Thanks to Beto O'Rourke, LSD Has Entered the 2020 Conversation
These days, you can't be considered a valid Democratic presidential candidate unless you have a progressive stance on weed. The most glaring sign that Beto O'Rourke would announce his intent to be President of the United States, before he officially announced it last week, was his decision to call for the nationwide legalization of marijuana. That put him in step with Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, and other candidates, none of whom want marijuana to be the political issue that sends their campaign up in smoke. Times are changing. Weed is old news. It's about as fresh as Bernie Sanders' haircut.
Psychedelics, however, aren't old news. And this weekend, O'Rourke said on the campaign trail, while signing a skateboard, that he has never done LSD, according to U.S. News and World Report. That tidbit was immediately covered by multiple outlets-along with reports that O'Rourke used to pen violent fiction online under the username "Psychedelic Warlord" when he was a teen. LSD and whether someone has or has not done it doesn't matter a wit right now, and if it becomes a defining issue in the 2020 election, that would be a real shocker. But somewhere down the line, there's a chance it could get the recognition weed is getting right now.
Look at marijuana's road to the mainstream. In 2014, grassroots efforts got it legalized in Colorado, and in the time since, nine more states have voted to legalize it. Medical marijuana use is permitted in more than half the states. And now, we have 2020 presidential candidates going on the record, laughing about smoking weed. (Beto hasn't copped up to smoking it.) More importantly, almost every big Democratic hitter in the Senate has backed Cory Booker's Marijuana Justice Act, which proposes federal decriminalization and the expunging of criminal records. Marijuana went from 4/20 joke to presidential fodder in a matter of five years.
To be clear, LSD and other illegal psychedelics did not leave a trail of carnage behind them like marijuana. The War on Drugs targeted minority Americans, incarcerating black and Latino men and women at vastly higher rates than white people, with marijuana racking up more convictions than any other drug. And as recreational marijuana becomes more normalized-a.k.a. white people feel more comfortable with its private and public use-politicians, cannabis companies, and consumers have to grapple with how to right those injustices. There can't be a system where only wealthy Americans get wealthier by gentrifying weed.
LSD does show remarkable medical promise. As more scientists conduct research, it has been shown to help people with depression, schizophrenia, and OCD. Research shows microdosing it could reduce depression and anxiety. Psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound in magic mushrooms, is equally as promising-and there's a legalization movement for medical use gaining traction in, where else, Denver. We're retracing marijuana's steps with psychedelics.
In the 2020 Democratic primary, it shouldn't just be a question of: Do you think weed should be legalized? It should be a question of: How can weed be legalized to benefit the people most traumatized by its illegality? LSD won't be a campaign promise in 2020. But Beto, who skateboards (albeit poorly) and hangs with Willie Nelson, who has enough confidence to say his campaign is modeled off the "punk rock adventure," and who's male enough to say he was "born to be" president, is the reason it's in play. He's the closest thing to "cool" the Democratic party has right now. Give it another few years, and it might make political sense to ask a presidential wannabe if they think psychedelics should be legal.
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