New Reality Tunnels

July 12, 2005 10:43 AM

LearyFilter: Does anybody know of a place in the world where LSD is still legal, and available in circulation?

If I recall correctly, it is *not* legal in Holland (although 'shrooms are). But, correct me if I have made a mistake in that analysis.

posted by Netzapper to law & government (17 comments total)

Hm...I would be surprised if it were legal anywhere although perhaps some enlightened country might use it in trials of some sort. At erowid I had a quick glance and note that Switzerland were still using it in trials in '93 but banned it again afterwards. Check out the vaults - there might be hints or links.
posted by peacay at 10:59 AM on July 12, 2005

Hooboy. This is going to go well.

Nope. I don't. Haven't heard of one. Chile, maybe. I know they're doing a lot of research into psychopharmacueticals, ethnogens, empathogens, entactogens and plain old psychedelics. But that doesn't mean that LSD or any otherwise normally controlled psychoactive is legal for Joe Everyman.

Antartica? Sealand? Thee Most Royal, Devine, and Sovereign Autonomous Zone of Thine Own Saucy Brainpan?

I'm pretty sure every government in the world realized it was an immediate threat to their physical and financial health, and has banned it entirely.

I would love to hear otherwise. Properly understood, set and applied, it's mostly - if not completely - harmless. Unless you're the status quo, and then it's God's own holy sniper rifle of love.
posted by loquacious at 11:05 AM on July 12, 2005

Though it doesn't answer your questions specifically, this might help a little.
posted by JPowers at 11:09 AM on July 12, 2005

Not even pot is legal in Holland (contrary to popular belief) although tolerated by the authorities - LSD, definitely not.

As to your question, it should be phrased more like "which country does not have the authorities able to seize/prosecute/identify LSD users". It is more a question of nobody giving a damn rather than legality. You will find a few such places in the world. Loquacious's suggestions are a good start, a few places in Africa also spring to mind.
posted by keijo at 11:12 AM on July 12, 2005

loquacious: I also doubt that I will be able to find a country where it there exists no legal attempt to control or schedule it.

I considered looking for countries with lax or ineffective legal systems, but I do not know if I will trouble. The drug requires significant skill, equipment, and investment to produce, thus it requires a base of operations and a skilled, and thus probably rare, workforce. An untrained operator has a high probability of screwing up an entire batch with great frequency. It would also require a large infrastructure, either in the form of commercial scientific supply houses or the black market. The larger the infrastructure, the easier the man will find it to catch you. Throw in the required downstream contacts to move your 25 pounds of LSD, and your exposure grows again.

Thus, I conclude that I must look for the most "enlightened" countries, or the poorest, or the most corrupt.

I've also considered the "weird possibilities", like Sealand; and the intralegal locations, such as International Waters and portions of Antartica. The problem is that I would have to live at these locations for the entirety of the synthesis process, which I could not probably do without considerable inconvenience, expense, and radical changes to my lifestyle.

Although think of the book I could write. I digress.

I also like the phrase "God's own holy sniper rifle of love".


JPowers: Thanks. I have heard several times of "a bigass bust", and have spread this explanation on when appropriate. I appreciate your link, which lends specifics to the Big Bust theory of LSD scarcity.
posted by Netzapper at 11:35 AM on July 12, 2005

Netzapper: are you seriously considering setting up a "legal" operation to do this?

It should be (in theory) possible to get a license to produce the stuff in any country that allows experimentation with it. Ecstasy, Marijuana, etc are made legally here in the US under controlled conditions.

But other then that, there are a lot of countries where huge Heroin purification labs operate, I'd be willing to bet you could start and LSD lab there.

---

Also, why not just grow shrooms? You're looking at a $20 investment in a pressure cooker and a few other odds and ends.
posted by delmoi at 11:45 AM on July 12, 2005

delmoi: I do not think that I will set up such an operation either in a location I think it to be safe and/or accepted (international waters, the Moon, intergalactic space), or in a country where I predict a large probability of some organization hassling me extensively.

I am merely exploring the idea for my own amusement.
posted by Netzapper at 11:57 AM on July 12, 2005

Thanks to the UN Single Convention on Narcotics, drugs aren't legal basically anywhere in the world. Your best bet is to build a spaceship and drop acid from orbit.
posted by darkness at 12:13 PM on July 12, 2005

hehe.. What darkness said.
posted by rabble at 1:29 PM on July 12, 2005

Sound like a job for Virgin Galactic
posted by b1tr0t at 1:33 PM on July 12, 2005

Oh, man, I want my own orbital country.
posted by Netzapper at 4:00 PM on July 12, 2005

Oh, man, I want my own orbital country.

Take enough acid...
posted by Pollomacho at 4:03 PM on July 12, 2005

Thanks to the UN Single Convention on Narcotics, drugs aren't legal basically anywhere in the world.

IANAL, but that's not really true. A quick search on Erowid shows many chemicals that are either Psychedelic Phenethylamines or Psychedelic Tryptamines that are currently unscheduled.
posted by rajbot at 4:51 PM on July 12, 2005

darkness just meant the common illegal drugs, not Shulgin's alchemy.
posted by Gyan at 5:46 PM on July 12, 2005

I don't know of a place where it is legal. I do know it is extremely easy and inexpensive to obtain in the UK and that your chances of being busted for indulging are laughably small. Which is almost as good. :-)
posted by Decani at 8:34 PM on July 12, 2005

Decani: Really? Hmm... I wonder if I could convince some, er, liberal UK MeFites to send me a postcard...
posted by klangklangston at 7:08 AM on July 13, 2005

darkness writes "Your best bet is to build a spaceship and drop acid from in orbit."
Somewhere someone is logging all the IP addresses in this discussion. I CAN see them looking. Yowzaaa
posted by peacay at 8:52 AM on July 13, 2005