LSD chemist William Pickard to be released from prison

https://www.psymposia.com/magazine/william-leonard-pickard-lsd/

by miles • 6 years ago

515 322 6 years ago

eindiran• 6 years ago

There was an article several years ago in Vice which mentioned him: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nndz9z/life-is-a-cosmic-g...

sibeliuss• 6 years ago

A+ interview and history

sybarita2• 6 years ago

I urge you to look into Krystle's story more. She's an absolutely vile person who participated in the torture and attempted murder of her boyfriend, Brandon Green.

https://thislandpress.com/2013/07/28/subterranean-psychonaut...

sybarita2• 6 years ago

Please read this, Krystle is an evil person https://thislandpress.com/2013/07/28/subterranean-psychonaut...

tdeck• 6 years ago

Any kind of TL;DR for this? It's quite a commitment to read.

spacechild1• 6 years ago

Wow, what a crazy and sickening story! I remember that I've stumbled across her Youtube-videos (Neurosoup) about 10 years ago. I had no idea...

ur-whale• 6 years ago

There's also this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=r7qliVpGEk0&...

bennysonething• 6 years ago

Twenty years!? Assuming he was non violent that is an absolutely brutal sentence.

mhh__• 6 years ago

But drugs ruin lives!

zelly5• 6 years ago

Under the Federal drug kingpin law[1], after certain thresholds[2] of business having been done, the minimum sentence is life. For example, the threshold for a life sentence for cocaine is 1500 kilograms, for LSD 300 grams. Doesn't matter if you were violent or not. No suspensed sentence, no probation, no parole (Pickard seems to have gotten an exception because of coronavirus like many others).

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/21/848

[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/21/841#b_1_B

anaisbetts• 6 years ago

He got an exception because the government didn't want to pay for his medical treatment, expect these "compassionate exceptions" to happen more often

0823498723498722• 6 years ago

Pertaining to previous psychedelic prosecution:

The NYT OCR game is weak: https://www.nytimes.com/1971/12/30/archives/swiss-reject-ple...

In 1971 reaction GIFs had very few frames; I believe this is Leary after the decision: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/EfA-aysZvcNpE84iYc8A...

pmoriarty2• 6 years ago

The Psychedelic Salon podcast did a long reading of Pickard's novel, The Rose of Paraselsus, which included an introduction which went in to Pickard's background.

It's well worth listening to.

The first episode of the series can be heard here: [1],[2]

[1] https://psychedelicsalon.com/podcast-609-the-rose-garden-int...

[2] - Direct link to the mp3: https://media.blubrry.com/psychedelic_salon/archive.org/down...

Alex3917• 6 years ago

Thanks for the link. Haven't listen to that podcast in many years, but am excited for this. It's funny that his style of thinking and writing is clearly kind of similar to Nick Sand, if you've listened to the previous episodes with him.

kitteh4• 6 years ago

He got a raw deal. People around him who were pretty evil got off.

smabie2• 6 years ago

For some reasons the feds in the 90s were unusually interested in prosecuting psychedelics. I'm of the opinion that all drugs should be legal, but even if I wasn't, I think I would still question why LSD manufacturers were getting such long sentences around that time. Never really made sense to me.

kitteh4• 6 years ago

Friend of a friend got caught with two sheets in the 90s and I think he got 20 years for each one. Downstate Illinois.

My recollection was the weight of the blotter paper was considered as the drug itself and that easily increased the federal sentencing guidelines.

rapsey• 6 years ago

Just how the feds when weighing pot plants weighted them with pots and all.

TheSpiceIsLife3• 6 years ago

When I was arrested and searched the police didn’t even find the 200 tabs I had on me.

They found everything else, but LSD is incredibly easy to hide from regular law enforcement.

They found everything else, but in typical stupid-police fashion, they ballsed that up too and ended up entering a nolle prosequi (do not prosecute) at the district court level.

The police prosecutor was sufficiently annoyed, and I was sufficiently elated and thankful for the woman who went before me (case unrelated) and set a strong precedent.

Any chance I get to gloat.

Edit to add: this happened in Australia in 2012. Not keen to repeat the experience.

worldsayshi2• 6 years ago

20 years for each one

That is incredible. For a crime that harms noone.

peroporque3• 6 years ago

I will never understand how people in the US are okay with this. Don't people care about justice at all over there?

