Psychedelic Drugs And The Law
Are psychedelic drugs illegal everywhere in the world?
My assumption is that psychedelic drugs are illegal everywhere in the world because there are World Health Organization rules about what drugs are legal or illegal. But I consider cannabis to be a psychedelic drug in that it is mind manifesting. And there are places where you can use cannabis without too much legal repercussion. So, then I would say no.
How does the US Controlled Substances Act classify psychedelic drugs?
The way that our government classifies drugs is Schedule I, II, III, IV, and V. Schedule I means that there is no accepted medical use and there is a high potential for abuse. Our government puts most drugs in Schedule I, not nicotine and alcohol for reasons that are unclear to me, but they do put cannibis which is a psychedlic -- that is in schedule I. LSD is in schedule I. MDMA or ecstacy is in schedule I. That is the government saying there is no accepted medical use and there is a high potential for abuse. However, MDMA does have accepted medical uses; the FDA has approved two studies administering MDMA to patients with post-traumatic stress disorder, with end of life cancer, and anxiety. Then you have medical marijuana, where clearly there are some medical uses. So there is a little bit of hypocrisy in terms of Schedule I and how things are classified currently by our government.
Are drugs classified by the amount of bodily harm they do?
If Drugs were classified by the amount of bodily harm they did, then, Tobacco and alcohol would really have to be classified as schedule one. There is no accepted medical use. There is a high potential for abuse and they do a lot of damage. 400 thousand people die in America every year from cigarettes. Over a hundred thousand people die every year from complications with Alcohol, and alcohol is a major, you know, it certainly involved in violent crimes and car accidents, so, you know, our government is pretty whacky in terms of how it characterizes Drugs
How does the law deal with psychedelic drug users?
Our government tends to go after the people who are growing, producing, and distributing drugs more than the people who are using drugs. It is illegal to possess or ingest something like LSD or ecstasy and cannabis, for the most part. But you know, my sense is that the police tend to not go after the users as much as the distributors or the dealers.
When did Ecstasy become an illegal substance?
Ecstasy's got a unique history it's the only drug that was ever emergently scheduled so it was placed in schedule one without any real data and this was emergently done in June of 1985 I believe. Then what happened was, there was a series of hearings where a group of psychiatrists sued the DEA to try to get it put in a lower schedule. And the administrative law judge agreed that it should be in a lower schedule that it did have a potential medical use and low potential for abuse and recommended that it be put in schedule three. The DEA took that recommendation ignored it and kept it in schedule one and that's where it's been every since.