Penalties for LSD

There is no question that LSD is a dangerous drug, and President Johnson last month asked Congress to make possession of it a misdemeanor, punishable with a $1,000 fine and up to a year in prison. He had the firm support of the Justice Department, but the medical men of the Food and Drug Administration were opposed on the ground that an anti-LSD law would be about as enforceable as the Volstead Act. Chief adversary was FDA Commissioner James L. Goddard, who four months ago complained publicly about the harshness of existing antimarijuana laws. In a surprising turn last week, Dr. Goddard reluctantly endorsed the Johnson LSD bill during a congressional hearing before the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce.

Goddard also supported Johnson's companion request to increase penalties for manufacturing, distributing and selling LSD and such stimulants and depressants as methedrine (speed) and phenobarbital. Under the bill, possession of the drugs would become a federal offense for the first time (some 24 states now have laws prohibiting possession of LSD). Manufacture, distribution and sale, federal misdemeanors punishable by up to a year and a $1,000 fine, would become felonies with penalties of up to five years and $10,000.

Goddard made it clear that, personally, he opposed such harsh measures. But law-enforcement officials had convinced him that without the increased penalties their hands were tied. Peddlers of LSD and other drugs, they had pointed out to him, could claim that drugs they possessed were for personal use rather than sale under present law. Still, Goddard reported, the use of LSD is already on the decline. "Not because of penalties," he said, but because of increasing awareness that it causes chromosomal damage.

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