State Sen. Scott Wiener aims to decriminalize a variety of plant-based psychedelic drugs like “magic mushrooms” with new legislation he announced this week.
Senate Bill 58 would decriminalize the possession and personal use of psilocybin, psilocyn, Dimethyltryptamine, mescaline — excluding peyote — and ibogaine for people 21 years and older.
“The war on drugs has been a complete failure,” Wiener said at a news conference outside of San Francisco’s War Memorial on Monday. “We need to treat drug use as a health issue and stop treating it as a criminal issue.”
Wiener, D-San Francisco, said the clinical use of such psychedelic drugs has been shown to help treat depression, anxiety, PTSD and drug addiction.
The bill is sponsored by Heroic Hearts Project, an organization that helps veterans find psychedelic therapy, among other things.
Michael Young, a U.S. Army veteran and Heroic Hearts spokesman said he came back from Afghanistan “spiritually broken, lost and unable to find my way back to normalcy.”
“Psychedelics helped heal the unseen scars from my 10 years of service in the War on Terror,” Young said Monday.
Wiener said similar efforts have been successful in Washington D.C., Oakland, San Francisco and Santa Cruz, and via ballot measures in Oregon and Colorado.
This is his second attempt to pass decriminalization legislation in the California Senate. Last year, Wiener’s SB519 made it out of the Senate but eventually stalled in the Assembly.
40 comments
Treating drug addiction with more drugs to become addicted to….can’t see where this could go wrong (sarcasm)
Apparently, nothing was learned by giving druggies free needles in San Francisco.
Your opinion is uninformed. Psychedelics are non-addictive and we’ve known for decades that LSD in particular is one of the most effective/rapid treatment options for drug addiction (LSD Psychotherapy. Dr. S Grof). The founder of Alcoholics Anonymous took LSD in the 60’s and upon realizing it’s potential he pushed (but failed) to provide LSD sessions at AA facilities.
@ JIm, LSD also has the potential to cause psychiatric episodes and irreversible brain damage. When you were preusing through the 60’s literature, did you get a chance to read the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test? It documents nervous breakdowns of many of the participants.
LSD can certainly activate latent mental illness but there is no evidence that suggests it is the cause. It’s simply a stressor. Just like how divorce, job losses, deaths in the family, etc can bring out schizophrenia.
LSD is not neurotoxic – this is false. Find me one publication that suggests neurotoxicity with any classic psychedelic. Psilocybin, LSD, mescaline, DMT – all non-toxic compounds.
Sounds like a circular argument to me – If you become mentally ill while using LSD, it’s because you had a latent mental illness. How do you know you had a latent mental illness? Because you because mentally ill after using LSD? ….Or is there now a comprehensive test for latent mental illness?
Most shamans throughout history have recognized the danger around psychedelics, both limiting their use and requiring a purification ritual prior to their use. But for those in the modern era, who’ve been “around” a bit, there’s no need to cite a publication describing their dangers. We’ve see it ourselves.
It’s not the government’s job to shield you, me, or anyone else from potential side effects of eating particular organisms. Myriad berries and non-psychoactive mushrooms — one is even called “death cap” — cause severe organ damage.
We don’t pay cops to patrol Lime Ridge or Briones to arrest people stupid enough to gather such poisonous mushrooms.
Stepping on a rattler can lead to amputation or even death. Surely you’re not so daft as to ban hiking.
Let people live their own lives man.
Lamorinda, actually mushroom gathering at Lime Ridge is illegal.
But more importantly, there’s a huge difference between mushrooms and LSD. One is naturally occurring and has a historical usage by many societies, the other is serveral times more powerful, made in a lab, difficult to dose, difficult to assess purity and was circulated by the CIA as part of their mind control experiments.
@Yoyohop – Why do you care so much about infringing on individual liberties? Drug prohibition is a classic Neo-Liberal, Big Government overreach.
BTW Stan Grof spends most of his time now promoting breathwork to heal trauma, not LSD. Wonder why?
The research abruptly ended when LSD became a schedule 1 drug so he moved on along eith everyone else in the field. It took us until now to utilize MDMA as a treatment for PTSD despite researchers knowing its effectiveness in the 1980’s. MDMA is currently on track to be the standard treatment within a few years. Millions of veterans could have been helped in the mean time but drug laws prevented the research until recently.
So Jim
You are suggesting it is okay to decriminalize these drugs because there are some potential benefits of use in a limited population. Hmmm, that sounds like prescription drugs. But you know that prescription drugs require a prescription for the medical disorder.
So Jim,
If you think that these drugs will help an addict with their addiction, have it it go through the FDA approval process and then prescribe it. There are too many people out there already ‘self-medicating’, we do not need a bunch more hallucinating around the bay area.
Drug scheduling has never stopped anyone from experimenting. People will do it regardless if they want to and drugs will always win. I’m not advocating for legalization, but criminalizing a victimless crime does not help anybody – it only creates unnecessary criminal records.
The DEA has been around for 50 years and we’re currently at peak historical overdose deaths. How anyone can argue they’ve benefitted the American people since their inception doesn’t make sense. They’ve clearly accomplished nothing except imprisoning people.
