Casey William Hardison (born 1971) is an American chemist convicted in the United Kingdom in 2005 of six offences involving psychedelic drugs: three of production, two of possession, and one of exportation. [1] [2]
Casey William Hardison (born 1971) is an American chemist convicted in the United Kingdom in 2005 of six offences involving psychedelic drugs: three of production, two of possession, and one of exportation. [1] [2]
Hardison was born in Washington state in the summer of 1971. [3] He is committed to the entheogenic use of psychedelic substances. [4]
In 2000, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies published in its bulletin Hardison's "An Amateur Qualitative Study of 48 2C-T-7 Subjective Bioassays." According to Hardison, 2C-T-7 is "a fairly novel entheogenic compound that has been used in a limited context as an adjunct in psychedelic psychotherapy since 1986." [5]
The Drug Equality Alliance, a nonprofit organization working to secure equal rights and protections for drug users, was set up by lawyer Darryl Bickler inspired by Hardison's legal arguments. [6]
After moving to Brighton, Hardison illegally manufactured three class A drugs: 2C-B, DMT, and LSD. [7] Having set up a laboratory in his rented bungalow, [7] he used £38,386 worth of chemical ingredients to produce hallucinogenic tablets with a street value of up to £5m. [8]
In July 2003, Hardison sent two packages to the U.S. During a random inspection at the FedEx hub in Memphis, Tennessee, [9] officials found four bags of MDMA (Ecstasy) hidden between pages of a magazine. MDMA is a psychoactive drug used primarily as a recreational drug at parties and raves. [7] [8] Thus alerted, British authorities monitored Hardison until arresting him near Brighton in February 2004. [8]
The case was complicated by the involvement of U.S. law enforcement agents, some of whom attended the trial as witnesses. Hardison represented himself in court. [2]
Hardison challenged the drug laws as violating his cognitive liberty and his rights to freedom of thought, therapy and religion, [4] contending that his basic human rights and liberties were violated by his arrest, detention and prosecution. In response, the judge of the Crown Court wrote, "I have come to the sure and clear conclusion that Mr. Hardison's arguments are misconceived and I reject each and every one of the Human Rights arguments." [10]
In March 2005, after a 10-week trial at Lewes Crown Court, [9] the jury found Hardison guilty. Calling him a "dangerous individual," the judge said Hardison was motivated by greed and set up his ‘illegal’ drug factory [1] —which a chemist from the Forensic Science Service called the most complex laboratory he had ever encountered [9] —in the UK because U.S. drug laws were "too hot." The court was told Hardison's father used proceeds of his son's crimes to buy a yacht. [1]
In April 2005, Hardison was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment in the UK with a recommendation that he be deported upon his release. [2] [7]
In May 2006, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales rejected Hardison's first application for leave to appeal, finding that none of his grounds had sufficient merit. In his decision, Justice Keith wrote that Hardison's criminal enterprise "was not an amateurish operation in a garden shed. It was a careful and calculated attempt to introduce new synthetic drugs onto the UK market which could have reaped great financial rewards." [9]
Subsequently, the House of Lords (then the court of last resort for UK criminal law) refused Hardison's final appeal, and his similar appeal to the European Court of Human Rights likewise failed. [4]
Hardison found drugs readily available in prison. "LSD, 2C-B, DMT, pharmahuasca, research chemicals, kratom, cannabis, home-brewed alcohol—I did a whole bunch of shit in there," he told Vice in 2014. "Drugs are more available in prison than they would be for the common man trying to find them on the street. And the British prison system is fairly gentle—it's pretty damn civilized." [3]
Following his release from prison in May 2013, [4] Hardison was deported from the UK to the U.S. [3] After living in Victor, Idaho, [11] he moved to Northern California. [12]
On January 17, 2017, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, after drinking heavily, Hardison and two other men consumed a substance believed by the Teton County, Wyoming coroner to be the psychedelic drug 5-MeO-DMT. [13] One of the men, artist and filmmaker Anthony Birkholz, [14] died from aspiration of vomitus secondary to food, alcohol and 5-MeO-DMT ingestion. The jury at the coroner's inquest found that Birkholz's death was accidental but could have been prevented. [13] [15] Hardison called 5-MeO-DMT "a very rare, beautiful experience," but admitted he hadn't done any since the night Birkholz died. "Looking back now," he said, "I'm not so charmed." [16]
A day after Birkholz's death, Hardison launched a GoFundMe page, "Tony Birkholz Slips the Mortal Coil," raising $6,100.[ citation needed ] "This campaign," Hardison wrote, "intends to raise memorial funds and to ensure his remains reach his intended destination. Any remaining funds will be donated to the Buffalo Field Campaign, West Yellowstone, Montana, in the fight to protect the last remaining wild buffalo." After several hundred people attended a vigil at the Pink Garter, [14] a music venue and cocktail lounge in Jackson, Wyoming, [17] Hardison said part of the $6,100 raised online paid for the open bar that night. None of the remaining $3,900, however, was immediately donated as pledged to the Buffalo Field Campaign.
