4 ms·

Mushrooms, sure, but synthetics I'd say no unless there was a means to produce a quantity and quality of LSD or X akin to seeing the alcohol content written on

Mushrooms, sure, but synthetics I'd say no unless there was a means to produce a quantity and quality of LSD or X akin to seeing the alcohol content written on a bottle of beer. LSD in particular is no joke, you're relying on word of mouth re: quality and quantity (if they even know, 75, 150, or in some cases 300 micrograms per tab for blotter), and even then you can't be sure it's LSD or some other cheaper-to-produce substance until you yourself try it. I think the less harm factor referenced in the imgur link has a lot to do with frequency of use. Nobody in their right mind trips everyday for years on end, while many heads break out the bong, pipe, papers, etc. daily.

aberzombie 12y ago
I would expect taxation of all of these -- synthetics included -- to buy the appropriate certification and regulation. It's also worth noting that the toxicity for some of these, including LSD, is so ridiculously low that as far as the science goes we should be much more concerned about moonshine than blotters.
- spacemanmatt 12y ago
  The LD50 for THC, last I ever heard, was over 40,000. Technically water is more dangerous.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    > Technically water is more dangerous. It's not technical - people die from drinking too much water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication
mseebach 12y ago
I'd expect it to be many orders of magnitude easier to create "objective" LSD than mushrooms since we already have a pharmaceutical industry in place that does that for thousands of different kinds of medicine. Mushrooms are a complex cocktail of stuff that affects the user in different ways, so there's no one scale on which mushroom A is a 3 and mushroom B is a 6 in such a way that two of A is roughly B. Rather, it's a multitude of scales with complex interplay.
- virtualwhys 12y ago
  Agreed, shrooms are indeed complex, but at least there are limits to the amount you can ingest. This is what makes LSD dangerous, you could take a very large quantity without even realizing it; it's why I lean toward no, don't legalize it (but also don't prosecute), it should remain hard to find.
  - mseebach 12y ago
    > you could take a very large quantity without even realizing it And that would somehow be better if the stuff you take doesn't have high purity, known concentration and comes with a clearly defined recommended usage? Plenty of OTC medicines will hurt you badly if you take too much of it or mix it in the wrong way, and while some people do hurt themselves, the vast majority of consumers are perfectly capable of reading the dosage recommendation on the box and adjusting their consumption accordingly. Designing dosages and appropriate guidance and packaging to avoid accidental misuse isn't exactly rocket surgery.
    - virtualwhys 12y ago
      There are two problems: 1) Current situation: street acid could be anything, and even if it is LSD, quantity and quality are unknowns. 2) Proposed: legalized and regulated, quality and quantity are known. Currently LSD is hard to find (I believe due to one of the primary producers in North America having been busted in the mid-2000s, not sure about Europe and rest of world), thus it is effectively hidden from the population at large. Playing devil's advocate, were it legalized then one could presumably build up a stash over time and potentially use it against others, kind of a modern non-merry pranksters scenario. It's one thing to trip willingly, and quite another to just lose your mind out of the blue, no? ;-) Saying that, if legalized LSD was delivered as some kind of bulky edible like shrooms, then above scenario could be avoided. Would be pro-legalization in that case. I guess my opposition is to the concentration, can pack many micrograms onto a tiny little piece of paper.
      - mseebach 12y ago
spacemanmatt 12y ago
You'd say no, but why should it be up to you?
- virtualwhys 12y ago
  When the OP says, "should we also legalize LSD...", it follows that people will voice their opinion on the subject, or no? Since you presumably say yes, let's hear your take. I may reply with, "why should it be up to you?" ;-)
deleted 12y ago
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ghshephard 12y ago
" synthetics I'd say no unless there was a means to produce a quantity and quality of LSD or X akin to seeing the alcohol content written on a bottle of beer." Trivial for your modern pharmaceutical organization. Also, LSD in particular has a huge ratio between it's normal dose and it's LD-50 - I did a bit of searching, and I couldn't actually find a case of someone having overdosed to the point of dying of LSD, so it's unclear to me what the LD50 is - but it's big - having a 10x overdose of LSD isn't going to kill you. This is unlike caffeine of course, where I've personally had friends hospitalized for caffeine overdose, and there are certainly records of people having died from too much caffeine. People have died from drinking too much water as well. Anyways, the entire idea behind legalization of things like LSD, THC, MDMA, Heroin, etc... is that you normalize the dosage, and reduce the number of fatalities resulting from poor quality control.
- virtualwhys 12y ago
  > having a 10x overdose of LSD isn't going to kill you Toxicity is meaningless in the face of losing your mind; you may not physically die in the above scenario, but rest assured you will be absolutely out of your fucking tree for quite some time, if not hospitalized. Compare that to eating too many ganja brownies, drinking too much alcohol, etc. Yes, you could die, but if you don't you'll be out of sorts for a couple of days and then more or less back to normal.
  - ghshephard 12y ago
    Too much alcohol certain can, and frequently does, kill people. Doing 10x overdose of MDMA has a not insignificant chance of killing you. Doing 10x overdose of Heroin will likely kill you. Never having tried LSD, I can't comment on what the psychological effects of 10 hits of LSD will be, but given that Erowid suggests starting with a dosage of 25 ug, and that the optimal dosage is between 50 and 200 ug, it's not clear to me that 250 ug (a 10x over the base dose) will really be that big a deal (beyond how big a deal LSD normally is). Perhaps you are referring to 10x of your optimal dose (i.e. if normally you take 200 ug, suddenly taking 2000 ug) Regardless, I think it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that, "Toxicity is meaningless in the face of losing your mind" - I had some pot brownies once, and went to a very twisted universe. At the time it was pretty scary for the better part of an hour, I just curled up into a tiny ball, but I look back fondly on the experience. I don't know anybody who has ever done drugs, and thought that "toxicity is meaningless in the face of losing your mind." Some people do drug just to lose their mind.

