I have been spending a lot of my free time lately becoming familiarized with drug laws, and in this process, I think I have found a thread of global reform with respect to drugs (forgive me if this is not news to any of you, as I am still learning about these substances). With marijuana legalization in two states with more to possibly follow, with the people living in DC voting to legalize marijuana (and possibly implementing it despite the rider in the recent omnibus spending bill) EDIT: (it didn't die!). In states like California, mass incarceration is being directly reduced by releasing up to 10,000 inmates. In fact, state governments have been whittling away at federal drug laws on their own for the past six years.

In many Latin American countries, drug reform is already taking place in countries like Argentina, Brazil and others. Uruguay has been leading the way with legalizing marijuana (although the implementation is being delayed).
In Portugal, drugs have been legalized and the results of this new policy have been called a "resounding success" at reducing deaths due to overdose and spending on incarcerating drug users.

It seems like things are getting better so fast! Is this just a short-term relaxation, or could a more permanent shift in attitudes towards drug policy? Pew seems to think so about United States citizens. Plus, for what it's worth, the UN is getting involved to stress reform.

So I'd like to know your opinion on how this might all play out. Will the Republican-dominated Senate and Congress double down and keep draconian drug policies? Could places like Colorado and Washington state be ever be subjected to the federal government imposing the federal Schedule I status of marijuana? If this happens, will other countries globally continue to reform their own drug policies, or will they just move in step with US drug policy as in the past?

It seems like the bloody, drawn-out war on drugs is seeing its last days. Could it be true, or am I being overly optimistic?

Mayyyybe...

One thing to understand is that psychedelics have a tendency to make people question what they're told and what to believe. It's very nature stands against the status quo; and this is terrifying to many governments. Especially the US.

Why else do you think psychedelics are illegally placed in schedual 1? Why do you think they don't allow medical studies? If they could irrefutably prove the safe/non-addictive nature of psychedelics then they would be taken off schedual, or re-assigned to a far less illegal status. That's what governments don't want: a return to the 60s and the antithesis of materialism/consumerism.

I'm not against large coorporations, not by any means. I have a samsung phone, a vizio tv, and I shop at large retail chains. But in order for psychedelics to flourish the entire economy would need to change. Not just ours.. look at how much we fuel china to develop our goods.

The tl;dr version is that at best, perhaps prescription only schedualing is the best we'll ever see.

There is no question we are moving toward a post prohibition world. As far as I'm concerned the cannabis thing is already over now that more than half the states have reformed their cannabis policy in some form or another. Not to mention all the changes taking place globally, as you've already brought up. It's just a matter of time.

With the success we see in places like Portugal, Switzerland, Vancouver, the Netherlands, and even Britain in regards to implementing evidence based harm reduction practices, it's also just a matter of time till we see more sane policy measures displacing the archaic prohibitionist model in the area of treatment.

MDMA is moving into phase 2 clinical trials and is on the fast track to become a prescription medicine by 2021. Psilocybin is following close behind as it's being utilized in more and more clinical trials. While there are still not a lot of statistics available, we are beginning to see quite a lot of success with iboga/ibogaine treatment models and ayahuasca treatment models.

The recent legalization of cannabis on Native American reservations is another step forward that helps to push the door open again for the religious use discussion. We also have the precedents set by the Santo Daime and UDV decisions regarding ayahuasca, the Oklevueha Native American Church rulings, and several other state level rulings such as the New Mexico ruling on mushroom cultivation and the peyote addendum to the recent cannabis legalization bill in Oregon.

At some point in the last decade or so the question changed from if drug policy would change to how we will go about implementing the changes? We are at a particularly exciting juncture right now because we have the ability to influence exactly how this all plays out. I urge everyone here to keep up on the latest information about drug policy, to vote where you can, to get involved at the local level, to lobby and help implement and support bills in your legislature. I urge all our students and academics to speak up for the newly emerging field of psychedelic research and to help create a place for this research in your institutions, this truly is a multidisciplinary field with far reaching implications and we need to start building the bridges and working to legitimize the field within our various disciplines now if we want to be a part of shaping it's future.