In February 2017, Hardison was stopped in Bellevue, Idaho, for speeding. After a drug-sniffing dog detected controlled drugs, police searched Hardison's vehicle. They found $7,928 in cash, about two pounds (≈ 0.9 kg) of marijuana, a half gram of cocaine and what was believed to be heroin. However, tests by the Idaho State Police labs determined that the suspected substance was not heroin. [11] Hardison admitted that half of the $7,928 in cash was the missing GoFundMe money collected to honor Tony Birkholz. [14] On March 21, Hardison pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from the traffic stop. [11]
In June 2017, a member of Birkholz's family filed a complaint with the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center accusing Hardison of fraud. [14] The $3,900 donation to the Buffalo Field Campaign in honor of Anthony Birkholz was finally made in September 2020. [18]
In August 2017, all charges against Hardison, including three felony counts and one misdemeanor, were dismissed after a judge ruled that the traffic stop was unconstitutionally delayed without reasonable suspicion, allowing a canine officer time to detect the presence of controlled substances. [12]
According to the Jackson Hole News & Guide, on August 6, 2018, police attempted to arrest Hardison for selling a large quantity of marijuana to an undercover officer. However, Hardison eluded them after a high-speed chase. [19]
On July 28, 2020, Hardison was arrested in Yorkville, CA, by the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office. A $500,000 Fugitive From Justice warrant saw Hardison extradited back to Jackson, to face charges stemming from the botched sting operation by Wyoming officers. [20] On November 17, 2020, in his defense, Hardison planned to present a motion to Dismiss the Indictment based on the premise that the Wyoming Controlled Substances Act, W.S. § 35-7-1001 et seq., ("the Act") violates his due process and equal protection rights guaranteed by the Wyoming Constitution and the Constitution for the United States of America. [21]
On September 2, 2024, Hardison was arrested at the annual Burning Man festival by the Pershing County Sheriff's Office for Sexual Assault, Arrest on Other-Agency Warrant, and for Possession of Scheduled (1) or (2) C/S LT 14 Grams, 1st or 2nd Offense. The Arrest on Other-Agency Warrant was due to an outstanding warrant related to the prior Wyoming charges, after Casey again left the Jackson Hole area before his legal situation was resolved. [22] [23]
In a January 22, 2021 interview with the Jackson Hole News&Guide , Casey Hardison announced his 2024 bid for president. Before he slipped underground again, Hardison had planned to run for President in the forthcoming general election as a candidate for a revived Democratic-Republican Party, originally founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in 1792. [24]
N,N-Dimethyltryptamine is a substituted tryptamine that occurs in many plants and animals, including humans, and which is both a derivative and a structural analog of tryptamine. DMT is used as a psychedelic drug and prepared by various cultures for ritual purposes as an entheogen.
