Care should be taken, like with any substance we ingest. However, I disagree with your premise.

We do not know if LSD was in fact the catalyst. We don’t know if the people who got ruined after taking a single tab of LSD actually took LSD or some research chemical (which are quite commonly sold off as LSD).

Some research psychedelics are more dangerous physically, and certainly less researched, but in terms of psychological effects, all psychedelics are generally pretty similar. It's silly to assume LSD is somehow significantly less likely to cause psychological trouble.

Yeah, 2CI is for example very dangerous psychologically, and I’m sure it gets sold as LSD when an unscrupulous dealer has excess inventory.

>The drug is illegal

>but the reality is that such a drug is dangerous and absolutely does hurt people.

With this reasoning, skydiving, base jumping, and even the act of simply driving a car should should also be illegal. We let people do far more dangerous things, yet keep them legal. There is another reason LSD & most psychedelics are illegal. What that is, I don't know.

What's your evidence that those people are worse off having taken the psychedelics? You can't know the counterfactual isn't that those people who respond poorly to the drug would have had a similar mental break without it. Until the drug is studied rigorously all we have to go on are conflicting anecdotes. That said in the face of a lack of reliable information caution is warranted.

Even if that person would not have taken LSD and would have had a psychotic episode 5 years later due to the underlying issue, that's still 5 years of good health lost because of LSD.

Or it’s 5 years less of post-treatment life.

We can make random guesses all day about what’s a good outcome but how about we leave it to medical researchers to actually figure out what’s safe and beneficial?

It seems pretty delusional to just say these people would have spontaneously lost their minds even if they didn't do extremely powerful mind altering drugs.

It seems pretty delusional to make conclusions when you don't even know if they really took LSD or something sold as LSD, but actually dangerous, and are missing basically all other important data other than "they took something and then became crazy", while the then in the sentence means "after that", as in time, not "because of that".

It’s literally guaranteed that some of them would have.

So if someone takes any medication and strokes out, has an MI, or stops breathing, we can't blame the drug because maybe that was going to happen anyway?

Usually, yes. That's why we haven't banned Tylenol.

>The drug is illegal,

Only in certain contexts (ie. some instances of interstate commerce).

I agree, it only should be available to those, who are already in danger by pre-existing conditions like chronic depression or other similar serious mental conditions.