Doxin• 6 years ago

My recollection was the weight of the blotter paper was considered as the drug itself and that easily increased the federal sentencing guidelines.

Which is of course the entire reason for switching away from using sugar cubes and to blotter paper as delivery media.

zelly5• 6 years ago

To make an example out of them and discourage others, prevent a cottage industry from forming. LSD manufacturing scales immensely. One lone wolf could create enough LSD to serve the whole United States demand, maybe even the global demand. LSD is also harder to manufacture. You generally need at least a MS degree and lab experience. The people who fit that profile tend to think about the future enough to respond to the possibiliy of a life sentence.

voldacar• 6 years ago

LSD manufacturing scales immensely

ergotamine doesn't grow on trees lol

kitteh4• 6 years ago

You also need precursors (like ET) which is difficult to get. Though China is a pretty good source if you can pull it off (and for other things like safrole, etc.).

0823498723498722• 6 years ago

A friend of mine once asked his TA about (my memory fails here) either how to activate a leaving group or set up a protecting group at a given hypothetical structure. The TA, without batting an eyelid, responded "I think you'll find all the precursors are scheduled, too." The next lab, the TA, presumably having reflected a bit and in the middle of an unrelated discourse, added "remember, always characterise any synthesis you undertake."

Edit: (ratelimit, sorry)

group: small chemical structure manipulated in a single synthetic step. See also

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaving_group

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_group

scheduling: I have no idea, but it seems likely that at least all the easy precursors were. (ChemE, like systems CS, is all about tradeoffs. It's unlikely anyone bothers to schedule precursors along very difficult synthetic routes. Just like CS people have the IOCCC, synthetic chemists sometimes do small batches with pathways no ChemE would use, just because they're there.)

characterisation: One should do this anyways, to discover if what one has made is what one had intended to make. (compare with unit testing) In the context, I'd consider it a warning that one should especially do this if one plans to partake product.

TA: teaching assistant (post- or just pre-MS in this case, definitely with lab experience)

The punchline is that the TA could guess the intended product given only a single synthesis step for a partial structure. (To be fair, computer geeks love discussing black hat activities, so it shouldn't be any surprise chemists are up on the "abuses" of their science to the same degree.)

tutfbhuf• 6 years ago

Are the mexican drug cartels able to manufacture LSD in scale and export cross-border?

skissane3• 6 years ago

In the 1970s, my father worked as a research chemist for CSIRO (Australian government research lab), doing research into new pharmaceutical products. One of his colleagues decided it would be fun to manufacture some LSD after hours for personal use. The colleague made an error in calculating the quantities involved and ended up taking an accidental overdose. It didn’t kill him, but he spent some time in a psychiatric ward as a result. (I’m pretty sure my father was too responsible to try any himself.)

My brother did chemistry at university too. Did an internship at an Australian government laboratory (National Measurement Institute) at which he got to manufacture MDMA - completely legally, it was part of a research project into different synthesis routes, so that by measuring traces they could determine how street samples were manufactured. He must be one of the few people in the whole country to synthesise ecstasy without breaking any laws in doing so. (They were very careful to ensure none of the staff sampled the product; it was all weighed very precisely and signed off by multiple people from precursors to synthesis to analysis to destruction.)

Dumblydorr2• 6 years ago

Do criminals actually respond to deterrents though? Sam Harris argues otherwise in a couple of podcasts and I tend to agree...people break the law constantly without thought of the penalties. People text while driving when that could kill someone else.

refurb• 6 years ago

My friend who is a pharmaceutical chemist said LSD is actually quite difficult to make, compared to other illicit drugs:

- Lysergic acid is a relatively fragile molecule and will fall apart if exposed to harsh reaction conditions. Compare that to say methamphetamine which can survive strong acids/bases.

