Probably a good time to remind people that the cops who killed Breonna Taylor haven't yet been prosecuted.

Having no experience with it, nonetheless, the popular impression of LSD is that an incredibly small amount of it can be on something and inadvertently ingested, so I can see the perspective that making, having, or dealing it is an unacceptable risk of harm to people who didn't consent.

Is there some reason that's unrealistic?

Counterpoint: PFOA / PFAS long chain polymers even at extremely low levels act as endocrine disruptors. DuPont leaks this stuff at its plants, people living near by have elevated types of specific cancers, and nothing is done.

If you can get 20 years for two sheets of LSD, I’d expect life in prison for everyone at the companies who continue to leak this toxic stuff, and full payment of affected people:s medical bills, for starters.

It doesn’t happen because LSD can be used recreationally, “drugs are bad,” and PFAS is only used by well-respected businesses.

https://theintercept.com/series/the-teflon-toxin/

Presumably they aren't dumping beyond the legal limits. That's how our system works. The EPA or other agencies attempt to determine what's safe, the government makes some regulations, and if you follow those regulations, you don't go to prison. Even if the regulations are bad.

> "Presumably they aren't dumping beyond the legal limits. That's how our system works."

They have and probably still do though[1]. Lived only a couple hours from the location of the film and my wife grew up in a city on the Ohio River they were dumping chemicals into. Was in the local paper here almost weekly during the late 90s and early 00s.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Waters_(2019_film)

That says they were dumping. It doesn't say they were breaking any government regulations.

In fact, it sounds like the government was lacking regulations on PFOA.

Sure, only because the chemicals weren't regulated yet by the government (and they fought as hard as they could to keep that from happening). Funny enough, DuPont actually had its own regulations for dumping such chemicals and knowingly violated them (which became the cornerstone for the class action lawsuits against them).

That said, there's plenty of cases of illegal dumping out there with chemicals that are regulated.

For example: https://apnews.com/9717f8be97db4944a825088dc5eee379/US-prose...

Please read these and then decide who's at fault:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-b...

https://www.salon.com/2016/01/04/teflons_toxic_legacy_partne...

In addition to a regulation’s existence, EPA must also do the testing and prosecute violations. I’m not sure they do here, even before the trump era, especially since for a while EPA was steadily lowering the safe limits. I think instances of that are contained within those articles, but unfortunately they are walls of text and you and I have no reason to greatly trust my memory.

My post was in response to this question:

> I can see the perspective that making, having, or dealing [LSD] is an unacceptable risk of harm to people who didn't consent. Is there some reason that's unrealistic?

My point was that the factors of “unacceptable risk” in regulations are laden with things that have nothing to do with actual levels of harm to people. You corroborated that point with your post; I’m only clarifying here. This is the system we have, and it can be quite bad at actual harm reduction due to cultural factors.

It’s weird to live in a world where a substance that showed great promise in therapy, fighting alcoholism and other addictions etc. has been banned for 50 years, while another substance that makes dish washing and floor cleaning easier but causes cancer and birth defects in people close to where it’s made is broadly sanctioned.

It is an unacceptable risk for people who didn’t consent, but that’s a different matter. We should punish people who give others dangerous things without consent.

Well, you can get into trouble if you start playing around with radioactive material, too. I think "The Radioactive Boy Scout" has been mentioned on HN a few times.

I think a reason why dangerous things are regulated is because even though they don't always lead to harm, the harm can be grave and impossible to undo. Even if an unexpected trip doesn't technically lead to permanent brain damage, if the behavior were misinterpreted (for instance as a psychotic episode) it could permanently wreck a person's life.

As long as you think the same arguments apply to toilet bowl cleaners, oven cleaners, windshield washer fluid, tylenol/paracetamol, antifreeze and visine, this makes sense.

Yes, I think the same argument applies to everything. That's not to say all hazards are equal or all substances need identical regulations.

> That's not to say all hazards are equal or all substances need identical regulations.

