohibition?
  - subsubzero 4y ago
    This is a straw man argument, having a permanent mental change after having a "bad trip" on psychedelics is not analogous to drinking a beer or too much whisky and doing something dumb(or worse). There is not evidence that a person consumes one drink and goes into psychosis or has permanent mental changes like with psychedelics. I am not against having psychedelics for certain situations(under controlled situations) but you are playing with fire and your mind and sanity are the tinder and are rolling the dice so to speak.
    - borski 4y ago
      Citation required. I have yet to see a single reputable paper or study that describes a 'permanent mental change' for the worse, like psychosis, after a single encounter with psychedelics.
    - acchow 4y ago
      What are the negative permanent effects of a "bad trip"?
      - drak0n1c 4y ago
        Perhaps not a single bad trip, but a couple years of bad drug habits can lead to permanent brain damage among those who aren't careful and knowledgeable about what they ingest and the dosage. It is a factor in the homelessness crisis.

BoorishBears 4y ago

You can already get hard drugs in the open here, the serious incidents would already be happening

jobs_throwaway 4y ago

No different than reefer madness. People do all that shit without psychedelics

Nifty3929 4y ago

I'd love to read a bit more about this. Do you have any interesting reading on how psychedelics were legalized or decriminalized in the Netherlands and the resulting affects on society? I'll Google it, but maybe you would know better :-)

rr888 4y ago

> Public suicide, animal sacrifice, crime etc. That's just normal in SF streets already lol.

pageandrew 4y ago

Psychedelics still can’t legally be sold in SF. What good is criminalizing simple possession? Besides, for every animal sacrifice on LSD there are 100 (probably more) drunk drivers crashing into trees, parked cars, oncoming traffic, and pedestrians, and alcohol is totally legal and widely used.

NullPrefix 4y ago
Unsure if by "parked cars" you've meant crashing into parked cars or parked cars by themselves being a bad thing
- chihuahua 4y ago
  I think they meant "crashing into parked cars". Because if you interpret it the other way, it implies that they also consider the mere existence of oncoming traffic and pedestrians a bad thing.
  - NullPrefix 4y ago
    >it implies that they also consider the mere existence of oncoming traffic and pedestrians a bad thing Why not?
autoexec 4y ago
> Besides, for every animal sacrifice on LSD there are 100 (probably more) drunk drivers crashing into trees, parked cars, oncoming traffic, and pedestrians, and alcohol is totally legal and widely used. That seems to ignore the fact that there are far more people drinking than tripping. I'm not saying that with an equal numbers of users the math wouldn't still make drinking more dangerous, I really don't know, but it's an unfair comparison.

ch4s3 4y ago

This is ridiculous. A single French teenager(17yo) jumped off the Nemo Building[1], which lead to mushrooms being banned. There are several problems here. This building has a low railing around the tall publicly accessible portion, and no real safety features to prevent jumping. Teens this age are notorious for impulsively jumping from these types of structures, it's why The Vessel in Hudson Yards in NYC was closed. There's no real reason to suspect the mushrooms caused the incident given the previous two factors. As for the animal sacrifices, I couldn't find a single news article from 2000-2007 referencing this. I also couldn't find any good crime numbers. The whole illegalization push in 2007 from available news sources was tied to this one suicide and damage to French-Dutch relations. [1]https://www.google.com/search?q=nemo+building+amsterdam&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS858US858&sxsrf=ALiCzsaZnw1PxD1ifCeLzAaCSMhVtcT2UA:1662665130372&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjcm-ej9oX6AhXIFlkFHYVwAO4Q_AUoAXoECAIQAw&biw=840&bih=946&dpr=2 https://www.google.com/search?q=nemo+building+amsterdam&rlz=...

borski 4y ago
Having stayed on a crane in Amsterdam (Faralda crane hotel) which was absolutely thrilling and simultaneously insane, I can vouch for the fact that 'safety standards' in Dutch buildings are far lower than those in the US. I actually found it refreshing, to be honest, from the railings and gates I'm used to in the US, but there was nothing that was going to stop me from even accidentally taking a dive off the crane. The upshot of that is a rooftop crane hot tub, though, so I mean...
- ch4s3 4y ago
  It's a cool place for sure. It seems like the US at 14 per 100,000 and The Netherlands at 11 per 100,000 have similar suicide rates. Jumping makes up a far higher share in the Netherlands at 3rd or 4th most common depending on the year (per statista.com), and barely registers in the US. Gun availability may be the reason here, but I wouldn't count out the total lack of safety infrastructure around heights as a factor.
  - borski 4y ago

codyb 4y ago

Lol, these stories are like bringing up some horrific accident every time someone talks about cars. Things happen, that's life, but it's really important to put things into proportion at some point.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]