I won't pretend to be an expert in the matter and, therefore, I won't share any opinion whether magic mushrooms should be legal or not.
What bothers me is the way people argue about such problems.
The common argument goes like this:
---
1) alcohol is as bad (worse than?) as X
2) alcohol is legal
therefore per analogiam:
3) X should be legal.
---
I'm fine with this reasoning, but one could also reverse the argument:
---
1') X is bad as alcohol
2') X is illegal
therefore per analogiam:
3') alcohol should be illegal.
---
Both stances are consistent and depend on other views. I believe the discussion should rather focus on the role of the law in the public life. Maybe "everything should be legal", but with some age clauses / agreement of a medical doctor? Maybe the law should be replaced with other measures?
What really saddens me though is when people advertise recreational use of possibly dangerous substances. It applies to all kinds of recreational drugs. There always will be person claiming that X solves problems/takes your conscience to next level/cure COVID/whatever. In case somebody attacks their stance, saying there is no valid research on the topic (but rather other way around), they will tell you of a conspiracy in the research community/government funding/whatever. Even if there is such a conspiracy, it doesn't validate the argument.
Please don't advice people to take drugs (or drink alcohol BTW), even if they work for you.
There are some drugs about which good arguments can be made on both sides of the legality issue. Highly addictive ones do indeed ruin lives, and while there is an argument that that should be the person's choice, the other side can argue that the government is there to better the common good, and that can include protecting people from their own bad decisions. I have mixed feelings about the legality issue when it comes to cocaine, meth, heroin, prescription opioids, etc.
With psilocybin mushrooms, though, I can't imagine any reasonable argument that people need to be protected from themselves. They aren't addictive by any definition of addiction I know of. And they can do some amazingly positive things, especially for those who are facing death due to illness or just old age. I would go so far as to say it is tragic that such people are denied relief from the horrible feeling of impending death that mushrooms can provide.
Not that I am against people just doing them for kicks, either.
I think it’s clear that there is a push for magic mushrooms to follow the same path as Cannabis has.
It’s very hard to fight the war on drugs (from a personal liberty standpoint) one drug at a time. From my political position it’s personally insulting that institutions such as the DEA and FDA tell me what I can and cannot put into my body. I’m an adult, I can either make those decisions for myself or hire experts for consultation to help me make the decision.
I mean we could just discuss the issue of freedom and making it illegal for people to grow and consume a mushroom and stop making it about just drugs. Marijuana is the same way. If it isn't for someone then they shouldn't do it and we should make as much information available about something available and provide safe environments, but making it illegal especially when plenty of people have experienced positive effects sometimes profound religious experiences it is just another mechanism of control and taking away freedom and natural rights.
> Maybe "everything should be legal", but with some age clauses / agreement of a medical doctor? Maybe the law should be replaced with other measures?
People often overlook that "legal" doesn't necessarily mean, for example, you can just open a shop and start selling magic mushrooms. "Legal" covers all of your above options. Alcohol is legal, but it's heavily licensed, taxed and restricted. In some countries (Scandinavian in particular), you can only buy booze from government kiosks. Similarly, DXM cough syrup is legal, but you'll find it difficult to "legally" walk into a pharmacy and buy enough for you and a friend to get high. Many prescription drugs are legal, but yeah, you need a medical doctor to approve your use of them.
The fact that certain substances are illegal and classified as dangerous and/or useless for medical purposes is another ramification regardless of your ability to go purchase X drug or item. There are "legal" substances that are dangerous (but not fun) that are widely studied, bought and used - for example, cyanide. Saying "magic mushrooms are illegal and you can't study them with science" because they're fun is, by comparison, kind of mad.
Anyway, I'm sure none of you needed pharmacies, prescriptions or off-license booze shops explaining to you, but there's nuance to the legal status of a substance beyond "it's banned" vs "you can go buy it in a shop right now" that some people can miss when you bring up the topic.
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.
To me, it's obvious that if you give unrestrained access to something and increase its availability, more people are going to use it. I'd be leery of reports that say otherwise. In fact, the current opioid epidemic is a testament to this.
Mushrooms are not for everybody. I don't want my kids using them. Should they be illegal? I don't know. I'd take them being illegal over making them easier to obtain.
Then maybe it's the controlled substance administration that's wrong. Seriously, what level of hubris does it take to think that natural substances like psilocybin mushrooms which have existed for millions of years must be brought under the control of a polity's legislature? It's like declaring sharks or snakes illegal because they give some people nightmares. Future generations will laugh in disbelief at this idiocy.
I don't have much information on Mushrooms personally, but shouldn't the default be that anyone is allowed to use a substance unless a case can be made that it needs to be restricted?
Given the current opioid epidemic, that exact same process of deciding when things should be restricted should be applied to opioids - but that practically gets a different treatment because there is a lot of money involved...
You will always find people who will abuse something. Happened with alcohol, TV, internet and will happen with mushrooms. The question is whether it’s more costly and damaging to prohibit something vs controlling it. I think people are slowly learning that prohibition is worse than letting some people abuse something.
