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| https://www.springercreative.com/?search=shroom |
Psychedelic mushrooms, also known as psilocybin, are at the center of discussion among California legislators. The hallucinogenic drug is widely criminalized across the United States, but there are some exceptions such as Oregon, Denver (Colorado), and Oakland (California). Other psychedelic drugs include mescaline, LSD, and MDMA (ecstasy), which the legalities of are also being debated in politics. A drug legalization movement began with marijuana and is now extending to psychedelic drugs with psilocybin being a major focus. Supporters of the legalization movement are hoping that San Francisco and San Mateo County senator Scott Wiener's proposed legislation gets passed. This legislation would allow adults over the age of 21 to possess psychedelic mushrooms legally. However, it does not mention the sale of psychedelic drugs, for selling psychedelic drugs is still a felony.
Wiener's law, also known as SB-519, focuses on the medical benefits of legalizing psychedelic drugs rather than the recreational aspects of the drugs. On a recent KQED broadcast, he noted that "It's hard to describe just how destructive the war on drugs has been." The Senate Bill was in fact passed by the California Senate in June, but Wiener decided to halt its progress by moving it to a "'suspense file'" on August 26. In an article written by NBC writer Dennis Romero on September 18th, he noted that the proposal to decriminalize possession of psilocybin mushrooms was approved for signature gathering by the state attorney general. The goal is to have the proposition on the 2022 ballot, although it will be difficult due to the amount of fundraising needed to get enough signatures.
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| Senator Wiener talking at a California state senate meeting in June 2018 |
According to Ismail L. Ali, who helps operate the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, "We are in an early and sensitive phase in the process, and much remains to be seen in how different states navigate the emerging policy landscape." Navigation of the "policy landscape" may be difficult given that psilocybin is a Schedule 1 Controlled Substance under Federal legislation. This basically means that the drug is supposedly highly abused, is not used in the medical field, and is not currently safe to use even under medical supervision.
Interestingly enough, studies have shown that shrooms could be monumental in the treatment of severe post traumatic stress disorder, depression, and substance abuse. According to Paul Tillis from Nature, a study published in November 2020 conveyed that 71% of people who took psilocybin for depression showed over a 50% reduction in symptoms after four weeks. Moreover, half of the participants entered remission. In addition to the treatment of mental disorders, clinical trials suggest that when used in moderation psychedelic drugs can trigger positive introspection and positive changes to one's behavior. According to Doctor Robert Grant from the Neuroscape Psychedelic Branch at UCSF, "...psilocybin and LSD also invoke self-like qualities... depending on the dose and setting." Moreover, the psychotic effects of psychedelic mushrooms are suggested by some to be liberating. One can let go of their predefined notions of self and can gain new perspectives free of compulsive and unwanted thoughts.
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Although there are medical benefits to the legalization of psilocybin, there are also many dangers that could result from widespread use of the drug. Some physical side effects of the drug include nausea, vomiting, muscle weakness, and ataxia. The psychological effects of the drug are its hallmark trait but can also be debilitating. This includes hallucinations, paranoia, and an inability to distinguish fantasy from reality (psychosis). Although disproven in a dated article from the Scientific American published in 2015 (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-link-found-between-psychedelics-and-psychosis1/), the general public fears a link between psychedelic drugs and psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. Another common concern regarding psilocybin is that people will not take the appropriate dosage, which could lead to overdoses and even death.
Despite the uncertainty over the safety of psychedelic mushrooms, it is general consensus that California is becoming a more drug friendly state. This is given that marijuana was legalized as a medicinal drug in 1996 with the Compassionate Use Act of 1996. California was also the first state to legalize medical cannabis, which comes as no surprise as it could soon become the second state to legalize the medical use of psilocybin after Oregon.
Questions:
- Do you think shrooms should be legalized for medical use only, for both medical use and recreational use, or for neither? Why?
- There are many drugs that are harmful to the user themself, but not harmful to others (some notable exceptions would be PCP and Methamphetamine, although most drugs can be somehow be harmful to others). Is there any good reason to criminalize possession of those drugs for adults if they can make rational decisions for themselves?
- Heavily blue states such as California and Oregon have been the most proactive in legalizing previously criminalized drugs such as cannabis. Why would "blue" states be more open to legalizing drugs as opposed to "red" states? Explain.