- It’s also light sensitive, so you need to protect from light which is why you see the red light setup in LSD labs

- Purification is challenging as well.

lvturner• 6 years ago

Possibly fall out from the MK Ultra program - take a zero tolerance stance on LSD to make it look like changes have been made.

liversage• 6 years ago

I came here to make a comment about CIA's Project MKUltra so I'll just add a quote about the use of LSD from the Wikipedia article:

[...] experiments included administering LSD to mental patients, prisoners, drug addicts, and sex workers—"people who could not fight back," as one agency officer put it. In one case, they administered LSD to a mental patient in Kentucky for 174 days.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

thelittleone• 6 years ago

The one thing powers fear most is losing said power. Open minds present a threat to power structures. LSD has the ability to open minds.

So does meditation... just that it typically takes way longer :)

dontcarethrow22• 6 years ago

I agree, just to add in my own words -- it gives you a fresh perspective, as if your staring at the world from the eyes of a tree. But is it really that important for those in power to maintain a certain narrative/perception? These sentences sound too rough..

say_it_as_it_is2• 6 years ago

The Government is very familiar with LSD, having used it for a wide variety of research over an extended period of time. LSD has proven exceedingly effective at behavior modification, and has already been put to use by the wrong hands. So, they know better than anyone as to how dangerous it is: https://www.amazon.com/Tom-ONeill-ebook/dp/B07K6J273Q

This is why the sentencing was so harsh.

quickthrowman5• 6 years ago

LSD has proven exceedingly effective at behavior modification, and has already been put to use by the wrong hands.

Please provide evidence for this claim.

masklinn6• 6 years ago

For some reasons the feds in the 90s were unusually interested in prosecuting psychedelics.

Psychedelics = hippies = anti-war left.

A well-known and somewhat similar "unusual interest" was in prosecuting crack versus coke.

Bootwizard• 6 years ago

Oh it wasn't unusual. It was intentional. A war on poor and minority (mostly black) communities starting with Reagan's "War on Drugs"

hnlurker• 6 years ago

Crack and cocaine aren't really all that similar. Crack and meth are tho. Guess what, they both have the same mandatory mins too.

When you look for racism everywhere, you find it everywhere. Let's be more objective, eh?

throwaway0a5e2• 6 years ago

In the 90s the feds tried to go hard on gun crime and that just got them a bunch of pictures of crispy children on the news, not exactly the look they were going for.

In the world of use it or lose it budgets cracking down on psychedelics seems like a pretty safe way for the DOJ to keep burning money without incurring too much negative publicity.

aeternum• 6 years ago

There was definitely unreasonable fear around LSD. I remember my parents not allowing us to use temporary tattoos because they were concerned they might be laced with LSD.

bitexploder• 6 years ago

Like most people using LSD are going to waste it to send a kid on a trip. One of the sillier things that swept America.

MiroF6• 6 years ago

Suburbia is full of anxious white people like this.

melq4• 6 years ago

One reason was that the government didn't like the people using the the psychedelics in the first place, and drugs were a convenient justification for going after those people. Marijuana prohibition in the US is the same story.

defnotashton2• 6 years ago

Money in the dorm of funding.

stormdennis• 6 years ago

People like the DEA and the FBI can just make up statistics to make themselves look good and they're reported as fact. The drugs seized had a street value of N million dollars, the supply of LSD went down 95% after his arrest. Good job DEA

intricatedetail2• 6 years ago

Is this comment sarcastic? What is good about this "job"?

icelancer• 6 years ago

> Is this comment sarcastic

yes

matsemann• 6 years ago

The drugs seized had a street value of N million dollars

In the words of Ali G: You're probably getting ripped off if you have to pay that much.

[0] https://youtu.be/B6Sg8D2Ci0Q?t=15

3131s• 6 years ago

http://freeleonardpickard.org/Skinner-Timeline.html

non-entity2• 6 years ago

Jesus 2 life sentences for manufacturing LSD? Wonder what people were getting for drugs that actually kill people.

seesawtron• 6 years ago

Tobacco and alcohol industry are getting government subsidies, bailouts and huge profit margins. Not sure about the other "illegal" drug manufacturers.

mindfulhack• 6 years ago

It's more acceptable and state-sanctioned to sell drugs that kill people while keeping them subdued, than ones that keep them alive and open their minds.

