The public itself needs to readjust its role with the government, where availability doesn't mean endorsement.
It is well known that humans can't make rational choices. If refrigerators with CFCs were still legal to purchase alongside non-CFC refrigerators, I'd be willing to bet the ozone layer would probably not exist right now. If leaded gasoline wasn't basically banned, I bet plenty of people will still drive around using leaded gasoline.
That is because "acting like adult" is used as term of approval. It means "a theoretically ideal" behavior. It does not mean "average adult have that psychology" nor "average adult have that value".
Yes, it's "ideal" in the sense that not everyone accomplishes that behavior (some people will fail a class or have bladder issues, obviously). But that doesn't mean "half the population failing Algebra I" or "half the population regularly pees their own pants" is an acceptable outcome in society.
Just because you can define "acting like an adult" as ideal rather than true in all real cases doesn't mean it shouldn't be an expectation.
Lysol can kill you and all your children.
Mouthwash can.
And for something with more similarities: advil.
All sold in gas stations.
So, do the studies just so that we can have fine print on the side of the bottle just like everything else, and sell it alongside everything else.
A car can kill you and all your children. Are you a proponent of allowing anyone to drive a car without restrictions (driver's licenses)? Slap a warning label on the steering wheel of a car "do not drive while drunk" and call it a day?
But you miss the point. Banning psychedelics prevents their use in psychotherapy.
Rolling back that ban do we can explore the possibilities is certainly sound.
Don't strawman what I said. I didn't say psychedelics should be banned. I said that they shouldn't be sold in gas stations (aka easily available to the public).
I fail to see how that prevents prescriptions from being a viable option, or a "mdma license" similar to a driver's license that is issued only after a person proves that they can safely use it.
Just because you don’t actively go out and seek for a drug does not mean you are not addicted (conditioned)to it.
I think psychedelics are safer in that regard. Nobody in the history of humanity has ever physically done "too much acid". Even some people who ingested tens of thousands of micrograms (thinking they were snorting coke) came out of it perfectly fine with appropriate care (since the amount was so high compared to the usual dosages, they did need medical care).
Serotonin syndrome is when you have too much serotonin, not too little.
But can I tell you my own brother said he "could not live without Prozac." What does that sound like to you?
Prozac artificially increases serotonin as as a result your serotonin receptor density changes. So trying to stop the drug, not only do you end up with all these horrible side effect, but your depression will be much worse until your receptor density normalizes again.
There is a biological marker for the need of insulin. There is no such thing when it comes to prozac.
Keep trying people.
Anyways, I agree with you w.r.t. many psychiatric drugs. Don't try to spread that into psychedelics though - completely different, it has enough of its own problems and it's not necessary to make up some non-existent on top of that.
Not for psychiatric drugs, which is my only point. I am not against pharmaceuticals.
But alcohol (or tobacco) should?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_scale_to_asses...
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You have two options- the drug can be sold legally or we can have an excess number of deaths from overdoses, impurities and black market violence.
For some inexplicable reason, the majority of people continue to chose the option that guarantees the most human suffering.
The problem is that we are asked to decriminalize drugs (like fentanyl) at the same time that we are asked to dedicated massive public resources for the rehabilitation of those people who then used those decriminalized drugs. I would be happy if it were one way or the other, but right now it sucks.
Maybe there should be exceptions made for exceptionally deadly and addictive dugs, like fentanyl.
Convincing us that we should let people do what they want with drugs and somehow...that it is also our responsibility to pick up the pieces for these people as a consequence, it sounds like hypocrisy. Deflecting that society was responsible for the drug abuse in the first place (by letting people be poor and closing the mental hospitals) isn't going to convince many people that we should allow drug abuse and pay for the consequences as well.
The question is: what's the alternative to allowing drug abuse?
We know the War no Drugs is a dismal failure that hurts most the people who need help the most, and their families, and (as knock-on effects) the rest of society.
The pessimist in me thinks it'll just continue, despite being so detrimental to our society as a whole, but there are signs (like the success of cannabis legalization, and the ongoing Psychedelic Renaissance) that we may be moving towards a more constructive future where people who need help aren't treated like criminals and attacked.
When I was younger, I used to think the war on drugs was a dismal failure, but now seeing what happens when decriminalization is gone with instead, with junkies on the street camping in parks leaving their needles everywhere and the pervasive burnt peanut butter smell from smoking fentanyl on the buses. It might have just been the best of a bunch of bad solutions.
But I get that not all drugs are fentanyl or heroin, I'm totally ok with marijuana legalization. Also, since it is decriminalized in our city and not other places in our region, we probably attract much more of the problem just because our cops don't harass users or dealers.
Either way, we're gonna keep spending untold billions on this problem. I'd like to stop throwing money at policies that destroy lives, violate civil liberties and have been proven by decades of evidence to be infective.
Oh, we can spend an unlimited amount of helping people and it only lasts until they get out and get their next fix. How do you help people that don't really want help? And all of the "help" they want just goes to enabling the destructive behavior, the money we throw at the problem right now just allow them to do more drugs.
> instead of marginalizing/imprisoning people might be a viable solution?
So? The other approach is just enabling their behavior with compassion: let's make sure they have housing and open shelters so they can don't die while continuing to do their drugs? We are already spending untold billions on that, meanwhile ignoring petty property crimes (because junkies need legos for what?), and we only go OMG when they bash some poor girl's head in with a baseball bat because they are having a crisis.
Why have any sympathy for those people at all? So we are already spending around $60k/year/person on these people, how much higher do you want our one city to go? $200k/year? $1 million/year? How do you help people who don't really want help but will gladly take your money? Supply of those needing help (even if they just want drugs) is also basically unlimited since it is more of a national problem, while big cities are expected to provide compassion on their own.
Yeah, almost like it should be... a prescription medication sold at pharmacies?
The mental health epidemic for returning veterans for example[1]:
"More than 45,000 veterans and active-duty service members have killed themselves in the past six years. That is more than 20 deaths a day — in other words, __more suicides each year than the total American military deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq__." "“One of the biggest battles is the military culture,” Ms. Ruocco said. “Seeking mental health treatment goes against everything they are taught in boot camp,” where service members are told “to push through pain, to think of everybody else before self, to solve problems with lethal force if necessary.”"
[1] https://archive.is/oxZZ3#selection-533.0-533.303