This is a non informative answer. Let's talk numbers, is 20 years a reasonable time to be incarcerated for a sheet of LSD? How many years is appropriate for a pack's worth of hand smoke, then? How about carbon monoxide from driving year round?

People don't experiment with household cleaners like they do with pyschoactive drugs.

Oh? https://www.thecloroxcompany.com/covid-19/learn-about-covid-...

Better to combat by certainly permanently wrecking someone's life with 20 years in prison.

I think there's no reason there should be a single person on both sides of the equation, never mind arbitrary choices of the harm scenario. In a contrived utilitarian scenario, you could save 1,000 people and send one to prison, or vice versa.

Apparently it's dead comment time, yay! But yes, some things are dangerous. LSD is less dangerous than many many legal things, such as guns, alcohol, driving, etc, so why is it illegal?

I read Stephen King's Firestarter at an early age, so that, and other things influenced by MKULTRA, factors in to why I think LSD is scary.

The other issue I have is that when people say that LSD can harm people with a predisposition to schizophrenia or whatever, it's frightening because it seems like a stereotyped thinking pattern that's useful for denying unacceptable causal hypotheses that might in fact be real.

There is no LSD radiation though. It can't beam itself into your mouth. Bystanders are never inadvertently drugged.

>Bystanders are never inadvertently drugged

I don't have a counterexample, as the allegations I was reading on Wikipedia are generally of intentionally drugging people,[1][2] but I wouldn't be particularly confident in your statement; how would one know it hasn't happened?

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1951_Pont-Saint-Esprit_mass_po... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra#LSD

Yes. At any gathering of a certain type that’s large enough, like a music festival, you run the risk of eating or drinking something that’s been spiked with something. Most people who do so try to be up front about the “bonus content,” but because of legality they will often couch it in lingo like “space brownies” and the like. If you don’t know what that means, you could be in for a wild ride without anyone having ill intentions.

People playing around with radioactive stuff, even if they are well-intentioned, can easily mess up and contaminate themselves and others with it. Radioactivity is not detectable to any of our senses, only radiation poisoning is. Things are completely different with LSD and other drugs. You could argue that making meth is a dangerous activity in itself, but a properly regulated industry could evaporate any real need to home-brew large amounts.

Ah the whataboutism is strong here. The point is, life is inherently dangerous. We make laws to punish people for making it more dangerous. People have had massive overdoses of LSD [see Wikipedia entry for LSD], several thousand times the standard party dose, and gone on to lead normal lives. All the arguments you make are exactly the same as arguments against alcohol, but LSD is actually much safer.

By what mechanism will people who didn't consent come into contact with LSD? As residue accidentally transferred by physical contact? By that logic peanuts and other tree nuts should be illegal because trances of its oils can kill those who are sensitive, unlike LSD which is pharmacologically safe. Additionally, while there are many examples of trace residues of tree nuts triggering anaphylactic shock in those not directly handling the nuts, I haven't heard of a single person accidentally ingesting LSD that wasn't willfully handling the drug (which implies consent to any accidental ingestion in my book).

A friend of mine was dosed without her knowledge or consent at a festival. She thinks it was from a cup of punch she was given, input to this day can’t be sure of the route of ingestion. She was familiar with LSD and realized what was happening, but was not prepared for it and had a rough time.

It’s completely irresponsible to give someone a drug without consent, outside of some forms of medical intervention, regardless of your intentions.

Well, we don’t do much to regulate the most common date rape drug, Alcohol, so it’s not clear why we need to do so much to prevent adults from consensually taking it.

Is there a reason stealing 20 years is realistic for a victimless crime? Poisoning someone actually has serious criminal consequences.

Meanwhile rapists and child molesters often serve only a few years, if that...

Taking drugs and potentially becoming addicted has societal externalities. We currently have a opioid overdose epidemic in the US which taxes the emergency response system, not to mention the pain it causes to friends and family. There's a reason opiods are regulated in the medical industry (some would say too little).

