Drugs like LSD and Salvia are powerful. Power is always dangerous.

Many people who have handled LSD have considered its potential as a weapon -- the CIA supposedly had considered a plan to involuntarily dose Fidel Castro so that he would become delusional during a public appearance. I haven't heard many drug warriors appeal to the dangers of dosing as a reason for prohibition, but it is surely one concern.

I've never known anyone who was "dosed" with a drug, but I am familiar with the urban legend of drinks spiked with alcohol, or marijuana laced with PCP. I don't know what drives people to do things like this -- is it simply a mix-up of the drugs? Is it malicious? Does someone think it would be funny to involuntarily intoxicate another person? Does some demented soul actually think he'd be doing another person a favor by slipping a drug into their bloodstream?

Those are questions for the ages, but if anyone thinks that dosing another person is harmless (especially with psychadelics), read this story, with it's quite gory details:

An 18-year-old woman was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, after reportedly smoking marijuana, with schizophrenia-type symptoms. She was agitated, disorganized and hallucinating. Several days later, her former boyfriend revealed that she had unknowingly smoked leaves and leaf extracts of Salvia divinorum added to her marijuana joint. The young woman had a long history of cannabis use with no untoward effects, but had never before used salvia. After increasing self-mutilating behavior in the hospital, she was involuntarily admitted to a closed ward.

I've been following the news on Salvia, and this is the first that I've heard of a person having sustained, acute reactions to it (it's dementia typically receeds in about 5 minutes when smoked). Based on what I know about psychedelic drugs*, I think that the negative effects were probably amplified by the fact that she was unaware of her intoxication.

So as libertarians, we have to consider scenerios such as the one above. Is it sufficient cause for prohibiting a drug? I think our answer would have to be "no", on the basis that the risk of using a drug as a weapon is no different than using any other weapon. But there is also an argument to be made that prohibition actually increases the risks from involuntary drug conspution: people who have experienced the drug previously may be more likely to understand what is happening to them and respond in a manner that returns them to sobriety.

Anyway, this is one more disturbing fact of the world, and something we need to face.

*for example, LSD is effective in minuscule amounts, most of the drug does not go to the brain, and its effects last long after the drug has been metabolized -- suggesting that it shifts the brain into a semi-stable alternative state, rather than simply causing a transient modification of brain chemistry.