Links:
Photos: Political Cartoon: https://www.springercreative.com/?search=shroom
Senator Wiener: https://apnews.com/article/california-health-government-and-politics-c3eb439025f5f0b50090c73f22183cd0
Drug Use Stat: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00187-9
Factual News Sources:
- https://sacramento.newsreview.com/2021/07/06/will-political-action-in-sacramento-lead-to-decriminalizing-psychedelic-drugs/.
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisroberts/2021/08/30/newsom-recall-cancels-californias-plans-to-legalize-psychedelics/?sh=3fab12706881
- https://apnews.com/article/california-health-government-and-politics-c3eb439025f5f0b50090c73f22183cd0
- https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-moves-closer-decriminalizing-psychedelic-drugs-n1279509
Is there a link between psychedelics and psychosis? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-link-found-between-psychedelics-and-psychosis1/
An interesting perspective from someone who spent months talking to psychedelic guides/researchers: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/1/10/18007558/denver-psilocybin-psychedelic-mushrooms-ayahuasca-depression-mental-health
"Nature" article for more info: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00187-9
11 comments:
I think that shrooms should be legalized for medical and recreational use for several reasons. One, the negative consequences of taking this drug are no worse than those for alcohol or cigarettes, both of which are legal for recreational use. Additionally, the positive impacts that have been demonstrated are very promising for treating mental illness as well as for providing other psychological benefits. Mental illness is a huge issue in America and finding effective treatments is crucial to the well-being of millions (according to the CDC, 1 in 5 Americans suffer from a mental illness). Lastly, in order to solve the US's mass incarceration problem, we need to end the war on drugs and reduce the number of people being sentenced for drug use. According to Pew, over 300K people (nearly 50% of inmates) are in state and federal prisons for drug use. The war on drugs (started by Nixon in the 70s, which helps explain why red states are less open to legalizing drugs) has been proven to be racist, costly, and ineffective. Decriminalizing drug use for drugs such as psychedelics, which have little negative consequences compared to their benefits, is a important step in ending it.
As I said, historically, the Republican party has been tough on crime and believed that highly criminalizing and penalizing drug use will make America safer and healthier (they were wrong, as drug abuse has not decreased since the war on drugs began). Today, they continue to be tougher on drugs than Democrats, which is reflected in the divide over legalizing marijuana.
Hey Ella, thanks for sharing your thoughts on the legalization of shrooms. You make a really good argument comparing the effects of psilocybin to alcohol and cigarettes (which are both legal for adults 21 and over). In fact, according to this article from The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/23/study-hallucinogenic-mushrooms-safest-recreational-drug-lsd), psychedelic mushrooms are actually safer than alcohol and cannabis by a decent margin. Moreover, the main effects of shroom use seem to be temporary rather than long term, whereas alcohol abuse and cigarettes are known to cause liver problems and lung issues, respectively. Also, I completely agree that mental illness is a huge issue in th U.S. and any treatment (shrooms included) should be seriously considered. However, I do quibble with the idea that the war on drugs has been proven to be racist. I do believe a lot of criminal drugs should be legalized, but after doing some brief research any article linking the war on drugs to racism had zero evidence whatsoever. The one article I could find with a single sentence of evidence was this one from the LA Times: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-07-21/the-war-on-drugs-was-always-about-race. It says, "Today Black people are four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than our white counterparts, despite comparable usage rates." This is some solid evidence that could support the claim that the war on drugs is racist. This statistic does not necessarily make the goal of the movement or the movement itself racist, but could indicate racism at the law enforcement level. Lastly, your assertion of the difference between democrats and republicans regarding drugs is widely recognized and as a generality is true (there are always exceptions, though!).
Thanks again for your input!
Hi Nicky, thanks for your comment! I was able to find more evidence supporting the idea that the war on drugs was and is racist, and the most convincing piece I found came from Richard Nixon’s domestic policy advisor John Ehrlichman, who said this in a 1994 interview: “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin and then criminalizing them both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night in the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
An example of how the war on drugs targeted Black people was the minimum sentences for crack versus powder cocaine, as determined by the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act. 5 grams of crack cocaine, which was cheaper and was more likely to be used by Black Americans, had the same minimum sentence as 500 grams of powder cocaine, which was more expensive and was more likely to be used by white Americans.
