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Comment by wjn0 | Hacker News Reader

> possession of 12 grams of LSD

Reader's note: that's between 50k and 100k doses.

Not that I disagree with your point.

Not when you include the blotter paper in the weight, which is what police often do, in that case it'd likely be <10 doses.

But do the judges also include the blotter paper?

Yes: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/500/453/

This is also why you should NOT attempt to dissolve drugs into drinks if you're caught with them... because they can use the liquid weight of the drink as your charged amount.

This seems like something an even mildly competent lawyer could get you off of. If a chemical is solid at room temperature, it definitely cannot be a liquid at 100% concentration.

I’ve heard of cases where they use the pots and soil in weighing marijuana. The paper seems like it would be included.

To clarify, you are assuming (a big if since the poster made no mention of this) that 12g includes the weight of the paper and if you were to discount that weight then you would get a lesser amount of LSD? i.e. If the paper weighs 11 g then the actual LSD amount would be 1g.

It's not a big if, this is standard practice in the US legal system. They weigh the drug + medium. If you have 1-9 grams, including the paper, minimum first offender sentence is 5 years. With the paper that's only a few doses.

so the impurities/media are considered to be the drug as well as substance itself. Im not very confident with the idea that 1gram of pure crystaline LSD would bring a lesser sentence than a sheet of blotter with one drop on it.

it seems the war on drugs has caused more brain damage than any recreational drug. This is similar to stunts like draining the drizzle from beer cans into one empty can and declaring an open alcoholic beverage was concealed in a vehicle. LEOs can have thier respect back when they stop this sort of nonsense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_Hogg

Yes, that's the claim (which seems supported elsewhere in the thread).

You are probably underestimating the magnitude of the effect, though. A single square of blotter paper weighs on the order of 10 mg; it holds a dose on the order of 50-100 micrograms, about 1% of the paper mass.

Having been myself on grand juries for drug prosecution and subsequently reading more about the process, this is not just a baseless assumption. Including carrier weight is SOP from police+DA for drug charges, and they're not upfront about that fact when talking to the jury. When they say "X grams of Y" what they always mean is "X grams of thing containing Y" which could mean anywhere from X grams of Y to X femtograms of Y in tablets that are mostly chalk. They do this because the legal code isn't specific about measuring active ingredients[see edit] and they are universally incentivized to elevate the charge.

[edit] To clarify, I mean that the law does not say specifically to weigh only the active ingredients. In fact it's the opposite.

According to the previously cited case linked at https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/500/453/, the law is actually very specific about the weight being the whole mixture.

Yes, sorry, that part of what I wrote was unclear, but that's what I meant. I edited to hopefully clarify.

In theory, the defense attorney would provide a counter-balance to this- unfortunately, our system does not provide adequate defense to folks who can't afford it. And that is the real tragedy, methinks.

According to the below linked case, 5.7 grams, including th e paper, was 1,000 doses. So 12 grams probably closer to 2,000 doses, depending on the weight of the paper. (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/500/453/)

Yeah that's a good callout. Some heavy cardstock vs. scritta paper would have dramatically different weights.

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