Psychedelics are a subclass of hallucinogenic drugs whose primary effect is to trigger non-ordinary mental states and a perceived "expansion of consciousness". Also referred to as classic hallucinogens or serotonergic hallucinogens, the term psychedelic is sometimes used more broadly to include various types of hallucinogens, such as those which are atypical or adjacent to psychedelia like salvia and MDMA, respectively.
Alexander Theodore "Sasha" Shulgin was an American biochemist, broad researcher of synthetic psychoactive compounds, and author of works regarding these, who independently explored the organic chemistry and pharmacology of such agents—in his mid-life and later, many through preparation in his home laboratory, and testing on himself. He is acknowledged to have introduced to broader use, in the late 1970s, the prior synthesized compound, MDMA ("ecstasy") in research psychopharmacology and in combination with conventional therapy, the latter through presentations and academic publications, including to psychologists; and for the rediscovery, occasional discovery, and regular synthesis and personal use and distribution, possibly of hundreds of psychoactive compounds. As such, Shulgin is seen both as a pioneering and a controversial participant in the emergence of the broad use of psychedelics.
Club drugs, also called rave drugs or party drugs, are a loosely defined category of recreational drugs which are associated with discothèques in the 1970s and nightclubs, dance clubs, electronic dance music (EDM) parties, and raves in the 1980s to today. Unlike many other categories, such as opiates and benzodiazepines, which are established according to pharmaceutical or chemical properties, club drugs are a "category of convenience", in which drugs are included due to the locations they are consumed and/or where the user goes while under the influence of the drugs. Club drugs are generally used by adolescents and young adults.
Entheogens are psychoactive substances, including psychedelic drugs, used in sacred contexts in religion for inducing spiritual development throughout history.
2C-B (4-bromo-2,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine), also known as Nexus, is a synthetic psychedelic drug of the 2C family, mainly used as a recreational drug. The substance was first synthesized by Alexander Shulgin in 1974, and gained an initial reputation for potential psychotherapeutic use, but its use has been limited to mainly recreational use. To date, there is limited scientific information regarding the drug's pharmacokinetics and pharmacological effects in humans. The existing studies primarily classify 2C-B as a stimulant and hallucinogen, and less commonly an entactogen and empathogen.
2C-T-7 is a psychedelic phenethylamine of the 2C family. In his book PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story, Alexander Shulgin lists the dosage range as 10–30 mg. 2C-T-7 is generally taken orally, and produces psychedelic and entactogenic effects that last 8 to 15 hours. Up until Operation Web Tryp and three deaths, two of which involved the use of other drugs in addition to 2C-T-7, and one which involved an excessive insufflated dose, 2C-T-7 was sold commercially in Dutch and Japanese smartshops and online. It is known on the streets as Blue Mystic or 7th Heaven. There has been little real research done on this chemical other than Shulgin's comments in PiHKAL and a few small animal studies mostly aimed at detecting metabolites.
2C-E is a psychedelic phenethylamine of the 2C family. It was first synthesized by Alexander Shulgin and documented in his book PiHKAL. Like the other substances in its family, it produces sensory and cognitive effects in its physical reactions with living organisms.
5-MeO-DMT (5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine), also known as O-methylbufotenin or mebufotenin, is a psychedelic of the tryptamine family. It is found in a wide variety of plant species, and also is secreted by the glands of at least one toad species, the Colorado River toad. Like its close relatives dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and bufotenin (5-HO-DMT), it has been used as an entheogen in South America. Slang terms include Five-methoxy, the power, bufo, and toad venom.
2C-C is a psychedelic drug of the 2C family. It was first synthesized by Alexander Shulgin, sometimes used as an entheogen. In his book PiHKAL , Shulgin lists the dosage range as 20–40 mg. 2C-C is usually taken orally, but may also be insufflated. 2C-C is schedule I of section 202(c) of the Controlled Substances Act in the United States, signed into law as of July, 2012 under the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act.