LSD and opioids are very very different things, and a major driver of the opioid epidemic is certain companies in the pharmaceutical industry legally pushing it.

IMHO if alcohol and nicotine are legal, then anything "soft" that is not particularly addictive should be legal. It's fundamentally unjust to lock people up for using or having substances that are for the most part less dangerous than entirely legal and socially acceptable substances.

Alcohol is actually kind of nasty stuff if you look at the real statistics, especially if used in excess.

I'm not claiming LSD is absolutely harmless, just that it's not physically addictive at all and not nearly harmful enough to merit the harsh criminalization and heavy sentences it receives. LSD can be safe and rather interesting if used occasionally but heavy use or use by people with pre-existing psychotic tendencies can be psychologically dangerous.

My personal opinion is that drugs like LSD should be subject to some kind of licensing regime similar to other hazardous activities like driving a car, flying a plane, or owning and using firearms (in some states). I would also be in favor of blanket bans or at least heavy restrictions on any advertising for drugs, including alcohol, nicotine, and pharmaceuticals.

>My personal opinion is that drugs like LSD should be subject to some kind of licensing regime similar to other hazardous activities like driving a car, flying a plane, or owning and using firearms (in some states).

I disagree. Driving a car or flying a plane can directly harm others, so the licensing process makes sense. Consuming LSD though? It doesn't directly harm others when I consume it.

Addicted to LSD?

LSD is not associated with major organized crime groups like cartels. It tends to be manufactured domestically in the Pacific Northwest and in semi-rural locations across the US.

The only reason such an inhumane black market can exist is because no one is allowed to produce it legally. I would argue regulators are responsible for the harm caused by the trade.

No, you have your logic backwards. The conclusion that with lax drug laws, there'd be less violence associated with drug manufacturing and selling is correct. But the laws don't cause the violence, they make it so violent individuals are the only one's willing to fill the supply.

If I outlaw [drug], I'm not responsible because you kill someone trying to sell [drug].

I disagree. If you take [action], and it was a necessary and sufficient condition for [consequence], then you are morally responsible for that consequence. (Sure, the individuals committing crimes in this concrete case are also morally respoinsible). In this case, I think it is correct to say that the laws cause violence, since that violence would not be happening otherwise.

There is a common trope that criminals sit down and decide what crime they will commit, and decide that drug dealing is the best one. In fact, that is backwards; if the TAM of crime is cut by 10x, then there are fewer jobs, and at the margin some will stop. And in the other direction, if there is no longer easy money to be made by selling drugs, then fewer would find their way into the drug business in the first place.

See prohibition in the USA for a natural experiment that supports my claims here.

> I disagree. If you take [action], and it was a necessary and sufficient condition for [consequence],

That's exactly the thing though isn't it. Marijuana is (was) illegal, and has VERY LITTLE amount of violent crime related with its market. Making something illegal isn't enough to induce violence alone. So the [action] of (making drugs illegal) itself alone isn't enough to make [consequence] of (additional violence) to be a certainty.

Or, consider the simple case. I insult you, you punch me. You clearly wouldn't have punched me if I didn't insult you. Who's at fault here?

Actually, substantial cartel activity was associated with marijuana, with significant violence associated with production in Sinaloa and transport into the US. It was a huge fraction of cartel activity, both in volume and dollar value.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/14/legal-marijuan...

The main reason cartels didn't take over entirely was A) there are few effective barriers to production, B) the low density of the product favors domestic supply, and C) making high quality product is time consuming and logistically complicated.

And there is still violence associated with marijuana in CA because about 80% of the market is still underground due to the extreme difficulty of navigating the current regulations.

There is plenty of reading material on this.

Everyone responding here shared a similar opinion regarding the idea of laws being responsible for the violence, so let me share another problem where the laws play a role, namely legal dangerous fake substitutes. Take for instance 25I-NBOMe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/25I-NBOMe#Legal_status It remained (has remained?) legal in many places for more than a decade.

