Drug Use In The 1970's

The 1960’s was a defining decade in American history. Across the nation, Americans everywhere joined together in a youth movement to embrace free-love, nonviolence, and psychedelic drugs. The movement was critical in evolving outdated societal values, however, it did leave the American public with a negative view of psychedelics as a whole. Horror stories of “bad trips” and people trying to fly off building circulated throughout the nation. LSD, and other popular psychedelics, were classified by the US government as Schedule 1 drugs - making them illegal for recreational and medical usage. However, research that has been building since the 1970’s shows that certain psychedelics may be the key to curing mental health problems - such as depression

The problem is not that people do drugs, but rather how we classify drugs. The Federal Drug Administration, FDA, groups drugs into 5 categories - Schedule 1, Schedule 2, Schedule 3, Schedule 4, and Schedule 5. The different groups all have their own set of rules that place limitations on drug usage by citizens. The rules are less severe when moving down Schedules. For example, Schedule 1 drugs cannot be taken medicinally or recreationally, and Schedule 5 drugs can be taken unlimitedly with a prescription. The drugs are placed into the different categories based upon the categories requirements. For Schedule 1 drugs, the requirements are that the drug has a high potential for abuse, no accepted medical purpose, and lack of accepted safety. The problem with the classification system comes from how the FDA interprets these rules when analysing a drug. For example, the graphic below came from a study that evaluated the potential dangers of the 20 most popular recreational drugs in the United

One of the largest and most funded groups against the use of psychedelics is nonprofit organization from Los Angeles called Foundation for a Drug-Free World. The group makes it their mission to “educate” the public on drugs, in the hopes that people will stop using substances. Their website features horror stories and “facts” about the dangers of psychedelics. According to the FDFW, when people take acid they lose control of themselves and their surroundings. An eight minute long documentary on the website, details different people’s horror stories with LSD. However, in almost every story that was told in the documentary, the problem had less to do with the drug and more to do with various circumstances. For example, one woman says that she became violently sick while taking LSD that was, unknown to her, laced with meth. The issue was less the psychedelic that she voluntarily took, but rather the harsh stimulant she was not expecting. People lacing psychedelics with more harmful and addictive drugs would not be an issue, if psychedelics were a Schedule 2 drugs that could be prescribed. Another man describes losing control of his motor vehicle while taking LSD. Again, the issue was not that he was on this psychedelic, but rather that he was attempting to operate a car while on drugs that alter perception. He most likely would have also lost control of his car if he