But that's true for any criminalized substance. It's not like the FDA or EFSA or so is going to do lab tests on, say, XTC and fine producers that lie on their ads or ingredient-list.

Though biological products like psilocybin (or weed etc) are harder to measure and control by producers, in strength than purely chemical products like LSD or MDMA. It's hard to trace what mother nature did exactly when producing this particular mushroom cap, but it could be possible to trace what the chemist did when producing this particular blot. If only it were legalized and we could have actual control, tracability, and prosecution of malpractice...

Fwiw at least xtc and coke can be legally tested in the Netherlands. https://www.drugs-test.nl/en/testlocations/

Ah funny! You were 3 hours before me. It's not just xtc and coke. It's much more than that. Most things are simply going to be sent to the lab.

The only thing they don't test are things you can somehow get legally, if I recall correctly (so whatever you can get for any psychological condition).

They can be in more countries than just the Netherlands IIRC. And simple test-kits are available too - these aren't as good obviously, but can e.g. prove the absence or presence of certain (by)products.

Also, these tests are set up in a way that they are anonymous in a way that e.g. even if prosecutors could subpoena a test-location or lab to hand over administration, this administration won't contain any PII or even pseudonymous information.

I was under the impression that it's impossible to reliably test, e.g., cocaine for fentanyl, without destroying the drug and it doesn't take much of the latter narcotic to kill you.

The amount that has to be destroyed is miniscule.

my point is that powders don't mix evenly. part of a baggie testing negative for fentanyl doesn't mean the remainder is clean.

Then thoroughly mix the whole amount before taking a sample.

Given that a lethal dose of fentanyl is about two milligrams (similar to 5-7 grains of table salt in volume), that still feels pretty risky.

Lsd can be tested as well in the Netherlands. You can get a quantative analysis, but you lose the sample.

With MDMA if you have 150 mg of powder, you have 150mg of powder, i.e. this is the upper bound on how much substance you will take (be it MDMA or not), i.e. there can't be MORE than 150 mg.

With LSD it's always a solution (either in paper or in liquid), so you can only trust the producer.

Well, also it degrades over a couple of years (unlike M) so the producer usually makes the dose strong to start

Depends on how it’s stored. There’s still LSD from the 70s in circulation in solution. It degrades in light, otherwise it’s very stable.

Sure it can’t be more than 150mg of MDMA, but that doesn’t tell you how much meth / fentanyl / whatever is in there, so it’s not like you’re somehow in a safer boat with it. At least it’s easier to test LSD for adulteration due to it being such a different chemical than what it could be adulterated with.

That's why I don't vape nicotine. Small molecule, sold in concentrate, mixed by who knows who. A high school chemistry experiment. If a butcher offers you a 4-ton pork chop by mistake at least it's obvious you shouldn't stand underneath it. Cigs are cigs but nicotine in solution is an assassination weapon. Ask the CIA.

People who long for the old days must realize there were serious mental issues in society. It wasn't a simple case of the dids and the didn'ts. People were batsh*it insane, and I don't mean hallucinogens, especially not LSD that is not directly toxic at all. People were literally driven to hysteria by the ~thought~ of LSD.

The juggernaut opposing LSD and set the stage for the endless war on drugs. It was the boogeyman that could justify any legal atrocity. Lives could be destroyed, tripping teenagers were treated as if it was a life threatening medical emergency, which is trauma and sadism. The monkey brain slides that implied chromosome damage was deliberately not replicated after the mistake in handling was found, and the study was cited for a decade after author retracted it. Just too convenient to repeat the lie.

It is not surprising that G. Gordon Liddy a toady in Nixon's cabinet, spoke up at a meeting briefly to suggest putting LSD on opposition journalist Jack Anderson's steering wheel. As if it's presence would cause an instant accident that flipped the car 5 stories into the air. He was showing off his ignorance and trying to boost his reputation as a 'fixer'.

But far more dangerous than LSD, a few impaired people here and there was the mass hysteria to the 'plot' and 'scandal' that wouldn't work anyway and 3/4 of the country was consumed by it. That was in 1972.

Then along comes fentanyl that is really scary and not much serious pushback, until 'recently'.

> If a butcher offers you a 4-ton pork chop by mistake at least it's obvious you shouldn't stand underneath it

brilliantly put

You're not wrong, but the biggest confounding factor for LSD is that a 100ug dose comes embedded in 10000ug of blotter paper. Scales are useless for determining how much you're taking.

This is true of every illegal drug to some extent. You do not know how it is mixed. Though sure, your 100mg of "MDMA" is unlikely to contain more than 100mg of MDMA

My point is that the potency at small doses creates novel hazards which, when avoided (and rightly so) interfere with the ability to know what you have.

One dose would be tricky, but you could process twenty doses of "MDMA" via column chromatography and end up with a sample of MDMA which your scale can actually measure. There's nothing scary about twenty doses of MDMA except that maybe you'll get caught with it. If you dropped it, nobody would get hurt.

