The Q&A Hole: Why Isn't LSD Legal?

Yes, we're talking about lysergic acid diethylamide here, citizen.

You know: That cosmic mind-opener of a substance first synthesized by Dr. Albert Hofmann and most commonly dispersed on bits of blotter paper or, more rarely, in the form of what the Andrews Sisters probably weren't referencing when they sang “Trip-trip-tripping on a windowpane” in their version of “Hold Tight.”

We understand that a lot of Americans are dying because they’re doing heroin – a totally different controlled substance – and because that heroin is, currently, both much stronger than it used to be and also sometimes cut with elephant tranquilizer. We’ve never ridden that particular horse ourselves and we're saddened by the lethal misfortune of our brothers and sisters; but acid, on the other hand, is … I mean … have you ever really looked at your other hand? We love that psychedelic shit, tbh. And so, in these times of increasing marijuana legalization, we find ourselves getting newly disgruntled about the druggy biases of the USA’s legal system and definitely had to ask the question:

WHY ISN’T LSD LEGAL?

Lana Lesley of Rude Mechanicals: I don’t know – I really, really think it should be. Fear, I guess. I mean, if I have to seriously answer the question, I’d say that people are really afraid of what they haven’t tried. And I’d guess that most of the people who are involved in creating the, ah, the schedules for drugs, the different legal designations? I’ll bet they’ve never done any of them.

Denise Prince, artist: I hear human testing of LSD is happening now. Apparently, they are looking at connectivity in the brain: It just lights up, and areas talk to each other that previously didn't – or not since your last trip. You hear about people guiding ayahuasca trips. I'd like to see modern hippies back at it (with best practices). I've heard of dolphin communication and things further outfield, don't get me started.

Mickle Maher, playwright: Of course the war on drugs is a failure, as impossible wars on near-abstractions will always be, and of course all drugs should be legal – including LSD. But thirty years ago you ask me this, I say "Never mind legal, why not required?" I had read my Aldous Huxley and listened to my Jim Morrison and was a passionate advocate for everyone getting their heads fed. Then I took an abnormally potent purple microdot and, frozen alone on an absent friend's absent friend's dirty apartment carpet, listened to “Tied to the Whipping Post” on repeat for three centuries, taking a stroll after, through four lanes of traffic in my socks, spiraling down finally in the field behind a Wendy's convinced I'd shot through a dimensional portal. It was scary. I think it was then the barest outline of the concept of Moderation first sketched itself in my head.

Nate Southard, author: I'm not sure, but I assume it has something to do with the giant devil chicken standing just outside our reality, maaaaaaan.

Shannon McCormick, actor: Why isn’t it legal? Because too many people are numbskulls. I’m fine with LSD only being able to be procured with difficulty, or only in some controlled environment. Because I think there are enough instances of people doing really dumb, self-endangering things. I mean, obviously, there are a lot of dumb things people do on alcohol. Yeah, maybe the question is “Why isn’t alcohol illegal?” OK, which it was for a while – and it led to lots of criminality.

Lenny Kleinfeld, author: 1. Puritanism is like syphilis; once it’s in your system it’s there unto death, impervious to treatment such as exposure to facts – for instance, how Prohibition accomplished nothing except creating the Mafia and national corruption, and how its descendant prohibitions against weed and coke created mega-mafias and global corruption. 2. LSD, like all the other recreationals, is a victim of alcohol-centric drug bigotry. 3. It’ll always be a niche market. It’s logistically inefficient. Takes up most of a day, during which you’re pretty much useless, and ends with a loooong crash that has to be buffered with weed or whatever. Also, unlike most other drugs, acid isn’t obliterative. Just the opposite. It doesn’t shut down annoying sectors of your nervous system, it blows open your whole electromagnetic apparatus and floods it with energy. Which can be giddy and ecstatic and yeah, the sex, the sex, the sex. However, it may force you to confront what’s on your mind instead of escaping it. Which might result in cosmic depression, or even turning your brain into the world’s greatest method actor, hell-bent on performing a remarkably detailed impression of schizophrenia. So … LSD will never have an industrial-scale market, which means no industrial-scale profits, which means no industrialists will fling industrial-strength campaign donations at legislators to get the product legalized. 4. Drugs ain’t democratic. They strike everyone differently. Hallucinogens are maybe the least democratic of all. So those who use it happily are elitist, effete un-Americans. So fuck ‘em.

Sarah Marie Curry, actor: Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country is a 1993 book by Peter McWilliams and he does a brilliant job of breaking it down. Complex issue made simple? Government Imposed Morality.