FUD. Just because you can't see the acid doesn't mean it's more likely to be "contaminated" or "something else".

Coke on the other hand is essentially always mixed with something, and sometimes the dealer might squeeze in a bit of whatever to hook you on his product.

LSD is one of the most faked drugs by far. There are communities whose sole purpose is to find the real amongst the fake. It’s so bad that you’re more likely to get fake LSD than real… Cocaine is always somewhat contaminated but it’s comparatively very easy to get what people consider a quality product.

Is most LSD sold on dark web markets fake?

It is not, he's listening to the hippies that want the "real LSD". "real LSD" means weaker tabs, they weren't as strong back in the days, 200+ug gets you too high.

Oh there's plenty of dubious shit being sold as LSD. One of the most common has been 25I-NBOMe, which has the unfortunate ability to be lethal at a dose of a couple blotters(a fairly common dose for LSD).

If you're purchasing through a reputable marketplace from a seller with good reviews this won't happen, if you go on the streets maybe.

Isn't LSD easy to make if you have a high school level of understanding of chemistry? Not as easy as growing shrooms, but still it shouldn't be as hard as cooking meth.

The opposite is true. Methamphetamine can be made with high school level chemistry, while LSD is a comparatively difficult synthesis. LSD precursor chemicals are also much harder to acquire.

Oh, I guess I got them backwards.

Waaay harder than meth.

Although picking the mushrooms yourself, there's plenty of toxic mushrooms which could be mistaken for whichever species is common in your area.

And depressingly, while there are communities where you could go to get mushrooms checked by experts, they all dispose psilocybe as "toxic".

Identifying mushrooms is pretty tricky, I've just decided I can't make heads or tail of it and have given up trying, both for food and other purposes.

You can at least buy the spores though, from somewhere more reputable than most sources of LSD.

Coke has a reputation of being commonly cut with other substances, including fentanyl which is obviously very dangerous. This varies majorly by location, places where coke is cheaper and more available, it's less likely to be cut.

Weed is mostly safe, but in some places there's been synthetic cannabinoids sprayed on buds and sold as K2, Spice, etc. and that has some dangerous and unpredictable side effects. Again this varies by location. Weed is also getting much stronger than it used to be.

LSD can a bit unpredictable, dosage is really important, and in some cases NBOMe are sold as LSD. NBOMEe's are relatively new, it is a group of synthetic stimulant and hallucinogen substances and can be particularly dangerous when it's not expected.

Mushrooms are probably the safest of the lot if taken with some preparation, dosage is important and so is set and setting.

I think if these substances were decriminalized and regulated, and a harm-reduction approach to education were taken for those most at risk (e.g. Festival goers, teenagers and young adults, clubbers, etc.), a lot of the dangers around their use could be minimised, and public funds could/should be appropriated towards health and education.

Interestingly when people actually get their drugs tested, if it's not what they expected it to be, a good number of people will throw them out. There's some really interesting results from canTEST, a fixed-site drug testing service being trialed in Canberra, Australia.