I, myself, am not one who partakes in psychedelics. I have nothing against those who do and wish them the best of luck on their journey, preferably not somewhere I’ll have to deal with it. I’m just not particularly interested in opening my mind, seeing as it’s the source of many, if not all, of my problems. I’m on Zoloft, basically a prescription drug to help close my mind because it was too open to disastrous possibilities. I have, though, been offered it, which is how you know I’m still cool, man!
In pure form, LSD is a liquid. This is inconvenient in a lot of cases, especially transport. As far as forms of matter go, in terms of easy portability, liquid (and gas) are both miles behind everyone’s favorite: solid. So, it’s usually soaked into a carrier, one that makes everything a little bit easier, as long as there’s something sweat- and rainproof between it and your pocket lining. Most frequently, it’s distributed through blotter paper, paper soaked in LSD and then cut into convenient little squares. If you have even a sniff of psychonaut in you, none of this is new information.
What you might not know, though, is that part of the reason blotter paper is the LSD distribution method du jour has to do with a Supreme Court case. The case in question is Chapman v. United States from 1991, and concerns defendants who had been given the mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison for possessing more than one gram of a “mixture or substance containing a detectable amount of LSD.” The point of contention that took it to the Supreme Court is that the defendants in question had only been in possession of 50 milligrams of actual LSD. The recorded weight of 5.7 grams included the weight of the blotter paper used as a form of distribution.
The Supreme Court ruled against the defendants, saying that the blotter paper — and therefore, one can imagine, any other distribution medium — was considered part of this “mixture or substance,” which meant that the medium you chose to carry your LSD on wasn’t pure preference, but had serious ramifications, should you get caught. The best option, obviously, would be the pure liquid, but as we’ve discussed, that’s a massive pain in the ass. And so, blotter paper wasn’t going anywhere.
What was going somewhere, that somewhere being far out of favor, was another popular method: sugar cubes. Sugar cubes with drops of LSD were another, much better tasting option, but this ruling suddenly made the trippers responsible for the comparatively leaden weight of the sugar itself. Sugar cubes, going by Domino’s website, are 3.5 grams a piece — or well above one gram, meaning that a single dose of LSD on a single sugar cube would be enough to get you a mandatory five-year sentence. It would take roughly 200 hits of LSD on blotter paper to hit the gram required to trigger that minimum sentence. A margin wide enough to outweigh any Deadhead’s sweet tooth.
Plus, you can’t put Bart Simpson’s face on a sugar cube.