Yeah, "designer drugs" -- the products of someone trying to make a drug that works on the same systems but is different enough in structure from anything on a Controlled Substances list are bad news. The problem lies in the fact that many drugs with long histories of human use (opium, marijuana) have long histories of human use, and so they've been tested extensively and are known not to produce horrid adverse effects. They might not be the global maximum of safety and efficacy, but they sure are likely to be close to it. Trying to replicate a compound that has been tested for efficacy and safety for decades to millenia (and not being allowed to just change tiny things on the molecule) is not something that is likely to give results close to the original. Other examples of that include synthetic cannabinoids (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_cannabinoids#Toxicit...), which are a lot more dangerous than actual marijuana. i'm not claiming marijuana is harmless, just, like, synthetic cannabinoids really are just that bad.

Ironically, the obverse task -- trying to create a molecule that acts on similar neurobiological targets as an illegal drug but doesnt get people "high" or look like a molecule from an illegal drug -- can be similarly fraught. The flagrant example is BIA 10-2474, an experimental drug meant to target the endocannabinoid system in a roundabout way: not by directly activating receptors, but by inhibiting an enzyme that degrades the endogenous chemicals that activate endocannabinoid receptors, which would, ideally, have similar effects as directly activating those receptors. A trial of it killed one person and irreversibly and severely neurologically damaged a few others. This isn't to claim that FAAH inhibition is doomed to failure, just that safely messing around with sublimely complex neurochemistry is difficult; adding constraints like "must not make people feel high" or "must not look like Prohibited Molecules" makes it needlessly harder.

I understand where you're coming from, but it doesn't seem so clear cut to me.

Let's say:

I have a choice to outlaw drug X or not. I can infer with near certainty that this policy will lead to a black market run by violence that gets people killed. Nevertheless, I outlaw drug X. People get killed.

What responsibility do I bear?

I honestly don't know, but neither "none" nor "100%" sounds right to me.

It's not clear cut, but the metrics chosen are important. If you care about drug use more than violence, it does seem to be clear cut. Same for the inverse.

You bear no responsibility. Everyone must take responsibility for their own actions.

I have a kid, I raise him to the best of my ability, and commit no egregious mistakes. He grows up and murders someone. Am I at fault? Obviously not, just because I'm a part of the equation, doesn't mean I also should be assigned blame. If I didn't have a kid, [person] would still be alive. That doesn't mean I'm responsible.

That parents' behavior has no effect on their children is not a universal belief. I think that a belief that one bears no blame for what one's children do is a way to inevitably raise terrible children. That's like not having any responsibility for whether the product you built works, or is toxic.

edit: blame isn't exclusive; everybody can have 100% of it. Although IMO blaming children for what they've done (however you define the age of majority) is almost entirely scapegoating. You might as well convict a dog or a pig as an adult if you would convict a 13 year old.

That isn't the same. After you raised your kid you don't control their environment. Does an environment contribute to individuals actions? Consider the thin blue line. Populations under duress and their cooperation with authorities.

> But the laws don't cause the violence, they make it so violent individuals are the only one's willing to fill the supply.

This is untrue. The vast majority of the US drug trade is done without violence.

There’s violence in the powder/pill drug game because the profit margins are so high, creating an immense amount of competition. Sometimes you can 5-10x your money off powder, that isn’t really possible with marijuana or lsd, unless you are the grower or chemist.

There’s very little violence in the marijuana and hallucinogen markets.

You're correct, I was speaking somewhat abstractly, and only meant to include the smaller subset of the drug market that has a large amount of violence associated with it.

You’re forgetting about coke, heroin and meth, and the massive amount of related violence down the supply chain.

Did you read my post? The following is a direct quote:

> There’s violence in the powder/pill drug game because the profit margins are so high, creating an immense amount of competition.