If you tried the same with LSD you'd have to process tens of thousands of doses before your scale would be of any use. That much LSD in solution is an accident waiting to happen. I wouldn't go anywhere near it.

That is not true and dangerous. 20 doses is deadly. It's less than the LD50 for most people, but since MDMA disregulates your body temperature you can easily overheat

Well yeah, if you consume it. I'm worried about it splashing out and touching your hand. That's how LSD was discovered, Hoffman accidentally touched it and got a massive dose. I'm just saying that its much more dangerous to be near several grams of LSD than it is to be near several grams of MDMA, which means that the only person who can tell you the potency is likely the person who was crazy enough to make it in the first place.

Some countries (Germany, Holland) have (or had ~5 years ago when I was interested in this) legal analogues of LSD that are produced and sold in a fully regulated, safe, precise manner.

Well, cocaine and heroin are still used for certain medical applications, too, ain't they?

Cocaine is still legal for medical use, but in twenty years of anesthesia I've never seen it used (though we are not an ENT-heavy practice). Too much concern about diversion. It's a great drug for ENT use but the way little bits of excess disappear means that most hospital pharmacies don't want to touch it (and surgery centers that don't have 24/7-staffed pharmacies want it even less due to risk of break-ins and theft).

Heroin is not legal in the US, although it is in the UK at least as a hospice med (under the generic name diamorphine).

Being significantly older than you (I retired from the practice of anesthesiology at age 67 in 2015) I am able to recount my experience with cocaine use to prepare patients for nasal intubation.

When I began my residency at the UCLA Department of Anesthesiology in the fall of 1977, I was instructed on how to use cocaine.

First, one requested a 2cc glass vial of cocaine hydrochloride solution (4-10% strength, prepared from cocaine powder).

The patient in the O.R. was then sedated heavily to both eliminate fear and anxiety and decrease the stinging and discomfort resulting from the imminent application of the cocaine solution against the nasal mucosa.

Cotton pledgets on thin wooden sticks about 6 inches long were submerged in the cocaine solution until saturated, then very slowly and delicately introduced into both nostrils simultaneously and rotated while being advanced deep into the nasal cavity: usually they went in about half their length.

A nice aid to successful intubation: As a rule, we chose to intubate via the nostril which most easily and deeply accommodated the pledget.

We then waited for 15-20 minutes for maximum local anesthesia and vasoconstriction, then removed the pledgets and proceeded with nasal intubation.

I continued to use cocaine for nasal intubation until I moved to the University of Virginia in 1983; for whatever reasons, the drug wasn't part of our therapeutic armamentarium there, rather lidocaine with epinephrine was employed in the same manner as cocaine solution and produced equivalent results.

I suspected you might have useful insight :)

It's not just used in palliative care (though it is certainly used widely for that). As I understand it, in the UK diamorphine is prescribed for lots of types of acute, severe pain, including pain from surgery, heart attack and childbirth.

Good to know. I read that many, many years ago (it was printed on paper!), but obviously things change. Still Schedule I (no accepted medical use, i.e., totally illegal) in the US.

My wife, a PhD student at the time, was tasked with delivering cocaine to another university's research lab. I believe they were administering it to mice, I don't know much else. Anyway, my wife agrees and proceeds to take a public bus with an illicit substance and no accompanying permit or documentation. Wild.

Like what? What was a legal analogue 5 years ago?

There were multiple, I think they were called 1p-LSD, 1cp-LSD, 1d-LSD, 1v-LSD and currently you can still legally buy 1S-LSD. Its a bit of whack-a-mole with the lawmakers because there isnt a blanket ban, only ever the specific chemical gets banned. Although stuff got quite a lot more expensive with every iteration.

Not quite the specific chemicals anymore. As I understood it, when they outlawed 1v, the legislation was changed to also consider the weight of the molecule. Ok fine, still whack-a-mole, it just took the clandestine chemists slightly longer to figure out what mostly inert structures they could add to the LSD (though not actually add, since that would mean they were at some point making LSD, which is illegal) that would be cleaved off metabolically so you end up with LSD in your system

Prior to those there were LSZ (lysergic acid dimethylazetidide) and AL-LAD doing the rounds in the UK. Very briefly PARGY-LAD too.

1P-LSD was something of a breakthrough IIRC (never tried it but I was still following the scene at that point) because unlike the others it is a pro-drug for LSD, being quickly metabolised to the parent compound, rather than a different but closely related compound as the others were.

Never heard of the rest of those though! I stopped paying attention sometime around then.

There is in the Netherlands. You can test it there [1].

Ah, I see someone else already mentioned it. I'll still keep this here for increased visibility. Drugs testing in NL is solid.

Source: trust me bro ;-)

Second source: go see for yourself! It's anonymous.

[1] https://www.drugs-test.nl/ (use google translate)