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Grateful Dead Fan Timothy Tyler Has Been Granted Clemency

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Re: Grateful Dead Fan Timothy Tyler Has Been Granted Clemency

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I do agree that it is a human right to consume anything you want, I very much disagree that "It is virtually impossible to harm yourself" with LSD or Ganja ... Just because you can't really physically kill yourself with the drug, doesn't mean it can't do you bad otherwise.

Minus the legality issues, neither of these have shown to be any worse than some of the dangers of alcohol. Either can be bad for folks with severe mental illness of certain types. It probably isn't safe to drive on LSD, and you'd not really want to be too stoned (or drunk) to take care of your kids. But this same sort of stuff is true for so many other things. If it were that bad, I'm pretty sure there would be many…

"Not any worse than alcohol" is pretty darn bad. Alcohol is the cause of so many problems in society that it's hard to even quantify.

Re: Grateful Dead Fan Timothy Tyler Has Been Granted Clemency

#152
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the point! Yes, doses are in the order of 100-150 micrograms, for a basic dose. 100ug will do as an approximation. How many doses of 100ug are there in 1g? Oooh... About 10,000. So yes, 1g of crystal is a substantial amount, that's the point. Compared to a handful of doses on a gram of paper, it makes a mockery of the law if I were to be charged the same way whichever of the two I was carrying. (Of course the…

No thats not the point. With LSD the paper is the unit of distribution. Its the dosage vector. A sheet of of acid which is comprised of 100 hits of acid. So by considering the amount of surface area or weight is what allows the law to decide if the amount comprises personal consumption vs distribution. So when the law is trying to decide how much of a threat the contraband is to society the potential damage of a shee…

He is saying that 1g of LSD (when including the paper weight) is maybe a couple hundred doses, while 1g of meth in a plastic bag is ~10,000 doses, but they are sentenced as if they are equivalent.

Re: Grateful Dead Fan Timothy Tyler Has Been Granted Clemency

#153
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it wasn't for the effect, nobody would bother acquiring the taste for beer or wine... Alcohol is, for the vast majority of the time, taken solely for the impact on the mind.

Really? I know I have no data to back up my point that all drugs are only taken for their impact on the mind, but I know that alcohol isn't solely taken for its impact on the mind. Wine is tasty. Beer is tasty. Brandy is tasty. And (anecdotally) know many people who aren't just drinking them to get out of their heads...

> Wine is tasty. Beer is tasty. Brandy is tasty.

Would they still be tasty if they were 0% ABV? I think not.

Re: Grateful Dead Fan Timothy Tyler Has Been Granted Clemency

#154
post #9

Link actually mentioning the clemency: http://liveforlivemusic.com/news/grateful-dead-fan-timothy-t... How would you even start putting your life back together after been in jail so long? It's unimaginable.

Thanks, we updated the link from http://famm.org/timothy-tyler.

Re: Grateful Dead Fan Timothy Tyler Has Been Granted Clemency

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there are two different things - selling and using. Using is only marginally criminalized. Selling and distributing is a much more serious offense. Alcohol in some ways is no different. I can home brew all I want and bottle it and put it in the refrigerator. If throw the garage door open and start selling it to the general public I can expect some trouble from the legal system. Crossing state boundaries and using…

You can't assure rapists don't get 4 years (or less): > The convictions carried a potential sentence of 14 years in prison. Prosecutors recommended six years in prison while probation officials recommended a "moderate" county jail sentence.[19] On June 2, 2016, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Turner to six months confinement in the Santa Clara County jail to be followed by three years o…

But he was NOT convicted and sent to prison for rape, it was sexual assault and in some states penal systems those are different crimes with different sentencing guidelines:

"On October 7, 2015, after reviewing the results of DNA tests, the two rape charges were dropped by prosecutors.[7][12][14][15] The trial began on March 14, 2016,[16] and concluded on March 30, 2016, with Turner's conviction on the three remaining charges of felony sexual assault."

Please show me one single rape conviction in the US where the sentence was 4 years.

Re: Grateful Dead Fan Timothy Tyler Has Been Granted Clemency

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The carrier weight is significant because its proportional to the amount of substance This is not true. I can take a clean sheet of paper and dissolve as much LSD (or as little) on it as desired. 1g of near-pure crystal will definitely contain thousands of doses. 1g of paper could contain anything from 0, 1, 10, or 100 doses or more.

Now what would be point in that? Sure you can do that but in practice this is not at all how it works. Drugs are a business. You can also sell pure cocaine but it is never done at the retail level because it would be a completely non-sensical business decision. The unit of purchase is a single tab. More tabs equal more paper.

It most definitely does work this way in practice. If you go buy a sheet of acid from a random person, you can bet there is at least a 50% chance it contains no LSD at all. Why should I give you a sheet with LSD on it when I can give you a clean sheet with nothing on it and you wouldn't know the difference until at least 45-60 minutes after you took it? Plenty of time for me to get away with your money. More likely, it will contain some LSD (or something similar), but not nearly as much as one tab ~= one dose. Just like you say with cocaine, it makes business sense to dilute it; it also makes sense to make sheets of LSD such that 4, 5, or 10 tabs equals one dose, instead of just a single tab.

