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Comment by dvt | Hacker News Reader

I have always steered clear of psychedelics. I know some people are super into legalization, but I wager it's a bit irresponsible considering we barely understand their long (and short, for that matter) -term effects. There's some evidence where psychedelics (particularly LSD) may have triggered schizophrenia in some patients[1].

Musician Daniel Johnston (he passed away a few months ago) is a notable case.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6870484

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Whose fault is it that we "barely understand the long term effects"? Clearly, the war on drugs is the very reason why scientists have been unable to study the benefits (or side effects) of these drugs for so long. There are signs that is finally changing (with the JH research center), but we've lost decades to something we could've understood so much better by now.

The harm done by criminal penalties exceeds the harm done by any possible bad effects of using psychedelics by a huge margin. To claim otherwise is intellectually dishonest.

This claim isn't obvious at all (let alone its converse being intellectually dishonest). You're acting as if justice and law enforcement is made up of solely either stupid or nefarious people.

It is Congress, which makes the laws, that is made up of stupid/nefarious individuals.

Or well-meaning but with catastrophic, negative effects for some people.

Emergent systems are absolutely a thing; and even when they’re not, some people’s lives can be truly ruined by punishment beyond their measure.

Nah I'd flip the complete opposite direction. Responsible use of psychedelics has many strong upsides, and I think the outright ban has done a lot of net harm to society.

At the very least I think doctors and researchers ought to be able to prescribe them and run experiments.

Having not steered clear of psychedelics like yourself, I do not want any ol' joe walking around on psychedelics. I fear if more prevalent more articles like this will be out there: https://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/california-mma-fighte...

With that said, charging people with felonies for possession is ridiculous. Fine the individual and confiscate for relatively small amounts of psychedelics.

>may have triggered schizophrenia in some patients

The same is true of marijuana, although the key word is triggered, and not necessarily caused. (Obviously some debate about this)

It's not randomly distributed among the general population, which suggests it mainly affects persons already predisposed.

Black American teen boys seem especially at risk, in a population that otherwise sees symptoms present in the early 30's.

But the striking thing to me, is that it typically happens with the very first dose, is acute onset, and is irreversible.

Look up the statistics surrounding schizophrenia related illnesses and cannabis use[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_effects_of_cannabis#...

Latent schizophrenics shouldn't take psychoactive drugs of any kind. Schizophrenics (like other people suffering from mental illness) are prone to self-medicate as well though. And the evidence that someone prone to schizophrenia who develops it because of drug use but wouldn't have otherwise developed schizophrenia is scant or non-existent.

According to the article, it's not just schizophrenics, it's literally everyone who is at risk.

Legalization would be highly irresponsible until we understand why.

He used "latent" for that reason.

> And the evidence that someone prone to schizophrenia who develops it because of drug use but wouldn't have otherwise developed schizophrenia is scant or non-existent.

It's much easier to prove that something happens, than something doesn't happen.

There is a lot of evidence that suggests that taking psychedellics can lead to schizophrenia. To conclusively prove that that person wouldn't have gotten it without those drugs is extremely difficult.

While I 100% agree that we can't conclusively prove causation at this point, we do have solid evidence that there is a correlation, and that shouldn't be discounted given the research into psycheddelics is too immature to have a chance of proving anything past that.

The problem with latent schizophrenia is that it's latent. You don't know that you're a latent schizophrenic until the illness is triggered.

I think the issue is that someone who is predisposed to schizophrenia might not be aware that this is the case.

Also, we already know that drug use can have permanent effects that presumably would not have manifested if the person had not taken drugs, unless you think that people who didn't see hallucinations before LSD and see hallucinations after LSD would have started seeing hallucinations anyway.

So I don't see why it would be unreasonable to think that drug use can trigger an onset of schizophrenia in an already predisposed person that would have not happened otherwise.

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