A victimless crime? How many people doped up on these drugs have hurt others …. It ain’t victimless. I have seen it first hand …
Then you consider the families of those that are drugged out, it ain’t victimless.
Your argument lost all merit when you said victimless. But let’s take it one step forward, you don’t want it criminalized but you are not advocating legalization. Huh? So what is it you are advocating?
Keep them high and dumb. Vote for me and my friends, and everything will be fine.
How about decriminalizing them ALL, but the first time you are caught doing something stupid while on them (neglecting children, robbing someone, driving under influence), then you are sent to a work camp for 3 months minimum? We need some common sense solutions that stop wasting our tax money.
This moron is the major reason for term limits…
Truly the definition of stupidity. Now we will have stoned and hallucinating people wandering in the community. What could go wrong? 30 year paramedic here.
Just what we need, more hopped up dingbats.
Only in San Francisco
Can we submit a bill to remove Weiner from ever introducing another bill again? It seems every bill he introduces in the benchmark for the next level of stupid.
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Wiener’s existence and proposed legislation is an immediate danger to CA residents.
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Another hallucinating event for this moron!! I hope it becomes a 3-time loser on this submission! It has failed twice and Weenie-Weiner is hoping that a Dem loaded legislature will back him(he might like that!!).
Wake-up people!!
Living up to his name 😂
“… decriminalize the possession and personal use …”
.
“And you’ve just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice
I think she’ll know”
.
Well heck, let’s make our roadways even more of a giant pinball game,
just watch out as Alice swerves to avoid hittin’ the White Rabbit
I still get flash backs from doing a 1/4 hit of Purple Dragon at the Key Stone Berkeley 43 years ago. The White Wrabbit was talking to me.
The way Wiener thinks and reasons is really screwed up. The fact he writes goofy legislation that sometimes gets through is really quite dangerous.
The last time I came across someone as delusional as Wiener, it was a guy that took way too much PCP for way too long. Fortunately that guy didn’t go into politics, rather he operated the Tilt-A -Whirl at a carnival.
More to the point, drug therapy can be helpful for some when administered and controlled by an expert. Wiener wants to formally “recreationalize” it for those who need a crutch. That’s quite different, and quite dangerous.
Psychedelics are to be made legal as proposed by a derelict creep, at the same time the term “American” is considered harmful language by a once prestigious learning institution (now a leftist indoctrination facility, an expensive one at that, wonder why student loan forgiveness was pushed by our leftists in the government?).
.. so all of those that get whacked out need to go to Weiner’s residence for rehab , narcan , whatever….
LSD can certainly activate latent mental illness but there is no evidence that suggests it is the cause. It’s simply a stressor. Just like how divorce, job losses, deaths in the family, etc can bring out schizophrenia.
LSD is not neurotoxic – this is false. Find me one publication that suggests neurotoxicity with any classic psychedelic. Psilocybin, LSD, mescaline, DMT – all non-toxic compounds.
Who keeps voting for this clown?
The stupidest idea ever imagined by a stupid politician. That’s why it’ll likely pass this time. All he has to do is say that it’s about “social justice” and that’ll be enough for the morons who work with him and the idiots who vote for him.
So the same dude who legalized giving someone aids, advocates drag queens and kids chilling, dresses up in leather for the pride parade, wants to lower the age of concent, wants to open drug dens in SF is still allowed to write bills legalizing LSD??…whoa 🤡🤡🤡. Do you guys get it yet? These people are sick rabid predators that need to be put down.
Whatever. As long as I retain the right to require my employees to submit to drug testing as well as the right to terminate their employment if they test positive.
Looks like we have a “JIM” bot that was deployed for this topic. Someone who’s never posted here and pushing this idea that nobody actually wants. Nothing says obvious bot like appearing on a blog randomly like this.
I post here sometimes. Usually only for drug related stories because it’s a very important topic to me. Otherwise I lurk. I can go on and on about current policies and why they’ve failed the American people.
I think we should all take a moment to reflect upon the selfless dedication to the job Senator Wiener does. Important legislation such as this in addition to all the transsexual promotions, pedophile exemptions, efforts to free prisoners and decriminalize sexual perversions committed upon children over/under 10 …. for whatever difference that’s supposed to make, Wiener still endeavors to find a way for folks to do these things while blasted out of their minds on psychedelic drugs. What would we do without Scott?…..
Let’s find out!
In response to YOYOHOP, the studies on whether psychedelics case mental illness are quite straightforward – look at mental illness frequency in a sample of the general population and then look at the frequency among users of psychedelics. The results out of numerous studies (hundreds of thousands of people) show the same mental illness frequency between both samples. Their conclusions time and time again are that psychedelics do no cause mental illness, but can trigger latent mental illness.
@ Jim, The institution of Psychology is hardly a credible one. The “Bible” of Psychiatry, the DSM was created to provide a standardized means of billing insurance agencies for hospital treatment. The list of mental illnesses change from year to year, with new ones being created and old ones such as “homosexuality” being dropped.
You’re welcome to assess causation of mental illness in whatever way you want, the bottom line is that many people would not have certain mental illnesses if they didn’t take LSD.
Weiner is the absolutely perfect example of feckless, useless and dangerous liberal California government put in place by the dumb gullible masses.
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