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." - Eleanor Roosevelt

I don't even think it's an "if", it's more of a "when"
This change has to be slow though. If tomorrow psychedelics were suddenly legalized, I can't even imagine how much of a wreck that would be.
There is a rate at which things change and a rate at which things can adapt. As long as the change is slower than the rate of adaptation, I'm convinced the right thing to do will prevail.

Maybe this burst of changes we have seen over the past few years isn't "the one", and somehow leads to even more strict regulations and propaganda (I highly doubt that though), truth can not be hidden forever.

Oh yeah!

This also happened the other day ago too.

Victory: Congress ends war on medical marijuana

I didn't know about the NM interpretation of "manufacturing" not covering growing plants! That's really good!

Overall, I agree with what you're saying. There is something happening with drug laws in the world today, and it is very worthwhile to have an ear pressed against the ground.



For a long time I felt that way, too. The possibility of a "post prohibition" world as Dreamer042 put it, is exciting and honestly seems impossible. But the facts are the facts. Within the past decade, there has been a strong, international push to reform drug policies.

Plus, I think even US conservatives are finally seeing the problems with the policy of "spend more money: prohibit harder". Here's something that might interest (and maybe encourage) you.

That's pretty cool, and it's a start. However pot just makes people lazy and complacent. (I have no prejudice against it. Actually I'm glad it's legal here).

But in contrast to heavy psychedelics, it's almost as off topic.

I'm pretty convinced we will see legalization/decriminalization of many substances in our lifetimes which is incredibly exciting. I'm concerned how the regulation/control of certain drugs will play out as they become legalized though. Who will have access to these drugs, who will be producing them, who will be profiting from them, and how will they be distributed? Will they be accessible to those who would benefit from their use the most? In the case of medical marijuana we are already seeing a valuable medicine being privatized and roped off exclusively for those who can afford to pay for a card whether they actually need it or not, while arrests for cannabis in communities of color are continuing to trend at an alarmingly disproportional rate.




I strongly disagree with this, however. I am a heavy cannabis user and I would not consider myself lazy and I'm most definitely not complacent. I don't think it's the nature of substance, more the nature of the user. I know many inspiring and hardworking people who smoke inconceivable quantities of marijuana and do incredible work in regards to tearing down our current system and creating viable alternatives. On the other hand, almost every single person I know in person who takes psychedelics does next to nothing to challenge the status quot and seems interested only in furthering their own desire to get high and preaching their uneducated and lazy analysis of the current socio-political paradigm.

I can't stand it when people treat drugs as the answer to anything. Drugs can certainly be a conduit to finding an answer when your motives and desire to succeed are in the right place. I'd fight for that.

I consider cannabis many things to many different people...including a powerful psychedelic. It's really difficult to make generalizations based on one's own use of it

I tend to agree with your weariness about how it's going to play out with who is controlling what. However I'm not really concerned, because we have our plants already and that's not going to change. Sure cannabis is turning into big business, but anyone can still throw some lights in a closet and grow their own crop. Pharmacies and various other agencies may end up in control of synthetic psilocybin but we all know how easy it is to grow or pick mushrooms. Worse comes to worse things end up pretty much the same as they currently are and our personal pursuits remain marginalized and criminalized. It's probably most likely to end up like alcohol and tobacco with the equivalent of marlboro and budweiser sitting side by side with withe small scale specialty growers and microbrewers and a smaller marginalized group of home growers and home brewers.

Anyway it goes, it's going to be interesting to watch it all play out.

That makes sense with cannabis because cannabis is quite popular, not unlike alcohol and nicotine. I don't think the same can be said of stronger psychedelics; I doubt that we would live to see an LSD equivalent to Coors. Doing strong psychedelics on a very regular basis would probably be frowned on by culture (just like how drinking alcohol is okay, but being a drunk is not). But what do I know?

I'm in agreement over this. Our culture would have to start moving in the opposite direction for psychedelics for find a home here. When you look at the way consumerism works, people are tought to live off impulse and greed. Common life is to take the path of least resistence.