All 3 of those drugs are powders, so no, I didn’t forget those.

> But the laws don't cause the violence, they make it so violent individuals are the only one's willing to fill the supply.

The laws prevent relying of the police in protecting your business with violence. The law creates jobs where violent people excel but those same violent people would not necessarily be violent without it, they may also be really good pianists, it just doesn't pay as well.

If you pass that law knowing full well that it will create a violent black market, you certainly are responsible when it does.

> The laws prevent relying of the police in protecting your business with violence. The law creates jobs where violent people excel but those same violent people would not necessarily be violent without it, they may also be really good pianists, it just doesn't pay as well.

100% agreed.

> If you pass that law knowing full well that it will create a violent black market, you certainly are responsible when it does.

I'm not sure you could say knowing full well. At least not when the laws were enacted. And knowing that it could create a black market, isn't the same.

Also, if your calculations also lead you to believe that you could control the market, keeping the violence to a small minimum. You're at worst responsible for a small mistake in calculation. Not the violence that you were unable to predict.

The argument of who's to blame currently is the people with access to all the information who still refuse to act.

At the time of beginning the war on drugs, there was already examples to take from prohibition.

This calculation seems negligent. Like, I could shoot you in the face, and it wouldnt be my responsibility if you died. I could only know that it's a possibility that you could die, not that you would definitely die

I disagree as well. The violence is an unintended consequence, but it's also a known consequence, and has to be taken into account. You can't separate the good and bad consequences of a decision and wave off the negative ones because they manifest themselves indirectly.

You’re not responsible legally/morally, but you did create an incentive for those things to happen

Not incentive, but environment. Yeah that's why drug laws are worse than drugs.

Drugs do destroy lives, and cause real societal harm. But it was never as destructive as what making it illegal has been able to achieve.

Let's not pretend that "outlaw [drug]" doesn't mean "threaten to harm or kill people distributing [drug]." If you sanitize it into an abstraction, it intentionally conceals who is starting the cycle of violence.

The laws don’t directly cause the violence, by they do create an environment in which violence is more likely (or violence around drug manufacture and trade).

Absolutely. Violence related to drug dealing is a result on the insane profit margins on heroin, cocaine, and meth. It’s possible to make 70-90% net profit on cocaine if you can get it at wholesale, which is nuts. Of course people will kill each other for the chance to make 90 cents on the dollar.

If you bought some Chinese fentanyl and made “heroin” I bet it’s closer to 95-99% net, imagine having a money machine that spit out 20 dollars for every dollar you put in. No wonder people kill each other over drugs.

> Of course people will kill each other for the chance to make 90 cents on the dollar.

I was going to argue with you. Something something... not everyone is that bad. But then I considered all the harm large corporations do... Shit man wtf is wrong with humans?

Our moral reasoning is so jammed full of the remnants of imperial dogma that we cannot make a coherent moral argument to one another that resonates beyond self interest.

We end up with a world where normal human behavior is stigmatized, and once that happens there’s no meaningful way to actually discuss what should be stigmatized.

I almost added a section about how corporations have killed (United Fruit, Congo Free State, and others) and would kill for those margins if the activity was profitable to offset the repercussions from killing, but left it out. I’m glad you noticed the similarity without it being explicitly mentioned.

> Funding criminals and terrorists is surely worthy of punishment, do you not agree?

Greater society does. Unless, or course, those criminals and terrorists are the wealthy leadership of large private businesses and the crimes are committed either overseas upon marginalized people, or over a long enough timescale so as to be virtually "unprovable".

Ugh. Your post is a perfect example of a valid argument, and yet a bunch of people downvote you instead of just having a conversation.

Two sheets is at least a few hundred tabs and that is definitely within the realm of possession with intent to sell, legally speaking.

And your conclusion wasn't even harsh like "they earned 20" or anything. You clearly said the punishment was harsh for the crime.

Jeez people, learn to communicate without the arrows.