The effect of this, as the ACLU wrote in 2006, is that 20 years after 1986, "Recent data indicates that African Americans make up 15% of the country’s drug users, yet they comprise 37% of those arrested for drug violations, 59% of those convicted, and 74% of those sentenced to prison for a drug offense." (https://www.aclu.org/other/cracks-system-20-years-unjust-federal-crack-cocaine-law)
Eugenia South, Faculty Director of the Penn Urban Health Lab, explained: “When we think about what fueled mass incarceration, what laws and policies were created that led to both the ballooning of the prison population and the racial disproportionality of who is there, the War on Drugs is really front and center.”
This is supported by the Associated Press, which writes that "Following the passage of stiffer penalties for crack cocaine and other drugs, the Black incarceration rate in America exploded from about 600 per 100,000 people in 1970 to 1,808 in 2000. In the same timespan, the rate for the Latino population grew from 208 per 100,000 people to 615, while the white incarceration rate grew from 103 per 100,000 people to 242." (https://apnews.com/article/war-on-drugs-75e61c224de3a394235df80de7d70b70)
It is true that having a racist intent and racist impacts are different things. Racism was only one of Nixon's motives for starting the war on drugs, but I do believe Ehrlichman's quote proves it was a real motive.
Adding on to what Ella has already said:
Although I believe the war on drugs was mostly racist, the John Ehrlichman quote might not be credible due to the context, since Dan Baum, the writer who interviewed Ehrlichman, took 22 years after the fact (in 2016!) to release the quote. More context from this quote (source article linked below): “Baum interviewed Ehrlichman and others for his 1996 book ‘Smoke and Mirrors,’ but said he left out the Ehrlichman comment from the book because it did not fit the narrative style focused on putting the readers in the middle of the backroom discussions themselves, without input from the author.”
The Ehrlichman quote would have been a gigantic story. The fact that Baum waited 20 years (even after Ehrlichman's death in 1999) to publish the quote really stretches the bounds of credibility.
A better quote might be this one by Lee Atwater, a Republican strategist and white house advisor (he is recorded saying this, you can find that recording in the article below):
“Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "N-----r, n-----r, n-----r". By 1968 you can't say "n-----r"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this", is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N-----r, n-----r". So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the backbone.”
Lee Atwater was an RNC Chairman in the late 80’s and early 90’s, and this quote is from 1981.
He basically affirms a Republican southern strategy of gaining votes in the south by pandering to white supremacists and attempting to conceal that strategy under the guise of economic reform. This also lets us know that other high-ranking members of the Republican party were already thinking of ways to pass laws that promoted racist ideologies whilst trying for those laws to not appear racist in themselves -- which could lend some chance that the Ehrlichman quote is indeed true. In any case, it lends itself more to supporting the idea that the War on Drugs was motivated by racism (among loads of other evidence, some of which Ella provided as well!).
Links:
https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/
Hey Ella, I'll keep this response really brief because I don't want people to be too distracted by an essay on the war on drugs for a blog post about the legalization of psilocybin :). Firstly, those statistics are very convincing. It is too bad that a movement that should be focused on saving people from drug abuse and addiction has this reputation. And not just a reputation, but proof of racist intent within the white house. I really appreciate you sharing all of that evidence, and as far as the shrooms go, let's hope it can be used to help those with debilitating mental illnesses. I'm not sure what ethnicities tend to use psilocybin more, but by legalizing it hopefully that eliminates any possibility to discriminate against people who tend to use shrooms more.
Thanks for fact checking the context of that quote, Anthony. It is a very shocking quote, to say the least. Also, the Atwater quote is very telling, and obviously there is a portion of America that are covert racists. This basically means that they channel their racism through mediums other than sheer language, rhetoric, and violence, which is the most identifiable form of racism. Covert racists are overtly open-minded, but demonstrate their racism by only associating with people of their own race, passing racist economic policy if they have legislative powers, and blocking minority races out of their social lives and social media accounts. I will stop writing here because like I told Ella, this is obviously a huge tangent that isn't related to the topic I want people to discuss (the legalization of psychedelics), but it is of course a necessary and productive discussion nonetheless, and I really appreciate your elaborate response as well as the two references!