I don't want to sound like a crazy 'conspiracy theorist' or a 'hippie', but I don't know to distill this sad and truthful statement more simply than that.

masklinn6• 6 years ago

As zelly notes below the US has mandatory life sentence for certain amounts of drug production. Under 21 USC § 848(b), a life sentence is automatic for the principal administrator of a "continuing criminal enterprise" involving in excess of 300 times the quantities listed at 21 USC § 841(b)(1)(B), which for LSD would be (v):

1 gram or more of a mixture or substance containing a detectable amount of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD)

By all accounts, Pickard had produced kilos of LSD.

Not defending the life sentence (let alone two concurrently), but it's a logical consequence of the US's fucked up laws & sentencing guidelines.

Wonder what people were getting for drugs that actually kill people.

Depends, were they "black" of "leftist" drugs that "actually kill people"? I don't think anyone got jailed over leaded gas.

andrepd2• 6 years ago

Reminder that leaded gas is still in use.

dfalzone2• 6 years ago

Kilos? Jesus, what would that even look like? I can't imagine that that much LSD would exist in the world at the same time. Amazing

wefarrell• 6 years ago

Three years probation and community service for the Purdue Pharma execs that were convicted for distributing oxycontin to pill mills.

throwaway9955• 6 years ago

For those that want LSD but not have to be a criminal I recommend trying 1-P LSD which has the functional class of LSD without being illegal in most countries, happy tripping. If you're on the wall about trying it micro dose and work your way up to something functional.

non-entity2• 6 years ago

Is LSD schedule I in the US? If so it might be prosecutable under the federal analogue act, although whether that act matters seems to be somewhat debated.

I know some other countries have blanket bans on RCs and analogues as well.

masklinn6• 6 years ago

Is LSD schedule I in the US?

Yes. Most psychedelics are Schedule I. Though to be fair, that's in large part due to the UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances, of which only 11 UN member states are not party.

dr_dshiv• 6 years ago

Is the effect exactly the same or somewhat different?

luckylion• 6 years ago

Very close / the same in my experience. I've never had the exact same effect even from two doses of LSD from the same sheet, much less different producers, but 1p-lsd was just fine and felt the same to me.

I bought a bit before it was put on the controlled substances list in my country. A good demonstration that legal LSD doesn't end the world: it was legal, it was LSD, the world didn't end!

Nursie4• 6 years ago

It was thought to be a pro-drug for LSD, but I'm not sure that's been proven.

AL-LAD has also been spotted in recent years.

ShiftyOdin• 6 years ago

I find it extremely close. I believe that it metabolizes into LSD in your system. If I'm not mistaken.

exdsq• 6 years ago

In the UK we had an act introduced to combat legal highs by making essentially everything illegal and then legalising products, rather than trying to ban legal highs as they were discovered.

https://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2015/05/27/the-government-j...

jowsie• 6 years ago

Despite this 1P-LSD is still being sold in the UK in a supposedly legal way. It's sold as micro dosing pills that are low enough dose to not produce any psychedelic effects if you just take one. There's nothing stopping you from taking 10, though.

(I have no idea if this supposed workaround would actually be seen as legal if taken to court, but the company has been active and selling in the UK for over a year now, they are a sister company of the well known lizardlabs)

https://micro1p.com/

brodo• 6 years ago

It’s illegal in Germany since last year I think. But there is a new one 1P-a LSD (or something like that) which is supposed to be legal.

gallexme4• 6 years ago

1cP-LSD

intricatedetail2• 6 years ago

Government comitted crime against humanity. Suppression of research and freedom is unforgivable.

thinkingemote• 6 years ago

He wasn't doing research.

ethanbond• 6 years ago

But all of his customers were :)

Only being half humorous here.

kanobo• 6 years ago

Ironically if prisons in the US were actually for rehabilitation, LSD therapy could help some.

retreatguru• 6 years ago

This should be at the top. There is so much truth to this!

braindead_in• 6 years ago

He is gonna love his first trip once he's out. Respect.

rv-de• 6 years ago

if the drug legalization momentum keeps up in the US, he might be back in business one day - which would be awesome. psilos are great and all but LSD brings the right amount of fun to tripping in my experience.

melenaboija• 6 years ago

I found this video with some opinions about the case. I would say it is biased but I though it was interesting.

https://youtu.be/Ly6Zn1a-Xc0

nlh• 6 years ago

I found this line from the article particularly interesting:

“The court concluded that the 20 years served are sufficient for meeting the goals of incapacitation, deterrence, retribution, and rehabilitation.”

