Washington DC activists appear to have collected enough validated signatures to get Initiative 81 on the November ballot, which would decriminalize entheogenic plants and fungi within the District. Specifically, the Entheogenic Plant and Fungus Policy Act of 2020 if passed would do the following (from initiative link):
- Make the investigation and arrest of adults for non-commercial planting, cultivating, purchasing, transporting, distributing, possessing, and/or engaging in practices with entheogenic plants and fungi among the Metropolitan Police Department’s lowest law enforcement priorities; and
- Codify that the people of the District of Columbia call upon the Attorney General for the District of Columbia and the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia to cease prosecution of residents of the District of Columbia for these activities.
Meanwhile in Congress, Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) tried to add an amendment to a spending bill currently in the for House, the Fiscal Year 2021 Financial Services and General Government bill, which would block the initiative. Harris is one of many Republicans known to oppose DC home rule, and is also apparently deeply ignorant of psychedelics as a class of substances. Fortunately, he has withdrawn the amendment proposal, but could reintroduce it at a later time.
As noted in the Act from the initiative, entheogenics have both a long and broad history of usage as sacred substances in various cultural and religious rituals in many cultures around the world and more recent evidence-based usage, supported by a volume of peer reviewed scientific studies, to treat conditions including:
substance abuse, addiction, trauma, post-traumatic stress syndrome [PTSS, also commonly called PTSD], chronic depression, anxiety, diabetes, cluster headaches and other conditions[.]
Although there is recreational use of these substances —especially psilocybin or “magic” mushrooms, AKA “shrooms”, considerably less for ayahuasca, mescaline or ibogaine (the Act specifically covering plants and fungi which naturally contain ibogaine, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), mescaline, psilocybin or psilocyn—there is essentially no documented history of abuse or addiction for any of them.
The largest risks involved in taking any psychedelics, including lab-created ones such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) are the rare but real occasions in which a person under the influence of them causes themselves physical harm due to a mistaken belief such as that they have the ability to fly or that they can safely drive, and the even rarer and very tragic event that a person has a psychotic break from which they do not recover. In the former case, ensuring that the substance is taken in a safe environment, with known triggers for bad feelings removed and a sober trusted friend present for the duration of the experience, the danger is essentially eliminated. In the latter case, it’s impossible to prevent with compete accuracy, but advisable that anyone with a family history of psychosis only attempt these substances under the supervision of a licensed counselor with experience in guiding “trips” and never use them recreationally.
Since these drugs—unlike alcohol, PCP, or opiates—are almost never involved in any violent incidents and do not drive burglaries, muggings, or other thefts to maintain addictions, there is no public safety justification for pursuing or prosecuting people who grow them, sell or share them, or use them. The vast majority of drug-related incidents of violence involve alcohol rather than any illegal substances, yet it remains legal and endorsed at all levels of society, and our experiment at outlawing it is almost universally viewed as an utter failure.
It’s time to admit that our long experiment with prohibition of other mind-altering substances has been a “lawful but awful” means of exerting state control over those viewed as “social undesirables” by the powers that be, most especially Black and Brown people and political leftists, and and that it’s long past time to end it.
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman in Harper’s
“There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, results from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and others.”
Harry Anslinger, first director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930-1960, opposed to interracial socializing and immigration
Supporting any aspect of the “war on drugs” means supporting racism, disenfranchisement, impoverishment of communities, and disempowering groups based on racialized groupings and political organization.