The drug has dangers, but they seem small compared to those of alcohol, even if largely orthogonal.

It got banned because it wasn't understood in the best case, to curb the counterculture movement from the 60s in the worst, but it's always been hard to justify it with medical reasons; it's been just tagged along with cocaine or heroin and made bad by association.

But if there hasn’t been significant medical research, how do we know there are no long-term dangers?

Then we have way too many measuring sticks.

1. Medical consensus say it's bad, but it's kept legal: tobacco, alcohol, drinking bleach.

2. There's no medical consensus, but it's forbidden anyway: LSD, mushrooms, DMT...

3. Medical consensus say it's bad, and it's forbidden: cocaine, heroin, meth...

4. Medical consensus say it's good, but we ban it anyway: MDMA in the context of psychotherapy [0].

5. There's no medical consensus, but we ban some yet not others that have an identical mechanism of action: poppers

That's without getting into the fact that the federal schedule system is seemingly impermeable, and cocaine or heroin have accepted medical uses, but somehow weed doesn't, despite all the evidence it does.

[0] Linking because maybe not many are aware: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20503245187674...

Why, the next best thing after significant medical research, anecdotal research!

So far so good.

So far in this topic, it’s been research of the “my friend said” kind. Which is even less reliable than direct anecdotal research.

My friend doesn't like to admit to things that might be considered a crime, it's just how it goes in a police state.

Do you not think huge quantities of people do it all the time right now? Because, well, they do. Further there were a lot of experiments with psychedelics in the 60s.

That’s not how medical research works.

Definitely, however it's also disingenuous to say that we have no idea what the long term consequences of shrooms are just because there hasn't been a formal study recently. There's tons of people doing it regularly - for millennia actually, studies from the before-times and a large incentive by the mainstream anti-drug folks to dramatize any adverse consequences.

Should there be studies? Sure. Are we pretty sure it's safe? Yep. Safe enough to legalize? Oh most definitely. Certainly until proven otherwise.

The way to get people to agree with legalization is to follow rigorous medical study procedures, not handwave about it being obviously fine.

For the record I think they should be legalized.

I tend to believe that unless proven otherwise, substances should be legal. The burden of proof IMO is on the folks who want to restrain behavior.

[edit] I don't think that producing a study that shows a lack of harm is going to change anyone's mind. The prohibition is puritanical and ideological, no amount of evidence is going to change that. I think if this was based on a genuine fear, the study would have preceded the prohibition. This feels more like running ourselves in circles to collect evidence, Lucy and the football style.

We already know the LD-50 of mushrooms is 17kg of fresh mushroom for an average size human lol.

I agree but I’m talking tactically. Legalization requires convincing people that don’t think the same way, and the best method for doing that is by rigorous medical study.

The prohibition is puritanical and ideological, no amount of evidence is going to change that

Your insistence that this is the case is itself ideological.

> Your insistence that this is the case is itself ideological.

Haha, ok, well, in that case, on what basis were drugs banned? Specifically psychedelics.

> We’re talking about current attitudes, not the reasons why they were banned in the first place.

The current attitude is "drugs are bad" because of childhood education programs. Drugs are bad because they're illegal. You've seen the PSAs. It was never evidence based to begin with, then the "puritans" (DARE) switched to youth indoctrination. It's been so long now that there "must be a good reason."

It was never logical, or evidence based, and it remains illogical, and not evidence based. Bringing evidence to an illogical conversation IMO is like bringing an inflatable flamingo to a fancy dinner. People will look quizzically, and you won't change minds.

But hey, here's hoping I'm wrong.

After all when Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001 all the negative health factors and societal factors associated with drug use fell off a cliff -- and usage did not increase. That's all the evidence I need to follow suit.

That isn’t what your comment said. You said “no amount of evidence is going to change it”.

We’re talking about current attitudes, not the reasons why they were banned in the first place.

But if the current attitudes aren't based on evidence, what makes you think that more evidence will change those attitudes? That's what the GP is asking.

> We already know the LD-50 of mushrooms is 17kg of fresh mushroom for an average size human lol.

Curious as to how we know... has anyone ever OD'd on psylocibin?

We don't have rigorous experimental data on alcohol or nicotine either.

Study finds mushrooms are the safest recreational drug https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/23/study-halluc...

Britain, drug harm score https://www.economist.com/img/b/600/916/90/sites/default/fil...