If you reran U.S. history from (say) 1960 to the present day, how likely does it feel to you that drug laws shake out in the way they did? Is there something about the way psychadelics ended up getting regulated that feels inevitable, or could the story easily have turned out differently? What could that tell us about hopes for influencing sensible regulation that lasts for > a decade?
I love this hypothetical question on the probability of the factual and counterfactual if history was resampled. I’d say it would be 70% likely that things would end up pretty much as they are now. But that leaves 30% for something different.
I think the history could have turned out differently. President Nixon got fixed on LSD as a critical element of the anti-war movement—why young boys were refusing to fight a war, which seldom happens. However it seems to me the researchers should have fought harder to maintain their ability to conduct research. It was never prohibited but scientists felt the government animosity and funding dried up. I can imagine a scenario where LSD was made illegal but the research continued and psychedelics were put on schedule 2 o3 3 rather than 1. This is purely hypothetical, of course.
If you reran U.S. history from (say) 1960 to the present day, how likely does it feel to you that drug laws shake out in the way they did? Is there something about the way psychadelics ended up getting regulated that feels inevitable, or could the story easily have turned out differently? What could that tell us about hopes for influencing sensible regulation that lasts for > a decade?
I love this hypothetical question on the probability of the factual and counterfactual if history was resampled. I’d say it would be 70% likely that things would end up pretty much as they are now. But that leaves 30% for something different.
I think the history could have turned out differently. President Nixon got fixed on LSD as a critical element of the anti-war movement—why young boys were refusing to fight a war, which seldom happens. However it seems to me the researchers should have fought harder to maintain their ability to conduct research. It was never prohibited but scientists felt the government animosity and funding dried up. I can imagine a scenario where LSD was made illegal but the research continued and psychedelics were put on schedule 2 o3 3 rather than 1. This is purely hypothetical, of course.