I think psychedelics will ruin the minds of many teenagers. They should never be legalized. Anyone who has spent time around people who used them in their youth knows this, we don’t understand how they affect brains
I used them judiciously when I was a teenager and in my early 20s. Use is one thing, abuse is another.
Your comment about how "we don't understand how they (psychedelics) affect brains" holds true for pretty much anything we put in our bodies, so there's no real reason to draw the line at psychedelics. That said, it's not entirely true to say we don't understand _any_ of the action, because we do. If you want to know the answer to deeper questions like the effect on long-term development and so on, lower the barrier to studying the effects, and go from there.
I can't think of any good reason why psychedelics cannot be prescribed, but Oxycontin or Adderall or whatever can, and you can go buy alcohol and cigarettes at the store.
Consider that teenagers can already acquire psychedelics regardless of legal status. More kids are killed by alcohol every year and it's a legal drug. Changing the legal status of psychedelics will help research into these amazing materials and hopefully change the world we collectively experience in real and meaningful ways.
Ha! I lived in a small town in WI, and LSD was more available than any drug. Not only available, but available in exotic forms: microdots, gel tabs, fancy printed blotter. Sometimes I wonder if it was a government experiment, that's how remarkably available it was relative to other drugs. Consider for a moment it is pretty easy to grow mushrooms or pot, and then consider that a bunch of small-town kids in WI had easier access to a difficult-to-synthesize psychedelic. Wild.
In high school in Australia, it was easy to find alcohol. Don't think there was much LSD going around (some marijuana and MDMA).
I think one difference is when you have 18 as the legal drinking age, a significant chunk of kids turn 18 while still in year 12. They could then legally buy it and then (illegally) on-sell it to their school friends who weren't of legal age yet.
In some cases parents would even buy alcohol for their teenage children. Parents supplying other drugs to their children is not totally unheard of but far less common.
Probably for the best, but I'm not sure what it means. I would think Utah would be unusually difficult to get alcohol, since (most) kids couldn't just raid their parents' liquor cabinets. Not sure how Utah's rather unique culture would affect availability of LSD.
> I have some stoner friends from high school who were really smart and gave up in college and now work mediocre dead end jobs and live in really low cost of living areas.
> They're happy. They're far from dead. But that potential they had is completely gone at this point.
What entitles you to their potential?
People may want to change the world, or may just want an entry level job that keeps them fed and housed while spending their time on drugs/videogames/what-the-hell-they-damn-want-its-not-my-problem
If really smart people decide that working in construction and smoking weed is their call, who am I to say otherwise?
You'd be hard pressed to find anyone that supports decriminalization and thinks people should be getting high at work, especially people who do dangerous work.
The same could be said about alcohol. It’s none of my business what people do in their free time at home, as long as they can safely and effectively do their job when they’re on the clock.
Anecdotally, as a college student in a state where marijuana is still extremely illegal, it is comically easy to obtain it while alcohol, a legal drug, is significantly more difficult to obtain (though still easy).
Following this pattern, from what I've seen psychedelics are relatively simple to get (albeit harder than weed), therefore legalization might actually make them more difficult to illegally obtain because dealers will be replaced by controlled medical practices in many markets.
Decriminalization will also open doors for people to study _how_ they affect the brain.
Illegal drug dealers have very little incentive not to sell to underage kids, while legal ones have a license and livelihood that could be taken away.
Of course legal drugs always have “cool” adults willing to be straw purchasers for underage kids. It’s complicated, and the relationship between the law and underage usage are non linear.
It'll probably remain at least slightly easier to get drugs than alcohol even if/when both are legal to 21+ just because drugs are so much smaller and easier to deal with. A trunk full of Alcohol isn't much but a trunk of any drug is a lot.
I have spent time around many young and old people who used and continue using psychedelics. These are absolutely normal people.
In addition, there is ton of research into the effects of these substances on the human brain, just look it up.
People will always find ways to get drugs one way or another, even just to experiment once or twice. It being illegal has an allure of its own. It's better if they can acquire it legally, and try it out with friends in a safe environment and don't have to hide it.
Making it legal also helps remove stigma, lowering the barrier for people to seek help and care.
> Anyone who has spent time around people who used them in their youth knows this,
No actually, not anyone. I have plenty of friends that have experimented with various psychedelics during different stages of their lives. They're perfectly healthy and productive members of society.
It's also perfectly possible to make something not be illegal, and still not sell it to teenagers.
This is predictably getting downvoted but the available science is tentatively supportive of this view.
Marijuana usage as a child or teenager is significantly correlated with declines in IQ by adulthood. Whether it's causal is up for debate, but avoiding it as a teenager is a good idea given extant knowledge.
This is a bit of a tangent. The issue at hand is the use of psilocybin, MDMA, and LSD, among others, by adults -- especially for healing and self-betterment. I'm not sure if you have seen the incredible research results that have been piling up. These substances are capable of relieving immense suffering and greatly improving people's lives. Of course, they are quite powerful and should be used with great care.
Look into the research that MAPS (and others) is doing with MDMA. Amazing results with people who are suffering from severe PTSD.
I expect it will be a powerful tool that can help people suffering from a wide variety of traumas. Side note, but we don’t understand nearly enough about trauma. Unresolved trauma is an enormous driver of human suffering. I think it may far more widespread and take many more forms than what the textbooks say.
I find trauma to be quite interesting. I believe it's real and significant, but what I'm trying to figure out is why, evolutionarily speaking. People were routinely exposed to very traumatic, violent things in our ancestral history, much more often than in present society. How would it have been adaptive to then respond to those events with trauma, which would seem to reduce our genetic fitness?
That is a really good question. I’ve wondered about that too. It may have provided some protection, as it may increase avoidance of future dangerous situations. It could also partially be a side effect of other useful emotional expressions. Or perhaps human behavior grew in complexity (more ways to hurt each other) faster than evolution could improve our emotional processing capabilities. It’s hard to say.
Relatedly, maybe humans had better ways of coping with trauma in the past, through communal bonds, more strongly shared world views, rituals, and so on.
I'd be interested to see the data on this, because I suspect occasional use (i.e. less than once every 2 weeks to one month) is not as damaging, if at all.
Occasional use is very different from the "wake and bake" style of using marijuana every hour or so. I fell into the former category, as did some friends of mine, but I knew many who were in the latter. The differences a few years on are quite profound.
you do realise alcohol is legalized, but teenagers don't have easy access to it, right?
Legalization is not the same as free distribution. It is not like you would see Psychedelics available in every store for everyone to buy, regardless of age or without prescription.
> I think psychedelics will ruin the minds of many teenagers. They should never be legalized. Anyone who has spent time around people who used them in their youth knows this, we don’t understand how they affect brains
Funny how I took huge amounts of LSD and mushrooms as a youth and then made a successful living as a productive member of society. People are surprised to learn that aspect of my past because when it comes up. If anything, my world view and appreciation for differing viewpoints is broader because of it.
We don’t understand the effects because of the stigma around their illegality. Only recently has progress been made there, and further understanding from legality could only be a good thing. Use is already happening and will continue to happen. Increasing our understanding of the effects and regulating production and distribution accordingly are the path to safety.
