Then maybe it's the controlled substance administration that's wrong. Seriously, what level of hubris does it take to think that natural substances like psilocybin mushrooms which have existed for millions of years must be brought under the control of a polity's legislature? It's like declaring sharks or snakes illegal because they give some people nightmares. Future generations will laugh in disbelief at this idiocy.
I don't know what you're getting at here. We're not talking about values. We're talking about why the word "psychedelics" is a worthless term as far as the law is concerned.
From a values standpoint, I don't see how it would be idiotic to schedule truly dangerous drugs like 25i-NBOMe more strictly than psilocybin or LSD.
25i-NBOMe isn't "truly dangerous". It's only dangerous if mistaken for LSD and dosed carelessly, so rather than scheduling it more strictly, there should be strict requirements for accurate labeling and consistent dosing, like every other drug.
It is straight up dangerous. 5x a common dose of <1mg can kill you. Nobody that can actually execute on properly dosing it will expose themselves to the liability of doing so.
Drugs are cool and interesting, go ahead and do them, but trying to pretend that something like 25i-NBOMe is something that Joe Average will safely deal with is, frankly, pretty fucking stupid. This conversation is constantly approached with this idea that everybody is a reasonable, informed person that is fully educated on the risks, but that's just not how this works.
Well, that's an interesting idea. 20x a common dose of acetaminophen, an extremely pervasive, legal, over the counter painkiller, can kill you. Less can kill a child. Lots of drugs contain it, such as over the counter cough medicine.
People legitimately die or become seriously ill every year because they don't know this.
Granted, 5x is a lot different than 20x especially when a drug is taken for recreation rather than necessity. I've never done 25i-NBOMe, but it's my understanding that it's easy to overdose because a method of administration is blotter paper and people think they're taking LSD.
In our current world, when you get prescription drugs for the first time, you are provided with information about risks. Over the counter medicine, you aren't.
In my ideal world, if you wanted to do a recreational drug and it had risks like this, you'd have to complete a drug education course and obtain a prescription, you'd be provided with phone numbers for services like overdosing or mental health, specific to the drugs you're planning on doing, and dosage would be easy because medical professionals are doing it in a lab before they sell it to you.
The average Joe would much rather do drugs that they know are manufactured correctly, not adulterated or cut with other substances, where the dose is measured accurately, and where if something goes wrong they have a professional to help them, even if it means they have to pay a bit more than the black market - which will surely still exist.
And if someone goes through the black market and does because they did a drug that is now legal, and they didn't know the correct dose? Sad, but that's on them
Acetaminophen has a poor safety profile and I wish they would take it off the market, and that's a drug where the danger is in taking 10+ fairly large capsules of it instead of 1. The difference between normal 25i-NBOMe usage and fatal usage can be as small as putting a 1x1cm piece of paper in your mouth vs putting a 1x3cm piece of paper in your mouth.
I agree with your ideal world. The point of my original comment was that making no distinction between something like 25i-NBOMe and something like LSD, calling them psychedelics, and regulating them as such just isn't a good idea. I am not claiming that you should go to jail for having or using them.
Nobody that can actually execute on properly dosing it will expose themselves to the liability of doing so.
Nobody? Um, I'm right here? I bought a 0.1ml pipette back in the day for the precise purpose of safely dosing 25X-NBOMes volumetrically, rather than by mass.
And I'm not the only one. Hamilton Morris[0], Nervewing[1], and many others on forums such as Bluelight[2] write about their positive 25X-NBOMe experiences.
trying to pretend that something like 25i-NBOMe is something that Joe Average will safely deal with
Of course it's dangerous for Joe Average to use NBOMes. It's also dangerous for Joe Average to buy a dodgy parachute off of the dark web and do amateur skydiving. That doesn't mean we should ban skydiving and put Joe (and capable skydivers!) in prison. Skydiving is actually quite "safe", with fewer than 8 fatalities per million jumps, but I put "safe" in quotes, because it is not skydiving that is inherently safe or dangerous, but rather it is the way that skydiving has been incorporated into society to manage its risks that is safe.
I take issue with the entire punitive premise of this discussion, namely, that substances should be placed on a continuum from safe to dangerous, or good to bad, or "soft" to "hard", so that we can determine how harshly to punish people who possess them. If anything, drugs should be regulated, not prohibited, and they should be categorized in such a way as to make clear the risks they present and how to mitigate them. Under such a scheme, you wouldn't even need to ban anything, because why would Joe Average futz around with something obscure like 25I-NBOMe when familiar LSD is available from the corner smart shop along with a pamphlet explaining how to use it properly? Why does everyone's mind immediately leap to a carceral solution?
My point on liability isn't about your personal tolerance for risk and confidence in your own work on a n=1 scale, it's about whether or not you would be comfortable doing that work for thousands of other people with the understanding that a very minor fuck up results in somebody being dead.
To be clear, I'm with you on the idea that all drugs should be legal. I don't believe in scheduling drugs to determine sentencing. I do believe in scheduling drugs according to the odds that Joe Schmoe will bungle the usage of them, in an attempt to steer people who aren't doing a an appropriate amount of research toward largely physiologically safe/well understood options.
