One of the imponderables was how millions of doses of that crap was manufactured and nobody went to jail. It came out of California, at least at first. A guy named Owsley, chemical warfare is illegal, but that’s basically what it was.
“A guy named Owsley”
Fascinating. I looked this guy up and he was in the USAF in 1958. The 50’s and 60’s were prime years for the CIA’s MKUltra and related research going on in the US and Canada of which LSD was extensively tested and used on university students and US Military.
The question being, did this guy have some connection to this research. Even if he were one of the research test subjects while in the USAF would give him such a connection.
Those interested in how LSD factored in to the death of a CIA researcher, watch “Wormwood” on Netflix. This is a multi-part documentary discussing LSD and related CIA activities of the era.
I visited my cousin in 1972 in Palo Alto.
He had a quart bottle of 100 proof Smirnoff. Into that bottle he put an eye dropper and dropped a drop onto 3 separate pieces of plain paper for myself and two friends.
He swore it was the concoction of a close associate of Owsley, AND that Owsley continued to make small batches in collaboration with “students” he was personally mentoring. It was known, and even acknowledged in government charging documents that the process he developed produced LSD-25 that was 99.99% pure.
He was out of prison and touring again with the Grateful Dead.
My cousin was in with these people for years before he moved north to be a dope grower in Sonoma county.
Needless to say it took nearly 20 hours to cross the San Mateo bridge and navigate the 100 miles home to Modesto. Downright adventurous.