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California Could Legalize Magic Mushrooms in 2018

hightimes.com

31–40 of 145 posts

Re: California Could Legalize Magic Mushrooms in 2018

#31
post #5

I think this is going to lead to a lot of unforeseen problems. Brick structures will be much more vulnerable once literally anyone can take one of these and become twice as large. And once you've had a mushroom, if you get the right kind of flower in your system you'd be an unstoppable fire-throwing menace. Then it doesn't matter what kind of gun control is on the books. I just don't know what they're thinking.

"Brick structures will be much more vulnerable once literally anyone can take one of these and become twice as large. And once you've had a mushroom, if you get the right kind of flower in your system you'd be an unstoppable fire-throwing menace."

I think you might be conflating the Super Mario series with your assessment of psychedelics...

Re: California Could Legalize Magic Mushrooms in 2018

#32
post #17
post #6

You can currently buy psychoactive mushrooms in stores in The Netherlands. Buying mushrooms illegally from a legit dealer in the US means making sure they have several uniform bags of the product. You want to make sure they're grown safely in a lab or farm. There are too many people who will go out and just pick mushrooms, which is incredibly unsafe. Unless you're an actual mycologist, it's difficult to tell what's s…

> Humans used psychoactive substances for centuries, usually under the supervision of a shaman or some type of religious figure to undergo a journey. I don't have a position on legalizing psychoactive mushrooms, but I don't think this is a good argument. For example, humans also used lead to sweeten wine for centuries, but that's not evidence that lead is harmless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II)_acetate#Sweet…

Nobody is running about trying to purchase, at least for their own account, lead sweeteners on the black market. We know the risks, and we don't want it. With psychoactive substances, however, many people who know the risks still want it. It strikes me as absurd that inhibiting them should be a public matter.

Re: California Could Legalize Magic Mushrooms in 2018

#34
post #2

An alternate perspective could be that California is lagging the other western states on legalization exactly because of overreaching campaigns that don't acknowledge the conservatism in the middle and south of the state. A previous cannabis legalization effort in California, IIRC, proposed to make cannabis consumption a protected employment class.

I thought California was lagging behind because their first try included a crazy monopolistic corporate giveaway to a handful of established companies.

Wasn't that Ohio?

Re: California Could Legalize Magic Mushrooms in 2018

#37
post #17
post #6

You can currently buy psychoactive mushrooms in stores in The Netherlands. Buying mushrooms illegally from a legit dealer in the US means making sure they have several uniform bags of the product. You want to make sure they're grown safely in a lab or farm. There are too many people who will go out and just pick mushrooms, which is incredibly unsafe. Unless you're an actual mycologist, it's difficult to tell what's s…

> Humans used psychoactive substances for centuries, usually under the supervision of a shaman or some type of religious figure to undergo a journey. I don't have a position on legalizing psychoactive mushrooms, but I don't think this is a good argument. For example, humans also used lead to sweeten wine for centuries, but that's not evidence that lead is harmless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II)_acetate#Sweet…

We can take "safe" as meaning "gets you high, and doesn't kill you" not as "absent from all conceivable known and unknown long-term health effects". Also, "safe" can simply be taken to mean as "the sought-after mushroom, properly identified" (believed to the user to be safe) and not some other, unknown mushroom mistaken for it.

The risk of using the wrong item is separate from the risks inherent in the genuine item; in that context, it makes sense to use "safe" for the genuine item as a rhetoric device.

Of course, none of these mushrooms are safe; there are unsafe doses of their ingredient.

Nothing is safe without reference to dose; not water, not salt, ...

Re: California Could Legalize Magic Mushrooms in 2018

#38

Why Californians so obsessed with drugs? Any serious explanation?

They're not 'obsessed': criminalization doesn't work because of many, many reasons I will not repeat here.

I think that moving to legalise drugs (harmless or not) is the normal, rational decision to make and the fact that is receives so much push-back saddens me.

I would be curious to what lead you to your conclusion? The press is pretty bad at painting this picture as most articles I've seen try to tickle people's sensibilities rather than present objective facts.

Re: California Could Legalize Magic Mushrooms in 2018

#39

After this, I hope that legalizing home distilling is next on the docket. I know it'd still be illegal federally, but you're much less likely to have the ATF bust down your door if the state law enforcement isn't interested in it.

I hope they don't. It's much easier to kill yourself and others by home distilling than by taking shrooms.
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