Auxin, I agree with most of what you are saying but in a minor way the thought of trying to avoid legislation ignores there is an elephant in the room.
Which is that no one seems to be adequately addressing our basic right to exist as valid humans or that communion with these plants is a valid experience for humans to have whether it is spiritual or whether it is recreational. (I've often wondered when and how 'recreation' became a dirty word?)
The courts (usually) recognize not just the right but the ability of Native Americans to have a genuine spiritual interaction with peyote. So I probably should be asking which nationality of my ancestors it was that befouled the integrity of my blood line and neurological system so badly it has caused me to become so spiritually incompetent that I am now perceived to be incapable of having genuine direct spiritual experience if it involves a plant-based communion and did so to such a degree that any effort I might now make is simply a disingenuous act of hedonism or delusional or worse? That question begs for an answer from those proposing any legislation aimed at prohibition.
What you mention is truly the conundrum: Better available information informs those who hate as well as those who love.
Its difficult to impossible to be able to successfully serve as a gate keeper controlling who can access information once it exists.
Either we do not know as a community and the plants remain better protected or they can find legislation along with their knowledge leading to use.
Publication alone does not typically do it, but rather its the perceptions that widespread use is either occurring or looming on the horizon. Most legislators don't read many journal articles, it seems to be works like Shulgin, Ott, Ratsch or me that they prefer as those summarize much literature in single books and let the reader avoid doing a lot of the reading that those authors did.
Plus they don't seem to actually read them a decent bit of the time. When TIHKAL and PIHKAL were used as basis for laws in England all listed compounds were illegalized which included a number of entries for inactive or unevaluated compounds, suggesting the legislators involved did not bother getting past the table of contents.
Forums are another way the powers-that-be have learned to monitor our interests, sometimes to our clear detriment. I'd suggest that its actually easier, more efficient and more productive to just monitor our conversations about these plants than to cull through the literature. If it is put on line it is just as vulnerable as if it went into print. Its not simply out of concern for their own existence that SAB banned discussions of controlled substances and potencies in plant discussions there, they learned for certain that active monitoring by law enforcement was ongoing and its not realistic to believe that is not a common practice on ALL forums.
I don't believe that I ever said or implied that research should be limited to professional scientists or that they are somehow ideal for performing it, I'd suggest that professionals are the least likely to perform this work as it lacks adequate novelty for thesis or dissertation material and it will take work to find a place to publish it. In fact, when the topic has been discussed I've always suggested that our community is the best place for this work to occur (along with a plea for much greater rigor in the process as well as broader investigation as the vast majority has been focused on clone lines within recognized known mescaline containers -- many of which can be tracked back to earlier clones known to be good that got renamed -- for instance what was circulating a few years ago as Osprey's macrogonus that turned out to be RS0004 which was a commercial offering that Kakster obtained from Jerry Wright). Collating clones and synonyms is potentially valuable.
I agree that science is not an ideal vehicle, even if it is the one with the right tools and sometimes funding. My comment was simply about why more research has not been done and published.
When asked if I had suggestions for trichs Ogunbodede to analyze a few years ago I jumped at the chance to organize some specimens even though I did have concerns about Juul's and scopulicola being 'put on the map'.
However, if Bode had not added the odd layer about shamans and preferential use (which has drawn him a good bit of criticism) I suspect that he would never have gotten it published in JEP and he might even still be looking for a place to publish it.
No matter what avenue of study is involved (academic or private) the lack of adequate funding is usually the single largest brake on progress.
Private labs can do testing for individuals but simple gc-ms cost around $200 a sample the last time I looked several years ago so its not within everyone's reach. Sometimes nice people who are in school pop up and graciously perform this work for our community but there are not nearly enough of them.
On peruvianus there is another piece of the puzzle worth adding. It was not just demand that brought peruvianus into greater availability it was the cessation of the crazy activity of a single wealthy individual (D.Z.) who for years aggressively tried to buy *every* single peruvianus and macrogonus that he could locate in an attempt to prevent the rest of us from getting one. He believed he was protecting the plants from legislation. For whatever reason after amassing what a mutual friend describes as "a forest" of trichs he thankfully moved into collecting cowboy hats and left peruvianus/macrogonus alone.
In the 1960-70s T. peruvianus was not hard to find in the cactus nurseries that grew the larger cactus species -- based on catalog entries from that era. Entries for it appear as late as in the 1981 Cactus Gems catalog. T. macrogonus was offered as late as the Abbey Garden catalog from that same year.
You bring up an important point about the demand for peruvianus causing a ton of bad lineages and IDs to become marketed as peruvianus. Most of that collapses to being the input of no more than several people (primarily Knize, Riviere, Ramirez & Van Geest) but WOW did they add some noise.
