The Illinois legislature passed a bill this past summer that, starting in January, will allow for the legal sale of medical marijuana to patients suffering from chronic and fatal ailments.

Now, even ignoring for a moment that this new medical marijuana program is only a four-year experimental run and that, according to the Illinois General Assembly’s website, cannabis will only be made available to people with the most fatal or chronic of diseases, it wouldn’t be right to call this a victory against unfair drug legislation. Why?

Because some really important drugs are still illegal. LSD or “Acid,” Ecstasy, Psilocybin Mushrooms, Mescaline and a whole slew of other substances that constitute the “psychedelic” class of drugs are still listed as Schedule 1 Drugs (the most illegal) by the Drug Enforcement Administration and Food and Drug Administration. A close look at these substances’ effects and uses leaves one thinking, “Why?”

A simple Wikipedia trawl on the subject of psychedelics, never mind the numerous institutions that have experimented with the drugs over the past six decades, reports on their high potential for psychotherapeutic use, incredibly low toxicity relative to dose, and a potential for physical and psychological dependence no greater than caffeine.

LSD has been strongly linked to treatment for alcoholism, end- of-life anxiety, cluster headaches (a severe form of migraines) and depression by the Journal of Psychopharmacology, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and UC Berkeley.

Similarly, in a 2009 study conducted by Johns Hopkins University, scientists found a direct link between psychedelic mushroom use and increases in creativity, openness and empathy. Yet, since the 1970 Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of the Nixon Administration, possession of any of these substances has been punishable with penalties that in Illinois exceed certain classes of sexual assault.

Even the aforementioned studies are somewhat novel, given that the FDA forcibly discontinued most research into the substances in 1970. Here we have a class of substances that science has said is by and large a good thing, or at the very least worth researching.

But then the government pulls science’s shirt over its head and forbids research on the topic. It may very well be that Ecstasy sparks terrible genetic mutations that will cause anyone who uses it to have horribly deformed children. But no one will ever know because hardly anyone is allowed to study it.

The FDA Public Affairs office, when contacted, claims this is because of psychedelics’ “high potential for profound adverse psychological reactions, abuse, and dependence.”

Yet startlingly absent from any of their public records are the studies informing that conclusion. The DEA’s online records are even starker. There are whole pages of documents detailing punishment for possession and sale, but not one that explains why those documents need exist.

Even their public relations office only makes vague reference to “studies carried out by a number of researchers in the 1950s and ’60s.” One can only hope they’re not referring to the CIA’s MKUltra initiative – a program that, by the US Supreme Court’s ruling in the 1985 CIA v Sims case, was illegally concerned with “the research and development of chemical, biological, and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behavior.”

That’s a fancy way of saying they were experimenting with mind control. Or maybe they’re referring to the 1953-54 British Military experiments demonstrating that LSD made soldiers unable to follow orders and unwilling to fight. If all this sounds like the rantings of a conspiracy theorist loon, it’s because – at least in part – it is.

But for once the loons have it. Some of these drugs have been illegal for almost 43 years now, and for no readily apparent reason. Much like marijuana, these substances were condemned whilst they were associated with a widespread counter- culture and in the midst of a controversial war. Much like marijuana, government programs are explicitly dedicated to their prohibition and cultural discrediting.

Unlike marijuana, there is absolutely zero movement on making these drugs legal, and possibly just as little on making them available for study. And that’s sad. In a society where poisons like tobacco, alcohol, caffeine, codeine and opiates are all readily available and culturally acceptable – even encouraged – a genus of a drug that has the potential to change lives for the better is so demonized that most people are taught to be terrified of it.

Everyone has a story of that friend of a friend of a friend who went permanently insane from mushrooms, despite psilocybin’s primary effects only lasting about eight hours according to the John Hopkins study. Everyone thinks that LSD is only used by hippies and failures, despite advocacy from such figures as Steve Jobs, Aldous Huxley, Francis Crick and Hunter S. Thompson.

So yes, marijuana may be slowly on its way to wide-scale legalization and acceptance. However, until other psychedelics are likewise accepted, the fight against the War on Drugs will be far from won.