"A marijuana decriminalization initiative has qualified
for November's ballot in Massachusetts. The initiative would make
possession of up to an ounce, currently a misdemeanor punishable by up
to six months in jail and a $500 fine, a civil offense with a maximum
penalty of a $100 fine. Pot smokers could not be arrested or jailed,
and they would not have criminal records, which trigger ancillary penalties that can be far more onerous than the official punishment. NORML reports that a recent poll found supporters of the initiative outnumber opponents by 2 to 1."
Decades after Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert and the controversial Harvard Psylocybin Project, researchers at Harvard and elsewhere are trying to do serious research with psychedelics.
"[Creator of LSD Albert] Hofmann, who died this past April at the age
of 102, watched it all play out, horrified by the behavior of both drug
users and opponents. He winced as the hippies took LSD with wild
abandon, and wrung his hands as the government, here and abroad,
criminalized LSD and other psychedelic compounds. But Hofmann also
lived long enough to see it all come full circle. By the time he died,
legitimate above-ground psychedelic research was alive and well at
places like Johns Hopkins and, even more telling, at Harvard
University, the latter under the guidance of Dr. John Halpern. Sitting
a little to the left and outside of Halpern is Rick Doblin, founder of
the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a
nonprofit research group that, through the support of members and
donors, helps fund scientists to do bona fide work with psychedelics in
the hopes of legitimizing their therapeutic use. Together, the two men
form a kind of psychedelic odd couple: Halpern is young but traditional
and cautious, a scientist first and foremost. Doblin is a veteran in
this world, a little rougher around the edges, and speaks openly about
his own psychedelic adventures and his vision for less drug prohibition.
Almost 25 years ago, on Good Friday of 1962 Walter Pahnke, a Harvard theology student, gathered 20 religiously inclined subjects, divinity students, in Boston University's Marsh Chapel for an experiment. The subjects had been screened by Timothy Leary, then at Harvard's psychology department. Half the subjects would be given psylocibin, the hallucinogen derived from mushrooms, of "magic mushroom" fame, and half would be given a placebo. The goal: to see if religious experiences could be induced via hallucinogen in the religiously inclined in the religious setting of the chapel.
Most of the psylocibin-ingesting subjects had difficult experiences although they found them positive overall. In addition, most of them had a mystical experience by Pahnke's standards. Pahnke's thesis is available online.
You can also look at this interesting video interview with a subject about the experiment:
It seems like the experience of having a religious experience
manufactured on demand would raise skeptical questions about religion
but the reverse seems to have occurred among the participants. Interestingly, a follow-up study found that "The experimental
subjects unanimously described their Good Friday psilocybin experience
as having had elements of a genuinely mystical nature and characterized
it as one of the highpoints of their spiritual life." One of the participants recounts, among other things in this interesting article, how the experience helped to confirm him in choosing a religious vocation.
Boston is not only one of the most expensive cities in the country, it's also one of the most stoned, according to the U.S. government.
If you forgot to go to the 16th Annual Freedom Rally to legalize marijuana in Massachusetts on September 17th at the Boston Common you can check out the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition's website.
