I have done. LSD is an exception because it is a recently synthesized compound which was only briefly researched and no tradition of use. Yet the same arguments were used against traditional substances such as psilocybin and DMT. It is not difficult to demonstrate that legislating sacraments is not in the DEA’s jurisdiction, and is unconstitutional. Of course I am not the first person to notice this, because it’s rather obvious. What is the substantiation of danger and abuse claimed by the DEA? I don’t want them to be interested in it, because it isn’t any of their business. Why should I credit their judgement of a substance with a long history of productive use which they admit ignorance of?
Much of the problem seems to be a cultural one, that unquestioningly labels a molecule which facilitates how your own consciousness works as “recreation”! That makes it sound like mere entertainment, when the tools are about as entertaining as using a microscope or telescope. And for all of your “party drug” concerns, an observatory telescope or electron microscope is about as easy to casually party with as a dose of DMT is. Nobody is doing keg stands or watching television on this stuff. Beyond a minimal dose, these things are counter-partying, because they require too much introspective attention and participation. They are tools, and suggesting that they need to be controlled because somebody might try partying with them misses the point of their use. It is horrific to imagine somebody being hurt because they want to juggle chainsaws, but this edge case doesn’t result in the criminalizing of those or other power tools.
What you think of as a “drug subculture” sounds pejorative to me. Again, you are going out of your way to insist that the use of these substances is abnormal. I don’t accept operating from that assumption. Why is classifying this as a drug (whatever that means) seen as the primary distinction of people’s whole culture? It’s a circular argument. “All use is abuse, because this is a drug, and any culture which uses it is therefore not a legitimate culture”. But this is what drug legislation hinges upon - blatantly ethnocentric/racist attacks upon the legitimacy of certain traditions by avowed outsiders who yet assert the right and duty to police others. Marijuana was largely criminalized upon the pretext that it is for brown people who if not regulated will soon be screwing your spouse in seedy jazz clubs (not hyperbole!). And many other American drugs were likewise criminalized mainly for not fitting into a Eurocentric worldview and Christian ethics. It so happens that I am neither European, nor Christian, so I find those to be neither relevant nor compelling arguments.
And if you read actual federal US documentations upon the dangers of LSD use, you will find that they had to make it all up. Vague hints that it “could possibly” cause neurological or chromosomal damage - despite a lack of any clinical evidence to this effect. To demonstrate how transparent the anti-LSD agenda was, there were FCC rules forbidding positive references to psychedelics in broadcast media well into the 1970s - long after they were aware that their professed dangers were factually incorrect.
Not entirely dissimilar, but I am not clear what your point is there.
I wish it was as simple as that, but it really isn’t. If medicine was strictly scientific, it would not need to be regulated. Regulation is a political process. The western medical establishment has been well aware of the relative safety of most psychedelics for many decades, but their prohibition in some circles has not had a medical basis. The DEA uses their lack of medical application as an excuse for a political agenda. I could just as easily say that eating grapes is abuse since nobody prescribed them to you. People don’t “just happen” to fear that psychedelics are unsafe, this scare has been purposefully pushed by feds and broadcast media for decades based upon no evidence. Your concern about whether people take these substances seriously is at its root an entirely political problem, the controversy has never been medical or pharmacological.
Yes, in the Americas, American drugs/plants/sacraments are as “mainstream” as anything else because this is the geography and culture we live in. If I wanted to worry about how they fit into European culture or Near-Eastern religion then maybe I would move to those places.
