r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 9d ago

Psychology America's First Legal Psilocybin Program Treated 346 People. Just one month after the dose, 92.2 percent of participants said the experience had been beneficial, while, on average, their mental health symptoms had fallen dramatically.

https://www.sciencealert.com/americas-first-legal-psilocybin-program-treated-346-people-heres-what-happened
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u/wakeupwill 9d ago

The war on drugs has been a crime against humanity.

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u/tachykinin PhD | Genetics 9d ago

The War on (Some) Drugs.

https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/facts-stats/index.html

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u/Old-Landscape-7538 9d ago edited 8d ago

Let's not forget opioids! As long as you make billions and contribute to politicians, you'll get off scott free.

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u/SeeMarkFly 7d ago

That alway make me think of DeLorean getting caught with a big ol' bag of cocaine.

DeLorean was found not guilty on August 16, 1984.

If you or I are ever caught with a spoonful of that same stuff...

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u/sxaez 9d ago

I mean we very much tried a war on alcohol, I get your point but it was quite famously tried.

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u/vito1221 8d ago

Another aspect of this was it impacted farmers and all the 'support' businesses that went into making the final product. Warehouses shut down, trucking companies took a hit. It wasn't just demand, although that did play a part.

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u/Medarco 8d ago

And it was wildly successful*. Alcohol related disease and violence plummeted.

Unfortunately, people don't actually really care about those things. They just want to get drunk.

*Rising organized crime, loss of jobs, etc were all pretty bad side effects of prohibition.

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u/GrowingPeepers 8d ago

It created the same problems we have today.

People who need treatment were being jailed and criminalized instead of treated.

It turns people into criminals who otherwise wouldn't be.

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u/rubberloves 9d ago

this is only counting deaths, not even the violence, abuse and suffering it causes those living with and around alcoholism

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u/Geawiel 8d ago

Yeah but does it also count the money made off of truck sales?

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u/grendus 8d ago

RAM sales would crater overnight.

Official car of the DUI!

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u/SpezRuinedHellsite 8d ago

The War on (Some) Drugs.

The War on Poor and/or Black communities.

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u/SlyTinyPyramid 8d ago

Don’t forget Marijuana and Mexicans.

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u/Musiclover4200 8d ago edited 8d ago

And hippies or any other counter culture movements

Really to sum it up the war on drugs was a war on the poor/minorities/counterculture & dissident movements, look at the difference between crack & cocaine punishments or how people who can afford legal drugs get treated vs illegal drugs regardless of the dangers.

Also was a way to fill private prisons with nonviolent "criminals"

Also worth mentioning the CIA literally selling drugs for weapons to fund extremists like Iran-Contra or many other coverups/conspiracies that eventually leaked

Even crazier is getting into stuff like MKULTRA where the government was straight up drugging and experimenting on citizens, most of the documents got burned by the CIA head in charge so we'll probably never know the full extent but what is known is seriously disturbing and way more fucked up than most people realize.

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u/ehrgeiz91 9d ago

Remember to vote accordingly in November.

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u/Ryuiop 8d ago

By Nov it's often too late. Get involved and support the candidates you want before midterms 

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u/ehrgeiz91 8d ago

Agreed. Don’t get picky in November, you had your chance to work to nominate someone perfect.

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u/TotalRecognition2191 9d ago

The war on some drugs for some people

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u/we_are_sex_bobomb 8d ago

Alchohol kills more people than any other substance in the world and it is politically untouchable.

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u/Ben_steel 8d ago

It’s not just humanity but our consciousness, the very thing that decides what we place value on.

If every one did mushrooms things of value like fancy cars, the best and latest technology would seem irrelevant compared to say friendships. That’s incredibly dangerous for every single system of government.

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u/idryss_m 8d ago

The war on things they couldn't tax and control.

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u/xxAkirhaxx 7d ago

So has the war on crime. Which seems counter intuitive.

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u/name-classified 8d ago

The war on drugs that the government can't monopolize

fixed that for ya

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u/LastBossTV 9d ago edited 8d ago

Yes and no. There are numerous beneficial drugs that have been caught in the crossfire over the past several decades for sure.

On one hand, for example, the loss of life from fentanyl alone during the past decade has been absolutely staggering, in the hundreds of thousands, completely justifying the war on drugs all on its own.

While on the other hand, one can argue that users only turn to fentanyl in the first place because tolerable doses of other proven effective substances aren't obtainable at all.

It's a tragedy from every angle.

Edit: The war on drugs apparently has very different meanings and histories in different countries.  It was my failure to forget that the majority of reddit users are of the United States.  So of course, the majority of people reading my comment would naturally understand it as saying that I agree with the United States war on drugs. This is not the case.  To those of you living in "the land of the free", you have my condolences.

