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Comment by cyberlab | Hacker News Reader

Magic Mushrooms were legal in Ireland[0] for a brief stint, then someone jumped over a balcony and died from the fall after taking them, presumably after experiencing a really bad trip. It could happen again in DC. Someone just gets the set and setting wrong and decides they can't take the mental turmoil and ends their life.

[0] https://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/how-tragedy-led-...

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While we're at it can we ban alcohol on account of one person having gotten into a deadly car accident under the influence?

If we're keeping this to balcony incidents, I had to be pulled from being half way over a 16th floor balcony a decade ago after making some drunk rant I hardly remember

Let's also ban chess on account of Urii Eliseev

Maybe we should just ban balconies

Alcohol is a bad example to compare vices too. It is definitely a very dangerous substance, nobody argues that, but it is so ingrained in many countries cultures that outlawing it would be political suicide. In fact, it was already attempted in America, we saw how that went.

Prohibition didn't fail because alcohol is actually a 'safe' substance, it failed because it is addictive and people wanted it back. Allowing other substances to gain this status should be done with _extreme_ consideration.

Disclaimer: I think psychedelic's do have valid medicinal uses, but I have also had a very bad mushroom trip before, I know what they can do to your brain. My personality was forever changed.

I don't think making drugs illegal has really made their availability difficult, but I went to a highschool where drugs were pretty readily available if that's what someone was looking for. So to me it looks like tax income & supply chain regulation being left on the table

Living in Canada legalizing Cannabis has indeed introduced more people to using it. I think you underestimate the stigma attached to using illicit substances, and the barrier this places on regular folk.

> By 2019, more than 5.1 million people nationally, or 16.8% of Canadians aged 15 or older, reported using cannabis in the three months before surveying (Table 1). This was higher than the 14.9% (4.5 million) reporting use, on average, in 2018 (before legalization).

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/82-003-x/2020002/article...

Usage in 2020 was up to around 20% overall:

https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-medica...

What should be illegal (or at least require treatment) is the behavior after taking drugs. Being drunk in your own home alone is one thing; getting behind the wheel of a car and driving is different. People have always wanted to hammer their brain in some way since people existed; legislation can't change that. If you can't be responsible taking it and (potentially) hurt others then you have to pay the price. Taxing the sale of drugs would bring in quite a bit of money as well. Even treating pot the same as cigarettes/alcohol (which are way more dangerous) would likely cause a lot less experimentation with more dangerous stuff.

Personally I have no interest in messing up my brain taking anything, I rarely drink more than a single beer and even that is rare, much less anything else.

I am sure there have been murders from drinking alcohol but I doubt anyone has slayed their own father whom they love dearly whilst drunk. This story is just so sad, breaks my heart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGVsJUW3WfY

I advocate supervised medical mushroom usage, but I really could never support home recreational use. I've taken a bunch of LSD and mushrooms in my youth and they have had lasting negative effects on me so I am speaking from experience too.

Alcohol has played a role in plenty of similar accidents. Here's one I just read about yesterday, in which the writer William Burroughs shot his partner, Joan Vollmer, in the head (!) as part of a William Tell reenactment: https://www.openculture.com/2018/07/joan-vollmer-wife-willia...

Just wait until you hear about how many people die from taking entirely legal alcohol or from driving entirely legal cars.

Yes but blanket legalization of mushrooms means mishaps would occur at the same rate of alcohol related mishaps, when the shroom drug picks up steam and everyone and their aunt tries it, and continues to use it - mass casualties would occur if the drug became as popular as alcohol. And the shroom related mishaps would be much more weird and nuanced than alcohol-related deaths, in that the shroom-user typically wants to commit suicide instead of being subjected to a (DUI) head-on car collision, and the former (suicide) is a lot more harder to process by relatives of the dead person. At least with alcohol you are numbed, let's give alcohol at least one positive review.

Also: there's more details on that event here: https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30265231.html

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