**Correction. The war on drugs IS related to the topic of the blog post, however as far as psilocybin is concerned, it is a drug with zero iterations. This means, unlike crack being a derivative of cocaine, which opens a can of worms to discriminate against people who use one iteration (crack) but not the other (cocaine), shrooms are typically prepared in the same way. Moreover, psychedelics are unpopular with minority groups in general, and seem to be more popular with white adults. Check out this article (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2377408/), and you'll see that for LSD, which is the drug most similar to shrooms, zero percent of African-Americans studied admitted to using it. This indicates that it is a drug that law enforcement and government most likely wouldn't pick to discriminate against minority groups with. As Ella mentioned, crack cocaine was the main drug use to incarcerate more African-Americans, but psilocybin is one of those drugs that wasn't the focus of the war on drugs, simply because it is not very popular and that it is a drug primarily used by whites.
Despite the positive benefits of psilocybin and other psychedelics, I don't think they should be available recreationally. I can't argue against the numerous benefits of psilocybin I don't think the vast majority of Americans should have over-the-counter access to the drug. While the drug may be physically safe the potential for psychosis and other mental problems from "bad trips" could have lasting effects on a recreational user only looking to have a fun time. From the National Institution on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 14.5 million Americans above the age of 12 suffer from Alcohol Use Disorder. Further drug abuse continues with prescription drugs suggesting that many in the American public have issues regulating their substance use. If psilocybin or other psychedelics were available over the counter, misuse would be rather common. Numerous research studies conducted in Europe have concluded that psychedelics can have positive effects on certain mental illnesses such as depression, but these tests are using the substance in a therapeutic setting. I think that psychedelic use should only be legalized in the context of treatment for people who could benefit from it under the supervision of professionals.
I don't think shrooms and other psychedelics should be prescribed by doctors, but I do agree with their decriminalization. The "war on drugs" has really been a war on the impoverished which is disproportionally affecting minority groups. The prison rates have been skyrocketing, all because when drugs are criminalized, police are able to arrest more people, and their wages go up. Although this is not a narrative of the police force as a whole, the narrative is widely evident to hold true especially in the South. Moreover, the supreme court's imposition of minimum sentencing laws is even more deeply continuing to place people in the cycle of poverty - which then makes it obvious why there's an ideological difference between "blue" and "red" states. Conservative states and lawmakers understand that when drugs are criminalized, more minorities are jailed, continuing vicious racism.
Despite the promising results of studies, I think it is important to note some of the bill’s text directly contradicts what those in favor of the bill are saying. The bill’s text proposes legalizing drugs such as psilocybin mushrooms, MDMA, LSD and other psychedelic drugs for recreational use and “social sharing”. However, the doctor in the AP article is quoted describing how the drugs can be used to treat mental illness, and that's why he believes people shouldn’t be incriminated for using them. While, if they become approved by the FDA to treat medical problems, it shouldn’t be illegal with a prescription, it is dangerous to allow people to take treatment into their own hands and allow them to use drugs that do have some serious side effects without the supervision of a professional. Additionally, while we know the short-term effects of the use of these mushrooms have, there is not much research completed yet that has determined the effects of long-term use. I have been noticing a great deal of laws being proposed lately to legalize the use of certain drugs, and while I don’t believe one should be put in jail for having a small amount of a drug on their person, drugs should not be legalized for recreational use just because a group of people wants to use the drug. They are drugs and medical research should point to whether they should be legalized for medical use, with a prescription, or recreational use.
On one hand, our prisons are overcrowded due to overly harsh sentencing because of simple drug possession crimes. However, sometimes we fail to consider the implications of such crimes. People die over small amounts of cocaine (I know that isn't one of the drugs discussed in the bill but I am using it as an example), that little bit of speed or LSD could've caused a car crash taking several lives. Possession crimes shouldn't be sentenced as harshly as they are/were, but we need to consider all of the consequences or what a simple "possession" might entail. Legalizing and prescribing such drugs isn't okay right now. Psychedelics are easy to become addicted to, so allowing a prescription to such substances opens the floodgates to dependence and addiction. The only scenario I'd be okay with would be if a doctor administered a procedure in a safe environment, and that was it. As Thomas stated, need to determine the long term effects of these drugs before legalizing them. Having over the counter access to such drugs is just too dangerous right now, and will create all sorts of abuse problems.
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