Why is LSD illegal?

So I'd like to find information on why LSD is actually illegal. I don't want to hear stuff like "because they are stupid", but real documents or notes from when it happened. Something like committee reports from government departments, parliamentary minutes, something involving the reasoning process that went on at the time.

 

The counter-culture.
Say what you want, but the government "needs" control over their people, if people are out adventuring with their own independent minds, rebelling and spreading anti-government propaganda, the source needs to be stopped. LSD was that source, free-love, drugs.

Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll, all things people want, that the government doesn't.

 

^^^ That's the reality of it. I'm sure they had other excuses to create the laws, something about safety and it being for "our own good". For the most part they can't control open minds.



Oh yeah..... and because they are stupid.

 

Could we say that the quality of the culture did not matter, as long as it opposes the dominant culture any culture will be challenged? Unfortunately we have no way of objectively assessing a culture - it will always be compared with the common culture, and if it happens to run against it, compared negatively.

Because looking back on it, what other reason was there? Here was something which made you peaceful, happy with no significant after-effects. I see nothing in that to justify banning.

 

Around the time that LSD was illegalized Tim Leary was declared the most dangerous person in the country. That should tell you something about the administration at that time and how much they knew about psychedelics.

 

@Walsh: I'm not entirely sure what you mean. But I'd say the quality of the culture does matter

If you're saying what I think you're saying, it's funny that we call the hippies a counter-culture simply because it's not what other people wanted. I think that is the most culture we've ever had and find it ridiculous that we must bypass it as COUNTER-culture.

What would you define as the common culture? Just the stable more conservative life style? Suburbs, rural?

 

Controlled Substances Act:

"Placement on schedules; findings required

Except ... The findings required for each of the schedules are as follows:

(1) Schedule I.—

(A) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.

(B) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.

(C) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision." [23]

No prescriptions may be written for Schedule I substances, and such substances are subject to production quotas by the DEA.

Under the DEA's interpretation of the CSA, a drug does not necessarily have to have the same abuse potential as heroin or cocaine to merit placement in Schedule I (in fact, cocaine is currently a Schedule II drug due to limited medical use):

When it comes to a drug that is currently listed in schedule I, if it is undisputed that such drug has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States and a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision, and it is further undisputed that the drug has at least some potential for abuse sufficient to warrant control under the CSA, the drug must remain in schedule I. In such circumstances, placement of the drug in schedules II through V would conflict with the CSA since such drug would not meet the criterion of "a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States." 21 USC 812(b


I believe it was made illegal in California even earlier.

 

LSD came up in conversation with my mom, and I tried to tell her it is actually safe, but she actually believes it burns wholes in your brain.. Her Grandma did lots of LSD in her time, and she's crazy. I don't know how to argue that.. she's nuts, just like my mom her mom the mom above... My mom is a crazy republican and will NOT listen to any arguments opposing her idea, I couldn't even tell her anything. Which is really funny since her mom and grandma our democrats.

But for the record, there is not a known drug on the planet that can physically create a hole in ones brain. What most people are referring to our cat scans that look for brain activity and after during drugs certain areas of the brain fire more, and some less. Those that appear to have little to no activity will appear as "holes" but they still function properly.

 

Mdma invented WWI begun
LSD invent WWII begun

Conspiracy?

 

^Yeah, though LSD was first synthesized in '38, it never really got out of the medical labs until the 50s, where it was used by intellectuals like Huxley, and then even further it didn't get to "the streets" and get out of control until the late 50s early 60s.

when the atomic bomb was invented across the globe the same time as LSD it is kind of funny to think of LSD as powerful as the Atomic Bomb in the mind.

 

Anything is culture, it's just the way we live. I don't know if it's possible to NOT have culture.

I do think the quality of the culture matters - what I was saying is we can't possibly assess it, because what we compare it against is always the culture that is dominant at the time (suburbs, tv etc). If our society is going to see a culture as good, it can only be seen as good with reference to the culture that is around right now. Was cannibalism bad to those tribes that practiced it?

 

^I see your point. So of course the hippies were a counter-culture relative to the 50s. Rebellion will always be seen as counter-culture, and the following enlightenment will simply be culture. The nature of change IMO

 

I disagree, these days alot of rebellious behavior that may not be supported by say many people's parents is actually supported by the dominant culture. This system has an amazing way to commodify most things and these days alot of the rebellious attitude of the 60's like 'sex, drugs and rock n roll' is actually lucrative buisness and encouraged by dominant culture.

 

Well this might be a start for you, a pretty good summary (with commentary)
Not actual documents but I'm sure from this you could come up with some good things to google.
http://www.psychedelic-library.org/stevens4.htm
It's a long and convoluted story how it happened.

I don't subscribe to the "vast conspiracy" theory. There are still many unscheduled psychedelics out there, and "The Government" knows all about them. One good reason in my book, to be an advocate of responsible use and harm reduction, look no further than the 2C deaths this year. The media runs with the story, people and parents demand action. Politicians and bureaucrats "do their job".
That is a big part of what happened with LSD. Obviously its much more than that. But give it some thought, you can't get 1/3 of government together on jackshit... how could it be capable of a widespread conspiracy? I just don't buy it.

