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 will 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]
In a January 22, 2021 interview with the Jackson Hole News&Guide , Casey Hardison announced his 2024 bid for president. Hardison plans to run for President in the next general election as a candidate for a revived Democratic-Republican Party, originally founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in 1792. [22]
Ayahuasca is a South American psychoactive and entheogenic brewed drink traditionally used both socially and as a ceremonial or shamanic spiritual medicine among the indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin, and more recently in North America and Europe. The infusion causes altered states of consciousness often known as "psychedelic experiences" which include visual hallucinations and altered perceptions of reality.
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.
Lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly known as LSD and known colloquially as acid, is a potent psychedelic drug. Effects typically include intensified thoughts, emotions, and sensory perception. At sufficiently high dosages LSD manifests primarily mental, visual, as well as auditory, hallucinations. Dilated pupils, increased blood pressure, and increased body temperature are typical. Effects typically begin within half an hour and can last for up to 20 hours. LSD is also capable of causing mystical experiences and ego dissolution. It is used mainly as a recreational drug or for spiritual reasons. LSD is both the prototypical psychedelic and one of the "classical" psychedelics, being the psychedelic with the greatest scientific and cultural significance. LSD is synthesized as a solid compound, typically in the form of a powder or a crystalline material. This solid LSD is then dissolved in a liquid solvent, such as ethanol or distilled water, to create a solution. The liquid serves as a carrier for the LSD, allowing for accurate dosage and administration onto small pieces of blotter paper called tabs. LSD is typically either swallowed or held under the tongue.
Psychedelics are a subclass of hallucinogenic drugs whose primary effect is to trigger non-ordinary mental states and/or an apparent expansion of consciousness. Sometimes, they are called classic hallucinogens, serotonergic hallucinogens, or serotonergic psychedelics, and the term psychedelic is sometimes used more broadly to include various types of hallucinogens or those which are atypical or adjacent to psychedelia such as MDMA or cannabis; this article uses the narrower definition of psychedelics. True psychedelics cause specific psychological, visual, and auditory changes, and oftentimes a substantially altered state of consciousness. Psychedelic states are often compared to meditative, psychodynamic or transcendental types of alterations of the mind. The "classical" psychedelics, the psychedelics with the largest scientific and cultural influence, are mescaline, LSD, psilocybin, and DMT. In particular, LSD has long been considered the paradigmatic psychedelic compound to which all other psychedelics are often or usually compared.
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.
William Leonard Pickard is one of two people convicted in the largest lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) manufacturing case in history. In 2000, while moving their LSD laboratory across Kansas, Pickard and Clyde Apperson were pulled over while driving a Ryder rental truck and a follow car. The laboratory had been stored near a renovated Atlas-E missile silo near Wamego, Kansas. Gordon Todd Skinner, one of the men intimately involved in the case but not charged due to his cooperation, owned the property where the laboratory equipment was stored.
Psilocin is a substituted tryptamine alkaloid and a serotonergic psychedelic substance. 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 5-HT2A receptors, psilocin modulates the production and reuptake of serotonin. The mind-altering effects of psilocin are highly variable and subjective and resemble those of LSD and DMT.
Set and setting, when referring to a psychedelic drug experience or the use of other psychoactive substances, means one's mindset and the physical and social environment in which the user has the experience. Set and setting are factors that can condition the effects of psychoactive substances: "Set" refers to the mental state a person brings to the experience, like thoughts, mood and expectations; "setting" to the physical and social environment. This is especially relevant for psychedelic experiences in either a therapeutic or recreational context.
The psychedelic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) was first synthesized on November 16, 1938, by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann in the Sandoz laboratories in Basel, Switzerland. It was not until five years later on April 19, 1943, that the psychedelic properties were found.
DET, also known under its chemical name N,N-diethyltryptamine and as T-9, is a psychedelic drug closely related to DMT and 4-HO-DET. However, despite its structural similarity to DMT, its activity is induced by an oral dose of around 50–100 mg, without the aid of MAO inhibitors, and the effects last for about 2–4 hours.
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".
ALD-52, also known as 1-acetyl-LSD, is a chemical analogue of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). It was originally discovered by Albert Hofmann in 1957 but was not widely studied until the rise in popularity of psychedelics in the 1960s.
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.
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Hallucinogens are a large and diverse class of psychoactive drugs that can produce altered states of consciousness characterized by major alterations in thought, mood, and perception as well as other changes. Most hallucinogens can be categorized as either being psychedelics, dissociatives, or deliriants.
Albert Hofmann was a Swiss chemist known for being the first to synthesize, ingest, and learn of the psychedelic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Hofmann's team also isolated, named and synthesized the principal psychedelic mushroom compounds psilocybin and psilocin. He authored more than 100 scientific articles and numerous books, including LSD: Mein Sorgenkind. In 2007, he shared first place with Tim Berners-Lee on a list of the 100 greatest living geniuses published by The Daily Telegraph newspaper.
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.
Robert "Tim" Scully is an American computer engineer, best known in the psychedelic underground for his work in the production of LSD from 1966 to 1969, for which he was indicted in 1973 and convicted in 1974. His best known product, dubbed "Orange Sunshine", was considered the standard for quality LSD in 1969. He was featured in the documentary The Sunshine Makers.
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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.
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