Psilocin, also known as 4-hydroxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (4-OH-DMT), is a substituted tryptamine alkaloid and a serotonergic psychedelic. It is present in most psychedelic mushrooms together with its phosphorylated counterpart psilocybin. Psilocin is a Schedule I drug under the Convention on Psychotropic Substances. Acting on the serotonin 5-HT2A receptors, psilocin's psychedelic effects are directly correlated with the drug's occupancy at these receptor sites. The subjective mind-altering effects of psilocin are highly variable and are said to resemble those of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT).
Bufotenin, also known as dimethylserotonin or as 5-hydroxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (5-HO-DMT), is a tryptamine derivative, more specifically, a dimethyltryptamine (DMT) analogue, related to the neurotransmitter serotonin. It is an alkaloid found in some species of mushrooms, plants and toads, especially the skin. It is also found naturally in the human body in small amounts.
David Earl Nichols is an American pharmacologist and medicinal chemist. Previously the Robert C. and Charlotte P. Anderson Distinguished Chair in Pharmacology at Purdue University, Nichols has worked in the field of psychoactive drugs since 1969. While still a graduate student, he patented the method that is used to make the optical isomers of hallucinogenic amphetamines. His contributions include the synthesis and reporting of escaline, LSZ, 6-APB, 2C-I-NBOMe and other NBOMe variants, and several others, as well as the coining of the term "entactogen".
2C-P is a relatively potent and long acting psychedelic phenethylamine of the 2C family.
Nicholas Sand was a cult figure known in the psychedelic community for his work as a clandestine chemist from 1966 to 1996 for the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Sand was part of the League for Spiritual Discovery at the Millbrook estate in New York, has been credited as the "first underground chemist on record to have synthesized DMT" and is known for manufacturing large amounts of LSD.
Psilacetin, also known as O-acetylpsilocin or as 4-acetoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine, is a semi-synthetic serotonergic psychedelic drug that has been suggested by David Nichols to be a potentially useful alternative to psilocybin for pharmacological studies, as they are both believed to be prodrugs of psilocin. However, some users report that O-acetylpsilocin's subjective effects differ from those of psilocybin and psilocin. Additionally, some users prefer 4-AcO-DMT to natural psilocybin mushrooms due to feeling fewer adverse side effects such as nausea and heavy body load, which are more frequently reported in experiences involving natural mushrooms. It is the acetylated form of the psilocybin mushroom alkaloid psilocin and is a lower homolog of 4-AcO-MET, 4-AcO-DET, 4-AcO-MiPT and 4-AcO-DiPT.
25I-NBOMe, also known as Smiles, or N-Bomb, is a novel synthetic psychoactive substance with strong hallucinogenic properties, synthesized in 2003 for research purposes. Since 2010, it has circulated in the recreational drug scene, often misrepresented as LSD.
The legal status of unauthorised actions with psilocybin mushrooms varies worldwide. Psilocybin and psilocin are listed as Schedule I drugs under the United Nations 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances. Schedule I drugs are defined as drugs with a high potential for abuse or drugs that have no recognized medical uses. However, psilocybin mushrooms have had numerous medicinal and religious uses in dozens of cultures throughout history and have a significantly lower potential for abuse than other Schedule I drugs.
This is an overview of the legality of ayahuasca by country. DMT, one of the active ingredients in ayahuasca, is classified as a Schedule I drug under the United Nations 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, meaning that international trade in DMT is supposed to be closely monitored; use of DMT is supposed to be restricted to scientific research and medical use. Natural materials containing DMT, including ayahuasca, are not regulated under the 1971 Psychotropic Convention. The majority of the world's nations classify DMT as a scheduled drug; however, few countries seem to have laws specifically addressing the possession or use of ayahuasca.
4-Propionoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine is a synthetic psychedelic drug from the tryptamine family with psychedelic effects, and is believed to act as a prodrug for psilocin. It produces a head-twitch response in mice. It has been sold online as a designer drug since May 2019. It was first identified as a new psychoactive substance in Sweden, in July 2019. A number of related derivatives have been synthesized as prodrugs of psilocin for medical applications.
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