If we want to make a drug illegal it should be alcohol anyway. It causes huge numbers of deaths every year. It’s probably the most dangerous drug we have.
Clarification: All I m trying to say is that it's dangerous to say "there is no addiction risk in mushrooms. They are totally benign". If you say that it will be really easy for opponents to find counterexamples. Instead we should say they are not more dangerous than already legal things so there is no point in prohibiting mushrooms while other similarly harmful things are legal.
The rejoinder to that argument is "two wrongs don't make a right" or generally that you can't justify allowing some bad thing because some other similar bad thing is allowed. It's a form of whataboutism.
Sure, it may make no sense that alcohol and tobacco are legal but weed and mushrooms aren't. They're all natural substances, they are all mood altering, they are all capable of being enjoyed in moderation and also can cause harm if used in excess.
But though alcohol and tobacco are legal, for whatever good or not good reasons, that isn't a logical argument for making more intoxicants legal.
I agree, but it depends on where you live. Here in California it’s legal recreationally. Psilocybin mushrooms are next.
It is a great hypocrisy that some substances are so vilified and criminalized while others are sold openly to great profit. I have a feeling it simply has to do with _who_ stood to benefit the most when those substances first became known.
It will take a lot of work to correct but with good education and open minds we’ll get there.
I'm not making any argument why drug use should be illegal. I'm making an argument for why the public should be entitled to decide whether drug use is legal or illegal. I also think, given your examples, the public should also be entitled to decide whether alcohol should be illegal.
Oh please that's an absurd argument. Nobody here is saying we should ban every possible dangerous thing. The question becomes what are the recreational benefits of using the drug when weighed against the possible risks and side-effects. If you're willing to present statistics that more people overdose on caffeine than cause violent crime on mushrooms, then maybe you'll have something.
Yes I specifically told the things that is currently happening and I am not fine with it. I am not saying that mushrooms should be banned, just saying I criticize legalizing everything just because you have choice to not do drugs.
At the very minimum we should immediately legalize anything that's clearly less dangerous than alcohol (which is a lot of stuff given that alcohol is very dangerous/destructive). Marijuana, most hallucinogens, etc.
Anyone who is arguing that marijuana, MDMA, etc. should not be legalized is an absolute hypocrite unless they're also campaigning to bring back prohibition of alcohol.
This is such a common fallacy in this topic. They imply people will do these drugs just because they are legal. Does everyone is smoking cigs? Or drinking alcohol? Or taking psychedelic seeds and plants that in a lot of countries are not defined as illegal? No sense.
Yes, it bothers me tremendously whenever I see people asking "should X be allowed?" and similar things. That's the wrong question. It comes from an original position of assuming that everything is forbidden by default, and that good reason must be given for that restriction to be lifted. This is not how the world works. It is restriction that is the aberrant case, and the one which needs to be constantly defending itself. The moment it becomes clear that the restriction is not justified, it must be gotten rid of. Restriction is inherently costly and harmful. If it is not preventing greater harm than it is causing, there's no defense for it.
When it comes to psychedelic drugs and other drugs generally, there has never been any legitimate basis for their prohibition. Even poisons like arsenic and cyanide aren't regulated the way drugs that simply make you smile for awhile are.
I suspect most people simply want to skirt the backing philosophy behind drug prohibition. They don't want to discuss whether the belief that easy pleasure is immoral has merit. They don't want to have to say out loud or try to defend the idea that people would abandon productive, full lives to pursue chemically-induced pleasure states in large numbers. Mostly because they're not confident in their ability to hold those arguments, and they fear it might make them easily swindled I think.
Yeah, it's not like people care about a (mostly) harmless illicit drug - specially when compared to a poisonous licit drug as alcohol - is illegal based on factors of which none are scientific.
I mean, why not make things illegal just for the hell of it, right? It's not like there's a whole industry benefiting from people going to jail.
What bothers me is the way people argue about such problems.
The common argument goes like this:
---
1) alcohol is as bad (worse than?) as X
2) alcohol is legal
therefore per analogiam:
3) X should be legal.
---
I'm fine with this reasoning, but one could also reverse the argument:
---
1') X is bad as alcohol
2') X is illegal
therefore per analogiam:
3') alcohol should be illegal.
---
Both stances are consistent and depend on other views. I believe the discussion should rather focus on the role of the law in the public life. Maybe "everything should be legal", but with some age clauses / agreement of a medical doctor? Maybe the law should be replaced with other measures?
What really saddens me though is when people advertise recreational use of possibly dangerous substances. It applies to all kinds of recreational drugs. There always will be person claiming that X solves problems/takes your conscience to next level/cure COVID/whatever. In case somebody attacks their stance, saying there is no valid research on the topic (but rather other way around), they will tell you of a conspiracy in the research community/government funding/whatever. Even if there is such a conspiracy, it doesn't validate the argument.
Please don't advice people to take drugs (or drink alcohol BTW), even if they work for you.
reply