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Denver votes to become first U.S. city to decriminalize 'magic mushrooms'
Denver will become the first city in the United States to decriminalize magic mushrooms, based on final unofficial results on Wednesday of a ballot initiative about the hallucinogenic drug.
The initiative called for Colorado's capital to end the imposition of criminal penalties for individuals at least 21 years of age for using or possessing psilocybin, widely known as magic mushrooms.
The Denver Elections Divisions will certify results on May 16, but the final count on its website on Wednesday was 50.56 percent of voters in favor and 49.44 percent against.
If the initiative is approved, psilocybin would still remain illegal under both Colorado and federal law. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration classifies the drug as a Schedule 1 substance, meaning the agency has deemed that it has a high potential for abuse with no accepted medical application.
Also at NYT:
"It's surreal," said Travis Tyler Fluck, a field organizer for the campaign to pass the measure, suggesting that Denver had a sizable population of "psychedelic constituents." "People just don't see it as a threat," he added. "Compared to the 'sinister' LSD, magic mushrooms are tame."
Oof. 🚲 🍄
Previously: Denver, Colorado Will Vote on Psilocybin Decriminalization Initiative on May 7
Related: Study Suggests Psilocybin "Resets" the Brains of Depressed People
Shrooms Safest, Comparatively Speaking
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 09 2019, @02:10PM (2 children)
LSD and shrooms are very similar in how they work so the comparison is intresting. Now LSD you can dose more precisely because it's a matter of dilution, but even so the LSD molecule is leagues more powerful than shrooms (as in more than hundreds time more effective). The average dose for an LSD blotter will more often than not induce actual hallucinations while the average trip on shrooms will just deform what you see.
Now both molecules are less toxic than caffeine, but overdoses can incur psychological damage or serotonin syndrome. If only from a statistic pov, serotonin syndrome is very rare in taker of shrooms that don't have previous medication (such as SRIs) while it's frequent enough to consider for LSD.
And as a footnote on the matter of public safety, unless you're brewing yourself and doing the dilutions, it's a crapshoot how concentrated a blotter is, just like for pills. Fresh product is harder to dose precisely but your margin of error is always small.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday May 09 2019, @04:44PM (1 child)
It's not at all clear to me that the two do the same thing or act the same way. "Powerful" assumes that you have a decent scale that you are rating both on, and, AFAIK, the only such scale we have is news stories...which isn't a very reliable scale. You could also put caffeine on that scale, and alcohol, and, for that matter, sugar. They're all psycho-active. But it's not a very reasonable thing to measure them the same way.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 09 2019, @05:58PM
Ok, let's devellop: both are serotoninergic psychedelic hallucinogens. They both work by overstimulating serotonin receptors by bonding to them. This is why it's meaningful to compare them, because they do the same thing you can compare strength by how well and how long they do the thing.
Meanwhile you wouldn't put alcohol or caffeine on that scale, because while they may affect serotonin receptor activation in the big picture, that's not their primary effect.
Serotonin syndrome is a chemical imbalance that follows very high spikes in serotonin receptor excitation. LSD is a well known cause of serotonin syndrome while psylocibin induced cases are rare. This is nothing like a study, but it's a reasoning based on facts. The way you are being dismissive, you read like someone who doesn't even want to consider the matter.