[el_nahual]

Datura is an interesting example that proves that what makes drugs criminalized is not their potential for damage, but rather their potential for fun.

Datura can (and I'm sure does) fuck you up permanently. It's perfectly legal.

MDMA is far safer, but far more fun, and so illegal.

Alcohol is interesting in this context. Kind of fun, kind of dangerous.

In other words, what the govt is trying to minimize is not harm, but rather "incidence of mind-altered states" which reduces to "criminalize those substances that are so unambiguously delightful that if they were legal people would take them all the time, regardless of danger, risk, or health effects."

This also explains why psychiatric medicine sucks: it's not allowed to be fun! If it were fun, it would be prone to "abuse" (read: recreational usage). That results in an entire class of treatments being disallowed, and makes available only those where the side effects (constipation, brain fog, loss of libido, etc) are of greater magnitude then any mood-altering effects.