What I mean by that is everything nowadays is laid out for us. What we wear, watch, buy, listen to, eat,.. even how we eat it. You don't see alot of people going against the grain and thinking for themselves how they choose to deal with their life. I mean really, even those who make healthy choices are really usually only following instructions presented and laid out by others, aren't they?

To distill this down: psychedelics have a limited appriciation because it's easier to believe they're bad. So say that they're good would be to conflict with society and government as a whole. Trying the convince the masses otherwise would be seen as a rebellion. This is why such changes must be done slowly.

Sure, maybe someday yeah. But not our day.

Dreamer-I had no idea that my yes vote on measure91 also allowed for, what is it, an 'affirmative defense' for peyote use. Meaning that if one can demonstrate that they use peyote as sacrament in religious circumstances, that legal defense is therefore established. That's great, and a positive step towards our end goal-of legitimatizing entheogen use outside of established religious structures. As i read it, one only has to prove that their use of peyote is done in a manner which is spiritual to them and do not necessarily have to be a member of a church organization that sanctions it. Now, hopefully this addendum can be looked at in the future and rewritten to include other entheogenic substances. Thanks for the info!

And as far as the comment on weed making people complacent and lazy, i agree with those who point out that it's the person, not the plant. I think it's kinda funny that the ol "the man will never let psychedelics out of the bag because they make people think" was trotted out by the same person who thinks pot makes people complacent. Despite a natural inclination to uncover bulls*** that has been with me since i was a tadpole, weed helped take the wool from over my eyes in a big way.

"To weed or not to weed, what was the question?"

I live in an area where marijuana has been legalized, and even prior to this, has had a very, very dominant presence here due to never fully being criminalized. There are exceptionally few people who survive the opposite. I believe it can be used for great good. Where I'm at, a shocking percent of the population is largely potheads who mooch and collect welfare checks. Fact.

I don't think 'the man' has much to do with it, unless by 'the man' you mean former US president Richard Nixon. I meant to say that society in most aspects is geared away from psychedelic use. That's very great news about peyote though!

Wow, people who smoke pot mooch and collect welfare. That's a pretty Nixonian attitude Actually, pretty sure they did away with welfare, but semantics, semantics. Hmmm, not sure how to counter this, irrationality is hard to argue with. Yes, I'm sure there are people eating with food stamps who smoke pot. Oh hell, I'm one. I know many, many people who collect disability payments who use mj to help them with various ails. Are they mooching, or living life? If i was in a finger pointing mood (oh hell, I am ) I'd point toward a greater number of people who take prescription benzos and antidepressants who don't work and take various resources they probably aren't entitled to. Not fact, OPINION.

Perhaps we are neighbors. I live in the PRoP (people's republic of Portlandia), a place that is, depending on which side of the Limbaugh you stand, is either on the cutting edge of social equality in America (er,as long as you're white, DWB-driving while brown- is still a crime here), or full of welfare collecting pot smoking hippies. Yeah, it can be annoying sometimes, I'm not really considered liberal, but I'll put up with missteps toward living in a place where i have cognitive freedom, where local economy trumps corporate financial interest etc. I may be deluded and ignorant,but I'm not to blissful, so idk.

I'm gonna leave the Nixon comment be, if that's a sideways remark, yeah, i was born as the week before Armstrong put his footprint in moon dust and actually remember Watergate coverage on the news. But, no, wasn't referring to him, but I'm pretty sure you know that. Ugh.

People who refuse to get jobs, and live off the kindness of others are mooches. These are the only people I'm attacking. There just happens to be an aweful lot of then around these parts.

About the Nixon comment, he started this.

I know this is an old thread, but I recently stumbled across this article and wanted to share it as it echoes many of my concerns that I voiced earlier in regards to the current trend of legalization/decriminalization for certain groups of people. I figured it'd be better to link it here than create a whole new thread.

TLDR; the cannabis industry is currently dominated by white men and while they reap the benefits of reformed drug laws, black people are still sitting in prisons and continue to be arrested for marijuana possession at highly disproportional rates.

What the hell, America.

This sounds extremely opinionated.

how so? can you expand on that comment?