EmmaSofia

Henrik: I believe it's inevitable that it will happen, my guesstimate is 4-8 years. I believe that we will get decriminalization of most drugs within the next four years.

The cognitive dissonance in the current system is just getting too much. It makes no sense to punish LSD-use whilst alcohol is legal, and I think more and more people are seeing just how weird the system is.

Will there ever be an official policy solely for psychedelics?

Henrik: I think that is an interesting question. It's perfectly normal to talk about "alcohol-policy" and "tobacco-policy", but when it comes to illegal substances we seem to just lump them into the "narcotics" category (Narkotika in Norwegian, meaning might be a little bit different than in English).

It would make more sense to use more precise categories like opiat-policy, a benzo-policy, a psychedelics policy. It's really dumbing things down when we treat so different things as one. In my ignorance I used to think LSD was as addictive as heroin only a few years ago because, "hey, LSD is a narcotic and all narcotics are addictive aren't they?"

Language matters, especially when it comes to people who don't know much about this. I think we'll get there if we can achieve this level of language differentiation.

Teri: Magic mushrooms (or truffles) are sold legally in shops in the Netherlands. Hundreds of thousands of servings per year, mostly to tourists, with very little information and without any supervision. Imagine wandering the streets of a foreign city while high on mushrooms plus possibly hash and alcohol, that cannot be the ideal setting for tripping! Yet hospital and police records show very few problems related to magic mushrooms. And an official harm assessment concluded:

"The use of hallucinogenic mushrooms... poses such a low risk for the health of the individual and for society that prohibiting their use would appear to be a disproportionately grave measure in relation to the nuisance and damage caused by their current use." http://www.rivm.nl/bibliotheek/digitaaldepot/cam_paddo_advies.pdf

Basically, LSD and magic mushrooms are certainly not risk free, but they are not particularly dangerous. The risks are generally comparable to other activities considered to have acceptable safety, such as bicycle riding, skiing, soccer, etc.

Henrik: Great question. Sharing personal experience is probably my best elevator pitch.

It is also important to stress that it is a pretty much undisputed fact that psychedelics are not addictive. In fact it is a good tool for treating OTHER addictions. That will break a lot of peoples programming, and get them curious. Especially people who are addicted to nicotine etc.

What is, in my experience, NOT a good elevator pitch, is to make the "liberty argument", that each person should be allowed to put what he wants in his body. That never really seem to convince anyone but the choir, and it annoys a lot of people for some reason.

Henrik: Yes, and I think this case also changes precedence for magic mushrooms. No-one disputes the similar profiles of LSD and magic mushrooms, both for usage patterns (fx how many times per year people use it) and potential risks.