David thank you for writing this. As a member of the American culture it does not surprise me when I observe the “fear”, “taboo” and reactionary recoil and judgement regarding psychedelic substances that our culture has. It seems to me we are focused on the enforcement and institutionalization of control, materialism (capitalism) and violent and/or non-libertarian dominance over ourselves. We are perhaps not too different from an extremist fundamentalist religious culture that cuts off the fingers of someone caught smoking a cigarette — except we wouldn’t do that because cigarettes make profit and full handed workers are more productive.

Unlike cigarettes (leading cause of death in America), alcohol or opiates we do not know of deaths, specific health hazards or addictive qualities of say (in this case) certain mushroom plants. There are people who might read this and become angry because they have had friend or loved one who it seems suffered horrific psychological trauma associated with a psychedelic. I have no reason to doubt these concerns and am not advocating for use of psychedelics: AND calm, adult and scientific examination and fact accumulation is the rise of civilized consciousness — reactionary prohibition, bias and superstitious/antidotal ideology is unhelpful and closed minded.

I hope you and other leaders set the stage for magnanimous discussion.