It's a lot harder to write a coherent response than downvote, but given there's so much misinformation around the internet, you could do nothing but try to correct it by replying, 24/7 and still get nowhere. Downvoting hides bad comments, and depending on your metrics comments that are based on a flawed premise should be hidden.

Buying drugs do not meaningfully fund terrorism. So to criminally prosecute someone for buying drugs because it might stop them from giving money to the "bad guys" is an abuse of both humans and logic. The bad guys only sell drugs because they're the only ones willing to break the law. If you cared about stopping them, you legalize recreational use so non-criminals would make the money. But the whole argument for prosecuting individual users is because "drugs are bad and you're bad for using them". The whole drugs fund terrorism was it interesting lie or propaganda, (depending on your view). And lies even when repeated unintentionally or unknowingly should be downvoted.

Speaking to this point exactly; drugs do not meaningfully fund terrorism. In a person's locality, one can readily learn what their supply chains consist of, and who is the chemist/grower producing it. For one to assume flat out that all drugs somehow for some reason pass through a cartel shows lack of knowledge, or bad faith. Especially today in the booming drug market, one can very easily buy right from cannabis growers and right from chemists, or nearly directly. Cartel drugs are frankly poor quality absolute garbage.

OP mentioned terrorism clearly as an after thought. The bulk of their message was focused on crime. This gives your position a sort of "knee jerk" air about it. To then be given a low effort downvote option to facilitate your low effort analysis simply enables your perpetuation of a reactive culture.

And you're not one person against the world. You don't need to correct every single misinformed opinion on the entire internet 24/7. Take the time to help one person who you feel is misinformed and bring them to truth.

I did, I replied to you.

But OP did their argument a huge disservice. Even considering I wasn't focused on that aspect given I specifically chose "bad guys" instead of terrorists. Or that their concept that drugs are necessarily connected with crime. Their argument with or without adding in terrorism is based upon a either a lie or a misunderstanding. One that would wrongly have additional credibility seeming to be true if it got up voted.

But I'm curious to why you're blaming me (rhetorically) for perpetuating a reactive culture when not only am I not even sure what that means, but I didn't even downvote him.

And I appreciated your reply and considered your reasoning. It was a helpful observation that has tempered my distaste for downvoting.

Being HN, this is a good place to throw up some citations and they would stand a far higher chance of being read and understood by your target audience even if they disagree with you.

And I don't feel I'm "blaming" you per se, but your response gives the impression that even if you didn't downvote this specific referenced post, you've done it before for the reasons you gave.

In any case, I must have heard the same lies or misunderstandings because I thought the connection between drugs and crime was fairly obvious. I would absolutely appreciate some citations.

That’s because everybody here already knows that keeping drugs illegal is what is actually funding criminal organizations.

Bingo. Plus, as it pertains to LSD itself, what he said was patently false. LSD has always been largely distributed among intellectual circles for decent low prices and among hippie circles. Real LSD is not meth, and it's not heroin. It wasn't and isn't trafficked by cartels. Maybe fake synthetic chemicals being sold as "acid," but not pure LSD-25. It was a perpetuated government War on Drugs (tm) myth.

No, what is actually funding those organizations would be the profits of the drugs they are selling. The law may be responsible for creating an environment that allows such groups to prosper, no argument there. But an unjust law doesn't make it morally permissible to work with violent criminal organizations.

In any case I think it is unreasonable to downvote someone who is arguing in good faith simply because you disagree with their premise.

> No, what is actually funding those organizations would be the profits of the drugs they are selling.

No, that's a nonsensical sentence. Profits are funding. What I said is correct: The law is what is actualizing the profits (or the funding). Without the law there would be no profits, no funding. Ergo, the law is causing the funds to happen. Profits are not self-caused. They don't just happen by themselves.

> But an unjust law doesn't make it morally permissible to work with violent criminal organizations.

