Super excited to see this. If you live in California please head on over to http://www.decrimca.org/
We're working to get state wide decriminalization on the ballot in November and we need signatures! If you buy a button ($5) they'll send you a petition sheet. There are also signature locations and volunteers in every county in the state.
This strategy is taking a page out of the very successful cannabis legalization movement. First there are decriminalizations at the local level. This makes decriminalization at the state level much more palatable for politicians, who see there's political will at the local level to make it happen. Once the first state decriminalizes it, others states will find it easier to follow suit.
Apart from voting, you can also donate and volunteer, but some of the best things you can do is educate yourself and others on the responsible use of psychedelics. If taking mushrooms or other psychedelics has helped you in some way, tell others about it. Seeing people who have their act together, who admit that mushrooms have helped them will open people's eyes to their benefits and make it less likely that they'll react with dismay or disgust at the suggestion that "drugs" be legalized because they equate use with abuse.
Stepping out of the psychedelic closet is not always easy, but it has to happen (as it did with admitting cannabis use) before there's widespread acceptance of psychedelics.
I am all for decriminalization, but both with cannabis and mushrooms I feel worried about the amount of "it's actually good for you!" that comes with it. I have used both (legally, in the Netherlands). As a student I enjoyed cannabis quite a bit but when I used a lot less later I did come to feel like (looking back) the usage came with some depression symptoms. With mushrooms I feel in general that they were good experiences but I've heard enough stories (first and second hand) of people experiencing long-term effects from psychedelics that I don't think it should be encouraged (at most for specific people with a therapist or so).
Personal responsibility and liberty are great but these products should come with warnings and guidance.
I think legalisation and regulation is a cure for the "its good for you" bullshit. As it becomes legal, it is easier to argue about it objectively, and there wille be also more data since people and institutions can study and research it easier.
PACs have been a key part of the cannabis legalization movement. So it's not just that you make decriminalization more palatable for politicians, you aim for politicians who find decriminalization more palatable.
And for anyone thinking “it will never happen”, let me tell you back in the 1990’s I thought the exact same thing about cannabis legalization. Ridiculous, waste of time, a pipe dream.
Opium poppy (Papaver somniferous) is actually kind of an interesting case. At least in the US, it's OK to grow the plants, the flowers are showy and many seed catalogs sell the seeds. It's also OK to harvest the pods and consume the seeds (poppy seeds, have them on a bagel). But, if you scrape off and collect the latex on the outside of the pods, you are committing a felony.
I thought that varieties currently sold have little morphine. Or at least, I recall that one ex wife had an heirloom variety from her mother. Which supposedly had lots of morphine. Not that I ever tested it.
> While the drug test can rule out heroin, it can’t distinguish the poppy seed from other opiates. This became such an issue that the federal government raised its threshold for opiates in workplace testing from .3 micrograms per milliliter to 2 micrograms so there would be fewer cases of positive opiate testing in situations where drugs where not the cause.
> Sure, the poppy seeds you buy at the store contain between 0.5 to 10 micrograms of morphine per gram, but a dose of medically-prescribed morphine contains anywhere between 5,000 to 30,000 micrograms. So to get that same dose from the seeds you eat, you’d have to potentially eat a ridiculous amount of them.
So you'd need to consume stuff extracted from at least 0.5-1.0 kg of poppy seeds. Or perhaps as much as 10 kg. That's not impossible, if you know what you're doing, and have the right equipment.
But it'd be impractical, and expensive. And then there's the risk that you'll have other toxic stuff. Insecticides or fungicides, for example. So you'd also want to purify your morphine.
However, what's interesting is the possibility of using poppy seeds to mask usage of other opiates. The article notes that drug tests "can rule out heroin, [but] can’t distinguish the poppy seed from other opiates". So perhaps you could eat lots of poppy seed cake, and hide your oxycodone habit ;)
The resulting potency is difficult to estimate, and people have died from getting it wrong. Please don't recommend for people to do poppy seed tea without warning them of the danger.
Also, it's not that far from religion, which is constitutionally protected. Far more so than for cannabis, anyway. As I vaguely recall, that's already the case for peyote and ayahuasca, at least in some jurisdictions.
Why would they ask for my employer information in order to make a donation? My employment has nothing to do with this. Are we now owned by our employer who needs to know everything we do?
It’s the law. Technically only required when the cumulative amount of donations reaches $200, but impractical not to collect it for every donation as the org may get in a situation where they realized they collected that much from one person but now don’t have the info because they didn’t ask - given the penalties, cost/benefit sways heavily toward being safe and always asking over catering to the few pedantics who might not donate due to this.
Until Citizens United blew the door open, if you were a corporation you had to find ways to get money to candidates.
Telling your employees to donate to $CAUSE was one of them, and offering them bonuses or matching or other "incentives" -- aka "sign here to get your X-Mas bonus" on donation form -- was a way to move money.
Indeed, it isn't your employer's business what or whom you donate to. But the more straightforward answer is that they are likely required to ask by law (possibly subject to other criteria).
That's a good question, because I've had no luck finding an example.
I do recall reading about it, but that could have been decades ago. And it's hard to find old stuff.
What I find is about contributions from employees of government contractors, and from government employees. So maybe that's been the driver for the requirement.
I wish this idea was more common in society. I hate being asked for identification in order to get a drink — I wish I just had a card with my photo on it and the official government phrase “It’s legal to serve this guy.”
I'm 100% in support of legalization, but as someone who has never lived in a country with decriminalized psychedelics, I'm very interested to see how this is regulated. The potential for chaos seems much higher with mushrooms than cannabis.
I support decriminalization of mushrooms, but I think your question is somewhat irrelevant. When considering a new law, the thing people discuss is, "Will this have terrible side effects?" rather than, "Will this have worse side effects than alcohol?"
There are side effects from the status quo, too. Having a regulated safe source of product is better than allowing amateur mycologists to go out in the field and poison themselves as they do now. It doesn't matter what the law says, people who want to do drugs will find and do drugs, so we might as well make it a little safer.
> The purpose of this article is to decriminalize the personal possession, storage, use, cultivation, manufacturing, distribution in personal possession amounts without profit, transport, and consumption of psilocybin mushrooms and the chemical compounds contained in them for any person over the age of 18, or for any person younger than 18 with parental or guardian consent by amending California Health and Safety Codes HSC § 11 390 & 11391.
I'm confused, whats the difference between legalization and decriminalization then. This sounds like legalization to me? Decriminalizaton i thought was making it a low priority to law enforcement which some places already did?
Correct, decriminalizing doesn't mean that it's legal, just that the police won't use resources trying to stop it.
Legalizing at the city or county level would run into conflict with state & federal laws that prohibit it. This is a way of getting around that conflict.
> As such, Topley, explained then, it is “very close to legalization, however, without psilocybin being rescheduled or descheduled at the federal level, it seems more appropriate to refer to it as decriminalization.”
Alcohol is legal, but you can't sell it legally without a liquor license and those can be restricted in number and limited in scope (in MA you can't sell liquor on Sundays).
Sorry for the cynicism. I'd love to donate to the cause, and want to make sure I'm not giving money to a scam or (less cynically) an inefficient effort. Anywhere I can see something to convince me this page and this group is legit and making real progress?
I can say it's definitely not a scam. I have personally been to multiple meetings with organizers in Oakland and San Francisco and witnessed that it is both well organized and well staffed. To my knowledge there are over 700 volunteers across the state in every county working on this initiative. Obviously, that doesn't mean it's going to be successful. I hope you're willing to risk $5 and purchase a button or sticker so you can send in your signed petition form :)