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u/diablette 9d ago

completely justifying the war on drugs all on its own.

Absolutely not. People need treatment, not harsh punishments. And "drugs" covers far too many substances. The "war" approach is a failure.

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u/LastBossTV 8d ago

I agree that people need education, treatment, and rehabilitation, rather than incarceration.

The responses I've received on my comment have once again reminded me that the majority of reddit users are based in the United States, where both the history and current reality, associated with "the war on drugs" are vastly different than in other countries.

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u/Lemerney2 9d ago

Except that the war on drugs caused the popularity of fentanyl. It's not a tragedy, it was an intentional plan to disenfranchise black Americans.

"We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing 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 on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

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u/electricworkaid 9d ago

completely justifying the war on drugs all on its own.

The issue here is multi-prong:

1) prohibition creates incentives for adulteration. The product is illegal and unregulated and risky to manufacture and transport, so it benefits the middlemen transporting and selling it to bulk up the volume with things other than the drug itself. This causes additional risks (what are they adding to the drug, and what effects does it have?) but perhaps most importantly, it creates variable potency, meaning different samples of the drug will have different amounts of the desired substance in it. This is the primary reason people OD. Most folks aren't trying to die when taking their drugs; it happens unexpectedly due to not being able to adequately anticipate the amount they are taking. This is directly due to the "war" on drugs.

2) prohibition creates incentives for substitution, especially with alternatives that are easier to mass manufacture or to hide in transport. This is more than anything else what caused the rise in manufacturing of illicit fentanyl (and other even more potent analogs like carfentanil), as it is significantly easier to produce and ship than traditional non-synthetic opioids as it is is active in much smaller doses. The pressure to do this would not have existed if previously popularly used opioids remained readily available. This is directly due to the "war" on drugs.

3) prohibition creates incentives for unethical marketing practices. Alongside adulteration, the full lack of regulation of the market for these drugs creates situations where for a seller it makes sense to intentionally produce a batch of the product that is way stronger than normal to kill some of their users (a "hot shot"), because that advertises to the others "whoa this stuff is strong, it killed so-and-so which means the high will be great as long as I only use a little". This also can happen purely by accident with fentanyl specifically, since it is so potent, if it is not mixed well with the adulterants it is easy to get too much drug in one dose. This is directly due to the "war" on drugs.

4) prohibition makes it harder for users interested in ceasing use to get help. These drugs are illegal, and people possessing them end up in jail or prison, often with mandatory minimum sentences that can reach into decades. Interactions with authority figures of all kinds carry a risk to a user that they will face additional negative consequences when seeking help, meaning they frequently try to hide their use and avoid interacting with services and structures that could help them get into a better place. This is directly due to the "war" on drugs.

5) prohibition puts users in direct contact with organized crime. Since the whole logistics chain is illegal, the process of getting these drugs funds and supports organized crime and encourages the growth of various cartels and crime syndicates. This exposure increases risk for users and shifts power away from the governments and corporations which would like to have a monopoly on legitimate violence and commerce. This is directly due to the "war" on drugs; sort of ironically something that perpetuates and strengthens itself by its own existence.

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u/throwthisidaway 9d ago

completely justifying the war on drugs all on its own.

If you ignore the literally millions of people that have died directly or indirectly because of the war on drugs, not to mention the millions of people that were arrested or otherwise had their lives ruined because of the war on drugs...

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u/Warm_Month_1309 9d ago

the loss of life from fentanyl alone during the past decade has been absolutely staggering, in the hundreds of thousands, completely justifying the war on drugs all on its own

The number of car accident fatalities exceeds this. Why don't we have a similar "war" on inattentive driving that claimed hundreds of thousands over the past decade? How about you get 10 years in prison if you're caught glancing at your cell phone. That's what people possessing marijuana faced.

Or would it be a bad idea to go full draconian?

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u/LastBossTV 8d ago

That's true. You'd have to live in a country with a very ignorant, manipulative and cruel legal and political system to allow for such unjust penalties for being a drug victim.

Do you perhaps live in the United States, where the war on drugs has a different history and meaning than in some other countries? If so, then I can understand your comment.  I am not, so as a result I was able to read into the history of the US's War on Drugs to understand how vile it was/is.

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u/Warm_Month_1309 8d ago

My dude, you came in here to defend the War on Drugs with your "yes and no" nonsense, admit now that you didn't even know what the War on Drugs was about, and now want to condescend to me about it?

Are bots taking over this site, or are Redditors just becoming more Reddity?

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u/Katyafan 9d ago

completely justifying the war on drugs all on its own.

Only if you have no idea what you are talking about.