Yes it does. Morals are subjective. I'm absolutely fine with it. These criminal organizations are far less violent and less criminal than my own government which I fund by paying taxes.

Furthermore, the vast majority of people buying illicit drugs are not buying directly from violent criminal organizations or even non-violent criminal organizations. They're buying from a friend who buys from a friend who buys from a friend who might buy from a criminal organization (who might be violent).

> In any case I think it is unreasonable to downvote someone who is arguing in good faith simply because you disagree with their premise.

You (and them) made poor arguments based on your ill-formed opinions and presented no evidence. You both deserve the downvotes.

It's downvoted partly because of the reasons other commenters have given and also because it shows ignorance about the drug market and about LSD specifically. Why participate in the discussion when you are not informed?

Yes, those violent LSD trafficking organizations.

The rhetoric is like straight out of the '80s and is not a "valid argument."

I downvoted for the initial sentence: "I mean, the organized crime groups that sell these drugs do harm people"

By that reasoning every gas station should be closed for selling oil that came from Saudi Arabia.

How about them apples?

Since America isn't officially the world police, switching scope like this makes a bad comparison. There are plenty of reasons the US might interact with foreign countries in a way it wouldn't with internal domestic groups.

I was arguing from the initial moralistic view about fruit from a poisoned tree.

And by the way, the US has for several generations been the unofficial world police. The US drug laws force other countries to toe the line as well.

But this is going off into the weeds. The real point is that the War on Drugs manufactures crime by design.

I mean yeah, if you view fruits from a forbidden tree as poisoned/immoral. The logic is sound.

So, they probably don't like dem apples, they're poisoned.

Except it's quite possible that the LSD supply chain had no violence associated with it, so it's pure conjecture biased by a "drugs are bad, m'kay?" attitude. Those apples are far from guaranteed to be poisoned.

I've seen the same argument about cannabis, and while some may come from cartels, much of it comes from indy growers and that supply chain is more than likely violence free.

As mentioned by another, the whole element of criminality is manufactured by the state and was designed from the start as a tool of oppression, not to "keep us safe".

I'm with you on that. I'm only trying to say that if you believe drugs are bad. I.e. if taking drugs is itself inherently immoral the logic is still sound. I don't believe the drugs are inherently immoral I do believe that fruit from The forbidden tree is poisoned.

So let's prosecute the people who are committing murders, human trafficking, and property crime, which are actually crimes. Possessing a psychedelic is not any of those things.

Criminals also profit from legitimate businesses. This comment is irrelevant.

Not sure I’d agree with “harms noone.” I have taken LSD and easily walk in the middle of the road with no cause for concern. Imagine a child accidentally eating some of it, etc. Could be worse than a loaded gun.

I’m all for legalizing natural stuff (mushrooms, cannabis, even coca plants) but once chemists start concentrating things or turning them into droplets it becomes extremely dangerous.

For instance, mushrooms grow on poop (and taste like sh*t), coca leaves are probably bitter to the taste (and not agreeable). So not much incentive to accidentally eat them.

One tab—the whole sheet even—of LSD tasteless and odourless, even hard to detect.

My rebuttal is “alcohol”. That settles any safety related debate, let’s move on.

I’m dismissing “think of the children” and “equivalent to a tool designed to kill” (and that tool is completely legal in the US) lines as obvious trolls, I encourage anyone else rebutting to ignore that as well.

Edit: To dismiss your argument that you edited in about dosage size and accidental ingestion. If LSD was legal, manufacturers would want to prevent accidental ingestion and design an RoA that isn’t a tiny tab of LSD. Keeping it legal means it will remain as is now. You’re arguing for legalization and don’t even realize it.

Furthermore, a quick google search shows some academic papers from the 70s about children accidentally ingesting LSD, and a news report from 2016 where a child may have ingested LSD accidentally, but there’s very little evidence that it’s a problem.

I agree with all of what you’re saying, but the comment I reply to says it “harms noone.” I am saying it does harm people.

