California lawmakers on Thursday narrowly approved a bill supported by veterans and criminal justice reform advocates to decriminalize the possession and personal use of a limited list of natural psychedelics, including “magic mushrooms.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom will now decide the fate of Senate Bill 58, which would remove criminal penalties for the possession and use of psilocybin and psilocin, the active ingredients in psychedelic mushrooms, mescaline and dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, known as ayahuasca. The bill also would require the California Health and Human Services Agency to study the therapeutic use of psychedelics and submit a report with its findings and recommendations to the Legislature.
So continue throwing people in prison for using them?
Prison is a different issue. I think they should seize the drugs and direct them to a rehabilitation center (or force them if it’s repeat offenders). Prison is for dealers.
But what constitutes a dealer? Because we throw people in prison now who are intending to sell a single vial of meth for $20 (or whatever Meth costs). They might be addicts who are so desperate for money that they’re selling their own supply. Don’t those people also need help? This is the problem with the drug war- it’s too vague. And there’s no real way to not make it vague.
Even if it was someone desperate for money, they still tried to sell a very dangerous drug to another human. That’s not ok, in my opinion.
That’s where I draw the line: if you’re only harming yourself you need help. If you’re trying to fuel others’ addiction, it’s jail. At most if it’s clear that the person has a huge drug issue you could force the rehabilitation center in that case as well (but again, the first time. If you still sell meth after that you’re asking for it).
Considering I had a friend with cancer sell me some of his weed so he could pay his medical bills that month, I can’t say I’d agree.
That’s weed. Weed is far less dangerous than the stuff we were talking about.
Also my view might be skewed due to living in Europe, so “selling to pay cancer bills” wasn’t really what I thought of.