Criteria for a Socially Sanctionable Drug

Abstract

In all recorded history, including accounts of preliterate peoples, there is irrefutable evidence that in practically every culture and every society man has developed technique or found mecbanisms whose psychological, physiological and biological effects have permitted him temporarily to alter the state of his consciouness and tbereby escape a world that seem all too present, all too humdrum, all too much with him. The occasional need to alter his state of consciousness appear to be one of man's basic drives. The e alterations-which must be dearly different by an order of magnitude from man ‘normal’ experience and expectations-involve one or more of man senses, his conceptual cognitive and ideational processes, his mood and emotions, and the integrative functions of hi mind. That tbese alte.rations appear to be a basic need for p ychic relea e can be seen in the enormous ran e and variety of the psychobiological consciousness-changing technique and mechanisms that have been developed and explored and the multiplicity of purpose to which they have been put. Their very en tence is a testament to the efficacyof man's ability to atisfy thi need.