The problem with what you're saying isn't how it sounds, it's that there's no evidence for what you're saying.
My understanding, looking at the history of psychedelic regulation, is that it had nothing to do with preventing people from opening their minds: the people who did the regulating don't think the concept of "opening your mind" even exists. I'll let John Ehrlichman (Nixon aide) explain:
"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. [...] We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
You might say, "well that's the same thing as being against opening minds" but it's really not. Keep in mind, a lot of times cops simply planted drugs on people to arrest them: why would they wrongly accuse someone of trying to open their mind if their intent was to prevent people from opening their minds? The answer is, that wasn't their intent. They didn't plant drugs on people to prevent them from opening their minds, they planted drugs on them because they were black or antiwar.
Agreed, but in a response to a comment whose claim is "It's more acceptable and state-sanctioned..." without differentiating who is doing the accepting or what elements of the state are doing the sanctioning, I think we've already accepted a level of oversimplification.
Reality is always more complicated than anyone says.
My understanding, looking at the history of psychedelic regulation, is that it had nothing to do with preventing people from opening their minds: the people who did the regulating don't think the concept of "opening your mind" even exists. I'll let John Ehrlichman (Nixon aide) explain:
"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. [...] We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
You might say, "well that's the same thing as being against opening minds" but it's really not. Keep in mind, a lot of times cops simply planted drugs on people to arrest them: why would they wrongly accuse someone of trying to open their mind if their intent was to prevent people from opening their minds? The answer is, that wasn't their intent. They didn't plant drugs on people to prevent them from opening their minds, they planted drugs on them because they were black or antiwar.