Deterrence and rehabilitation (yeah, right) I knew were “goals” of the US prison system, but I never realized that “incapacitation” and “retribution” were actual legally-stated goals.

aspenmayer• 6 years ago

Maybe we’re the bad guys?

jhardy54• 6 years ago

Only if you don't fight it. :~)

beervirus• 6 years ago

There are different theories of criminal punishment (i.e., different people subscribe to different philosophical justifications). Incapacitation is basically a special case of deterrence, in that you're deterring the individual who's in prison. Retribution is a little more controversial, but plenty of people see it as a valid goal.

melq4• 6 years ago

Technically speaking, retribution is a punishment dealt to someone for committing a crime, so any prison sentence is an act of retribution.

WillDaSilva2• 6 years ago

I'd argue that if the intention is entirely to rehabilitate (and incapacitate if necessary) then a prison sentence would only incidentally be a punishment.

dahfizz• 6 years ago

You don't give someone a life sentence to rehabilitate them. At some point, you have to recognize that certain people are dangers to society and need to be "incapacitated" from causing further harm.

lorenzorhoades• 6 years ago

Like Australia, but more expensive and brutal.

_2d30• 6 years ago

Incapacitation makes sense, no? Would we not want to incapacitate a serial killer's ability to serially kill? If we really believe crime is bad then we should want to incapacitate people from committing crimes.

baron816• 6 years ago

Government policy: prevent people from ruining their lives with drugs by ruining it for them with prison.

marcrosoft8• 6 years ago

There should be no victimless crimes! This man made a product that others willingly wanted for themselves. There are no victims here.

This can be applied to seatbelts, helmet laws, etc.

dEnigma• 6 years ago

I don't know. It could be traumatizing to kill someone in a rather unspectacular car crash just because they weren't using their seatbelt. Same for helmets.

platistocrates• 6 years ago

There is no such thing as a victimless crime.

sandworm1013• 6 years ago

> This man made a product that others willingly wanted for themselves. There are no victims here

People may think LSD or cocaine is all well and good, but there are far more dangerous substances out there. Things like Carfentanil need to be regulated. So too all the so-called "date rape" drugs. Just because some guy wants a powerful, tasteless, anesthetic that can be readily dissolved in water doesn't mean we should let him have it. Even if it has personal uses, the danger of such substances means they need controls.

wyldfire• 6 years ago

As a practical matter, helmet and seatbelt laws are effective and drug prohibition is not.

xg154• 6 years ago

Did I miss an /s or are you seriously arguing against seatbelt and helmet laws?

closeparen• 6 years ago

This arguments applies to the criminalization of possession and use, not manufacture and distribution.

marcrosoft8• 6 years ago

Manufacturing a substance harms no one. Distributing a substance to willing participants harms no one. possession harms no one. Use may harm the willing participant but I would argue for the freedom of that participant to make that choice.

zamalek• 6 years ago

America has a penitentiary system, not a rehabilitation system. The concept of ruining lives with prison is embedded in the name, so there is a level of honesty, at least.

monadic22• 6 years ago

Big government is only ok if it’s punitive, apparently.

newbie789• 6 years ago

This is delightful news. I really hope in the coming decades the research of organizations like MAPS get more attention and become completely mainstream.

Making psychedelics Schedule 1 set us back decades that could have been spent doing important research on a large number of mental health conditions.

rdmirza• 6 years ago

MAPS (multidisciplinary association of psychedelic studies) is systematically demonstrating the positive effects of psychedelics.

Their most impressive work is in PTSD. In Phase 2 trials, they took people with established PTSD (for years) and undertook ~3 guided psychotherapy sessions with MDMA. Within 2 months, 53% no longer met criteria for PTSD and at 12 months 68% didn't.

Far more efficacious that anything else we have. Powerful tool for psychologic healing.

chmod775• 6 years ago

What about the control groups in those trials? How many people?

Hard to tell how effective the treatment is with nothing to compare to.

james_s_tayler• 6 years ago

EMDR also works.

shitgoose• 6 years ago

Two life sentences. Barbaric.

LSD chemist William Pickard to be released from prison

Related Stories