aberzombie 12y ago

I would expect taxation of all of these -- synthetics included -- to buy the appropriate certification and regulation. It's also worth noting that the toxicity for some of these, including LSD, is so ridiculously low that as far as the science goes we should be much more concerned about moonshine than blotters.

spacemanmatt 12y ago
The LD50 for THC, last I ever heard, was over 40,000. Technically water is more dangerous.
- DanBC 12y ago
  > Technically water is more dangerous. It's not technical - people die from drinking too much water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication

mseebach 12y ago

I'd expect it to be many orders of magnitude easier to create "objective" LSD than mushrooms since we already have a pharmaceutical industry in place that does that for thousands of different kinds of medicine. Mushrooms are a complex cocktail of stuff that affects the user in different ways, so there's no one scale on which mushroom A is a 3 and mushroom B is a 6 in such a way that two of A is roughly B. Rather, it's a multitude of scales with complex interplay.

virtualwhys 12y ago
Agreed, shrooms are indeed complex, but at least there are limits to the amount you can ingest. This is what makes LSD dangerous, you could take a very large quantity without even realizing it; it's why I lean toward no, don't legalize it (but also don't prosecute), it should remain hard to find.
- mseebach 12y ago
  > you could take a very large quantity without even realizing it And that would somehow be better if the stuff you take doesn't have high purity, known concentration and comes with a clearly defined recommended usage? Plenty of OTC medicines will hurt you badly if you take too much of it or mix it in the wrong way, and while some people do hurt themselves, the vast majority of consumers are perfectly capable of reading the dosage recommendation on the box and adjusting their consumption accordingly. Designing dosages and appropriate guidance and packaging to avoid accidental misuse isn't exactly rocket surgery.
  - virtualwhys 12y ago
    There are two problems: 1) Current situation: street acid could be anything, and even if it is LSD, quantity and quality are unknowns. 2) Proposed: legalized and regulated, quality and quantity are known. Currently LSD is hard to find (I believe due to one of the primary producers in North America having been busted in the mid-2000s, not sure about Europe and rest of world), thus it is effectively hidden from the population at large. Playing devil's advocate, were it legalized then one could presumably build up a stash over time and potentially use it against others, kind of a modern non-merry pranksters scenario. It's one thing to trip willingly, and quite another to just lose your mind out of the blue, no? ;-) Saying that, if legalized LSD was delivered as some kind of bulky edible like shrooms, then above scenario could be avoided. Would be pro-legalization in that case. I guess my opposition is to the concentration, can pack many micrograms onto a tiny little piece of paper.
    - mseebach 12y ago

spacemanmatt 12y ago

You'd say no, but why should it be up to you?

virtualwhys 12y ago
When the OP says, "should we also legalize LSD...", it follows that people will voice their opinion on the subject, or no? Since you presumably say yes, let's hear your take. I may reply with, "why should it be up to you?" ;-)

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

ghshephard 12y ago

" synthetics I'd say no unless there was a means to produce a quantity and quality of LSD or X akin to seeing the alcohol content written on a bottle of beer." Trivial for your modern pharmaceutical organization. Also, LSD in particular has a huge ratio between it's normal dose and it's LD-50 - I did a bit of searching, and I couldn't actually find a case of someone having overdosed to the point of dying of LSD, so it's unclear to me what the LD50 is - but it's big - having a 10x overdose of LSD isn't going to kill you. This is unlike caffeine of course, where I've personally had friends hospitalized for caffeine overdose, and there are certainly records of people having died from too much caffeine. People have died from drinking too much water as well. Anyways, the entire idea behind legalization of things like LSD, THC, MDMA, Heroin, etc... is that you normalize the dosage, and reduce the number of fatalities resulting from poor quality control.

virtualwhys 12y ago
> having a 10x overdose of LSD isn't going to kill you Toxicity is meaningless in the face of losing your mind; you may not physically die in the above scenario, but rest assured you will be absolutely out of your fucking tree for quite some time, if not hospitalized. Compare that to eating too many ganja brownies, drinking too much alcohol, etc. Yes, you could die, but if you don't you'll be out of sorts for a couple of days and then more or less back to normal.
- ghshephard 12y ago
  Too much alcohol certain can, and frequently does, kill people. Doing 10x overdose of MDMA has a not insignificant chance of killing you. Doing 10x overdose of Heroin will likely kill you. Never having tried LSD, I can't comment on what the psychological effects of 10 hits of LSD will be, but given that Erowid suggests starting with a dosage of 25 ug, and that the optimal dosage is between 50 and 200 ug, it's not clear to me that 250 ug (a 10x over the base dose) will really be that big a deal (beyond how big a deal LSD normally is). Perhaps you are referring to 10x of your optimal dose (i.e. if normally you take 200 ug, suddenly taking 2000 ug) Regardless, I think it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that, "Toxicity is meaningless in the face of losing your mind" - I had some pot brownies once, and went to a very twisted universe. At the time it was pretty scary for the better part of an hour, I just curled up into a tiny ball, but I look back fondly on the experience. I don't know anybody who has ever done drugs, and thought that "toxicity is meaningless in the face of losing your mind." Some people do drug just to lose their mind.