Your example with cocaine is a good one, people caught with cocaine aren't carrying pure cocaine either. They are usually charged with the weight of the cutting agent as well, which in my view is equally stupid. If you have a pound of baking soda with 1gm of cocaine mixed in it, you shouldn't be charged with having a pound of cocaine.

Re: Grateful Dead Fan Timothy Tyler Has Been Granted Clemency

#157
post #24

The bigger story here, Obama has granted clemency to 111 inmates. It looks like they are mostly drug related. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/president-obama-grants-commut...

Agreed. I am no Obama fan - for one thing I think his unprecedented expansion of covert surveillance programs and defiant tone in the wake of the Snowden revelations did tremendous damage to US tech companies seeking to do business overseas. But I am quite happy he did this. It shows a measure of humanity and common sense that is rare in US politicians. These are traits that we are unlikely to see in the next President, regardless of which candidate wins.

Re: Grateful Dead Fan Timothy Tyler Has Been Granted Clemency

#158
post #75

I get that the right to consume any substance one wants into one's own body is a basic human right, but outlawing LSD and cannabis are two cases of outrageous, striking dumbness and pointlessness. Neither one is addictive, and the LD50 of each is an incredible number of orders of magnitude higher than a normal dose. It is virtually impossible to harm yourself.

In the eyes of the traditional establishment, LSD is an extremely dangerous substance, not because of it's potential for causing physical harm (which is very close to zero), but because of it's consciousness altering ability, also called "mind expansion" ability. People who go through a proper acid trip are permanently changed. Their core philosophy, religious and political views can be dramatically altered. They sto…

Because LSD ended up being used primarily within counterculture after academia dismissed its medical potential, I do believe there is some degree of truth in the Erlichmann quote / rememberance. But the fact that LSD culture was aligned with the rise of the beatniks and hippies does not mean that every person who takes LSD becomes a rebel-against-the-system hippie.

Some early LSD use was actually intended for therapeutic treatment, recall. LSD was also experimented with by those same military-industrial complex you are talking about, in the infamous Project MKULTRA experiments. These experiments may have contributed to making a hippie or two (Ken Kesey famously was a participant), but clearly not all participants became a hippie for sure. (Some individuals in fact received negative effects from what I recall, LSD is safer than DARE videos would have it, but the potential for causing mental harm is there, paranoia / schizophrenic type issues in particular) Do also recall that the Hell's Angels (in the California / Hunter S. Thompson circle at least) were also pretty big fans of LSD "back in the day". Biker culture is quite far away from hippie culture.

Today, with marijuana in particular, currently I think you are seeing somewhat of a "normalization" with marijuana in that it's becoming more "normal" to use in a casual manner (ala casual consumption of alcohol). It's not just "hippies" smoking marijuana anymore, it's anyone from CEOs to Olympic athletes these days. It's why, in my opinion, it eventually will be legalized. It won't happen with LSD as easily in my opinion, not enough potential for casual usage, but marijuana's story is a good reason why one has to be careful conflating the recreational substance with the culture it is associated with.

Re: Grateful Dead Fan Timothy Tyler Has Been Granted Clemency

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I do agree that it is a human right to consume anything you want, I very much disagree that "It is virtually impossible to harm yourself" with LSD or Ganja ... Just because you can't really physically kill yourself with the drug, doesn't mean it can't do you bad otherwise.

Minus the legality issues, neither of these have shown to be any worse than some of the dangers of alcohol. Either can be bad for folks with severe mental illness of certain types. It probably isn't safe to drive on LSD, and you'd not really want to be too stoned (or drunk) to take care of your kids. But this same sort of stuff is true for so many other things. If it were that bad, I'm pretty sure there would be many…

LSD is not without risks. There are number of well known artists from the 1960s that experienced mental health issues related to LSD consumption. Look up Roky Erikson, Syd Barret, Peter Green and Skip Spence.

Re: Grateful Dead Fan Timothy Tyler Has Been Granted Clemency

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now what would be point in that? Sure you can do that but in practice this is not at all how it works. Drugs are a business. You can also sell pure cocaine but it is never done at the retail level because it would be a completely non-sensical business decision. The unit of purchase is a single tab. More tabs equal more paper.

It most definitely does work this way in practice. If you go buy a sheet of acid from a random person, you can bet there is at least a 50% chance it contains no LSD at all. Why should I give you a sheet with LSD on it when I can give you a clean sheet with nothing on it and you wouldn't know the difference until at least 45-60 minutes after you took it? Plenty of time for me to get away with your money. More likely,…

No it doesn't work that way in practice. LSD is culturally much different that the substance where you are likely to be sold bogus substances.

I'm not saying it can't happen, its just not very common. The culture where acid is prevalent is much more communal.

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