Exactly. Every cause needs an hero and/or an enemy. Leary played right into that.

Ya it was, 2 yrs earlier. It wasn't actually schedule 1 at first as there was no such system then. It wasn't until the CSA that it was put in that category. The CSA mostly came out of all the drug scare/propaganda of the 60's of which LSD was only part of it.
http://www.levity.com/aciddreams/timeline.html

Ha! Now thats one I could get behind. Trip on this.. Nick Sands father worked on the A-bomb.
http://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/sand_nick/sand_nick_biography1.shtml

You're a pretty smart cat GB. Bingo. It's all about money.

Sex with an underage girl? Naughty naughty. Put an underaged barely dressed girl on stage gyrating her hips suggestively? (um, Spears and Cyrus?) That's just business. Oops, I mean entertainment.

 

I was under the impression that it was the lack of patent availability on LSD, so not as much money is to be made from it as big pharmas current substances. The whole counter culture thing is a huge aspect too, along with the US governments need to fill the prisons that they have too much of.

 

It's kind of a generational nature of life though. The young will bring in a rebellion, this type of new culture and wave of thinking countered to that of the generation before, the parents. This new wave of thinking will push like waves in an ocean, some of them will be subtle and fade quickly, but as the tide changes the waves may become more immense and this big wave is when something really takes off. The 60s was like the tsunami of our ocean, but it too blew over. Everything always does, and everything always will. After such a big wave, everything following it is small, that brought us into the 70s. The 70s is seen as a little more trashy, but let's give it some credit, it was a time of fads, these trends were like small ripples as an after effect. The 80s blew in with another big wave, and ever since the water tended to mellow out a bit, there was some 90s movements of course. I don't know if it's just me, but I felt like nothing happened last decade 2001-2010. I'm not going to discredit the technological advancements, but I can't put a stereotype or image to that decade as I could with the others, it seemed very .. plain.. But now, now it's time for the waters to change again, this generation seeks rebellion, the wave as I predict will be much bigger as more people will ride along, but for a rebellion it needs an enemy, and by having one, the rebellion is a counter-culture, whether dominant or not, if you fight against the system, you're counter-culture. Or at least, that is how it will be perceived. And thus the rebellion brings an enlightenment, it has to. If you successfully change things, now you think, you live with this new way of life, and thus it's "an enlightenment" A reflection period. Much compared to a trip, you come up from the world you new, you reach your peak of "rebellion" and you reflect with what you were given. Then it comes down back to you were, but a bit different, because an experience, an event just took place. You are back to where you started essentially, but now you have this memory or history behind you.


Sorry for a huge ramble, it just sort of came out... make sense of it if you wish

 

The technological developments over the past decade are huge, we wouldn't be even having this discussion without them.

The only other psychedelic centered culture in the 20th century that I can think of is the rave scene + Ecstasy in the late 80/early 90's. All night events, often free or extremely cheap with a new psychedelic drug, a new type of music. All those things probably seem counter to the dominant prospering economic 'Just say No' Regan era of the times but rave culture is often considered a subculture. There's a spin on a famous Leary quote of the 60's adopted by the rave culture which was "Turn on, tune in, be late to the office on Monday"

Burning Man has probably taken the subculture idea to a new level in what it's created but once it's done people go back to their 'everyday' lives. It seems in the 60's they were striving for a more permanent lifestyle change and upheaval. Perhaps semantically changing what to call a culture that is against many of the established values of the dominant culture of the day works like a 1984-esque type thing where now the meaning and those ideas of the culture are diminished.

My point in the other post was that just because the youth can exhibit a rebellious attitude it's not necessarily exhibiting counter-culture. As Voyage pointed out, someone like Britney Spears is practically an engineered 'product' of dominant culture. When she came out she exhibited rebellious underage sex appeal that probably made some parents uneasy, counter to the values of dominant culture but she was signed by a major record label, and she was featured by dominant culture media by being plastered all over magazines and television.

I'm not sensing this 'boiling of the waters' you seem to be in the younger generation. There is still rebellious behavior exhibited but most people seem complacent.

 

LSD is illegal because it can change people's minds. Beaver Cleaver went away to college, took some of that stuff and the next thing you know he had long hair, was smoking marijuana, demonstrating against the war, and living in sin with a colored girl! He used to be such a nice boy.

 

I think they knew plenty about psychedelics, the research all existed. They pointedly ignored it and told blatant lies, such as the now famous "orange juice" tale. (which many people, including people who have been born long after that age, do believe-and if you argue against it, they'll tell you that's not the point, which is really about that SORT of thing happening and ruining your life forever, when you're stuck as a dresser or something-oh shit, what if someone unfolds my underwear drawer during a raid :willy_nilly: )

 

None of that stuff is illegal.

I guess the point is that social factors matter more than medical ones. Just to make that point clearer - caffeine is legal, despite recent discoveries about mechanisms of dopaminergic psychosis caused by the drug. It's very possible that >50% of the western population is living in a permanent mild psychotic state through constant coffee, cola and energy drink consumption (could explain many of the world's problems!). But even if this were established beyond all doubt, the interests of the coffee industry, Coca-cola, Pepsi, Red Bull etc are far too strong to allow any legislative change.