|
|
|
Acid is back (and, in the case of several Drexel students, seized by police)
Lysergic Acid Diethylamide is back: and yes, it did go (mostly) away for a while.
Acid is back (and, in the case of several Drexel students, seized by police)
Lysergic Acid Diethylamide is back: and yes, it did go (mostly) away for a while.
Today, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office announced charges against an alleged “ring” of LSD dealers who had been operating on Drexel’s campus— to the tune of as much as $5,000 to $15,000 per week’s worth, according to the DA.
Putting aside tantalizing details like the Homer Simpson blotter paper and the 9,500 hits the ring was allegedly busted with — and putting aside the question of how we all feel about the drug wars, especially when it comes to drugs not usually associated with violence — what makes this bust particularly interesting is that it seems to be indicative of the resurrection of LSD.
Acid has been around for decades — and it’s never completely gone away — but it has had some pretty serious supply droughts, as Ryan Grim (an acquaintance of mine from my brief stint freelancing for the Washington City Paper) pointed out in a 2004 Slate article and in his book a few years ago, This is Your Country on Drugs.
Starting from his own personal observation that there had seemed to be acid everywhere in the mid-90s and almost nowhere by the early 2000s, Grim managed to confirm what had been a stark national trend:
[A University of Michigan study] has documented the rise and decline of many drugs, but lead researcher Dr. Lloyd Johnston says the group has never seen such a dramatic drop in the use of an established illicit drug as they're seeing now with LSD. In both the 2000 and 2001 surveys, 6.6 percent of high-school seniors reported that they'd used LSD in the previous year. In 2002, the figure dropped to 3.5 percent. And in the most recent survey, from 2003, only 1.9 percent of high-school seniors claim to have dropped acid. (The standard error for this LSD survey is 0.25 percentage points.)
Evidence of acid's decline can be found practically everywhere you look: in the number of emergency room mentions of the drug; in an ongoing federal survey of drug use; in a huge drop in federal arrests; and in anecdotal reports from the field that the once ubiquitous psychedelic is exceedingly difficult to score. In major cities and college towns where LSD was once plentiful, it can't be had at all.
Eventually, Grim traced the likely cause of the shortage to the arrest of one or two major suppliers.
Given these arrests, the national acid shortage seems to have ended.
- ActiVman
- adventures
- Arts
- Ask A Man-About-Town
- Award Tour
- Awards
- Bad Idea Factory
- Beer
- Below the Curve
- Bikes
- Booze
- Brian Hickey
- BRT
- Budget
- Budget Fuss
- Business
- Casinos
- City Council
- City Hall
- CouncilMANIC
- CP Abroad
- CP in the Community
- Criminal Justice System
- Day Tripper
- Death and Taxes
- Delaware River
- Design
- DROP
- Drugs
- Dubious Distinction
- Elections
- End of Days
- Environment
- Fashion
- Film Fest
- Financial Meltdown
- FrackTrack
- Free Library
- Gambling
- Gay Stuff
- Get Lit
- Greenstorming
- guns
- Hall Monitor
- Health
- Health Care
- Hello, Kitty
- Holidays
- Ice Cubes
- Iggles
- Immigration
- In Memoriam
- Labor
- Lawsuits
- Letters
- LGBTQ
- Maps
- Marcellus Shale
- Media
- MMA
- Mummers
- Music
- MUST READ
- Mysterious Mysteries
- Nation
- News
- Non Sequitur
- Opinion
- PA politics 2010
- Parking Wars
- Parks and Recreation
- People Send Us This Stuff
- Philadelphia Police
- Philadelphia Union
- Philaphemera
- Philly From Scratch
- philly madness
- Photos
- Poverty
- PPA
- President Obama
- Print Edition
- Prisons
- Protest
- Readers Write
- Real Estate
- Rock Bottom
- Schools
- Science
- Screwing Philly
- SEPTA
- snow
- So Lush
- Soccer
- Sporting Life
- Sports Complex
- State Politicians
- State Politics
- Street Art
- Strike
- Stuff We Like
- Taxes
- Taxi Drivers
- Tech Fetish
- television
- The Budget Crisis
- The City Paper
- The CLOG
- The Human Condition
- The Mayor
- The Phightin Phils
- The World
- Things that make you go hm
- Tinfoil Hats Off
- Under the Table
- Under the Tables
- Urban Development
- Urban Planning
- urban wildlife
- Video Poker
- We Call Shenanigans
- Weather
- Web Junk
- Weekend Omnibus
- White House
- What We've Found
- Women's Issues
- Flyered Up!
- How 'Bout That Weather?
- it's always sunny in philadelphia
- Stu!
- Shopping
- get out
- 10-track mind
- ArtsFlash
- Bloggity
- Bruce Being Bruce
- Colleges
- Comedy
- Gigantic Surprises
- Hello Canary
- Hello Puppy
- errata
- get lost
- Inside The Fishbowl
- Library Closings
- Local Support
- Movies
- Murder
- Night Moves
- Recycling
- radio
- Scientology
- Sex
- Sixers
- Skeeze Police
- State Politicians Screwing Philly
- That's a cool stencil!
- Theater
- Things We See
- This Week
- This Week in Oates
- University City
- WIN
- What we don't heart
- trailer!
- what we heart
- Feeling Guilty
- Askadelphia.
- Broke in Philly
- Contest
- Dance
- Dear Paper Doll
- Do A Good Thing
- Education
- Film Fest Schism
- G20-20 Vision
- Goodbye
- Gossip
- Great American Heroes
- PATCO
- Pearl Jam Week
- Puppy
- Stars of the Photostream
- sustainability
- Lower Merion Webcam-Gate
- The Cycle
- Equality Forum
- Bureaucrat of the Week
- Animals
- ElectionEar
- Photostream
