Some substances are pretty harmful, and some substances are pretty safe. It's kind of arbitrary which substances the USA has legalized and which ones have been

Some substances are pretty harmful, and some substances are pretty safe. It's kind of arbitrary which substances the USA has legalized and which ones have been outlawed. Alcohol and tobacco/nicotine can have dangerous health consequences, like various cancers. To make matters worse, they are addictive, so it's hard for someone to stop using alcohol or tobacco/nicotine even if they want to stop. Marijuana and psilocybin are usually not very addictive, and there's not much evidence of any serious medical issues when adults use these. In fact, there's some indications that marijuana and psilocybin can be helpful medical treatments, but that's not super well understood because it's very difficult for scientists to study the positive benefits of illegal substances (legalizing the substances would make it much easier to study). The most dangerous things about these substances is that it's hard for a person to be sure what they're buying. If someone wants to purchase marijuana or psilocybin in a state where it is illegal, you have to go through shady channels to get it. Hopefully that psilocybin pill is just psilocybin, but maybe whoever made it laced it with something addictive, or maybe it wasn't processed in a sanitary way. Who knows? When these substances are legalized, their production can be regulated and inspected like anything else. All that said, if an adult is caught with marijuana or psilocybin, they can face serious legal consequences and jail time right now, depending on where they happen to be in the country. That can ruin someone's life. And even though marijuana use doesn't vary that much by race, marijuana charges are overwhelmingly used to jail Black and Hispanic people, which just exacerbates race issues in the USA. Having these law on the books is doing way more harm than marijuana (or psilocybin) ever did. Let's get rid of them!