To be frank, I have taken a decent amount of LSD in teenage years and suffer permanent effects from it (all mental stuff like anxiety and paranoia). Granted some of it was probably made in someone’s garage (legal stuff could have some sort of standards). But still, LSD is dangerous and point being it has potential to make people do things without cause for concern, and cause damage to others. It also lasts easily 8-24 hours depending on dosage.

Another point: if LSD was legal, then it would be legal for a cult to use it in rituals and as a way to manipulate individuals. Think Charles Manson—that’s a lot more dangerous than run-of-the-mill narcotics.

> To be frank, I have taken a decent amount of LSD in teenage years and suffer permanent effects from it (all mental stuff like anxiety and paranoia).

What proof do you have that your anxiety and paranoia are caused by your teenage LSD intake? There are plenty of people who have issues with anxiety and paranoia that have never taken drugs.

Consider that 70-90% of schizophrenics are tobacco users, and most started young. This is an astounding rate of smoking for a population subgroup. Did tobacco use cause the schizophrenia or did schizophrenics seek out tobacco?

Plenty of cults operate without drugging their members with LSD, if it was effective I assume it would be more widespread considering mental, sexual, and physical abuse are illegal and used as tools by cult leaders to maintain the cult and its membership. See NXIVM for a recent example. Giving people LSD is far more benign than beating or raping them.

I had a bad trip and afterward I had anxiety. No anxiety before then.

I don’t have “Anxiety” requiring meds and such—the effects taper off over the years.

Believe me, I know the effects I felt and what it did to me—statistics and external “scientific proof” are not required.

Also, true there are many ways to manipulate people. It’s what you can make them do while they are on LSD that is scary. If you try LSD you will know what I mean—you could walk into a train without hesitation or fear. At least if the other methods are used to manipulate people their underlying emotions, hesitations, and consciousness is intact.

Again, I agree certain drugs should be legalized. And perhaps LSD can be therapeutic in a good way. But, it is also very dangerous stuff—more so than other drugs.

That is my opinion and not based on rigorous research. But I have done a lot of drugs in my day—and I can say if I went back in time I still would have done the natural stuff (mushrooms, cannabis) but never would touch the man-made chemicals.

So, you don’t have proof, you just happened to develop anxiety around the time you started taking LSD, which was as a teenager, a time of notable change.

> If you try LSD you will know what I mean—you could walk into a train without hesitation or fear.

I’ve done LSD a number of times, the most recent was 8 days ago. I’ve never lost the interest in self-preservation while tripping on LSD. You cannot control someone’s mind when they’re on LSD.

Please provide me with a drug that LSD is more dangerous than, keeping in mind that mind control with LSD isn’t possible. I’ve been a heroin addict and severe alcoholic, and I’ve also taken LSD a number of times. Being an addict/alcoholic is so much more dangerous and detrimental than any use of LSD than I find it hard to take you seriously when you make such claims.

Replace LSD in your argument with "alcohol", "bleach", "nailpolish remover", "cigarettes" or any other dangerous stuff you can find in the household that are supposed to be locked away when children are around. Yes, most of these are smelly, but toddlers can be too curious for their own good and are not that discerning for bad tastes yet.

Imagine a child eating Tide Pods too. Or eating blood thinners. Or ...

Eating nails! We need to ban nails immediately. 20 years prison per nail!

Worse than a loaded gun? That’s insane, the gun can kill you. LSD can’t. There are a multitude of things in every household that a child could kill themselves with (various medicines, cleaning supplies, knives). That is not a reason to ban those things, it’s a reason not to leave small children unattended.

> Imagine a child accidentally eating some of it,..

When all else fails, won't somebody think of the children!!

That just goes to show how weak your argument is.

A child seems more likely to harm themselves with a kitchen knife than a blot paper lying around. But sure, I would support laws that makes you legally responsible for safe handling of the substance, like not giving it or making it accessible to minors.

... and loaded guns are legal!