I get what you're saying, though the use is not just isolated to one culture. Mushroom veladas involve children, peyote sweats involve children, Ayahuasca is used by children under many different styles of usage in the Amazon. Even Datura was given to teens by the Chumash and Brugmansia given to misbehaving children I believe in Columbia. As I understand it the doses are usually small. That's not to say that there wouldn't be circumstances and cultures where it is prohibited and you make a good point that if there isn't a comparison then you might not identify the harms. I just find the widespreadness of it in seperate cultures/different substances around the Americas interesting and to me hints towards there being more to the story. Psychedelics definitely are not good nor bad but their framing and context have a huge say in what they have to offer.
It's ubiquity unfortunately doesn't bolster the validity. That's an ad populum fallacy. I think it also appeals to the bandwagon effect in a way too.
Involving children doesn't necessarily mean that children are taking the substances. This why I previously mentioned that they are still often part of ceremony. Last I checked, children just sweat for peyote sweats (I could be wrong), and I think there are some communities and ayahuasceros that allow children to be there but not imbibe.
We are rowing the same boat of fascination and curiosity. It's extremely intriguing. My flow of reasoning simply evaluates things contextually. So while there his historical precedence for a lot of things, we have ways and manners now of different modes of thought and perspective shifting in order to assess things in a new way and check the veracity of whatever we're considering.
Unfortunately, in this context, it may be hard because it's commonly not accepted to test drugs on children without a lot of red tape. I would be curious to see what could come from such testing, but am not willing or an advocate for the potential harms in order to find out.
I also think in today's society of high novelty/weirdness it is wise to see the behaviour of cultures which came before us because we know that it's at least got us to this point. For example when analysing health fads I always try to view it through the lens of ethnography. Sure it may be an appeal to antiquity but there is surely wisdom in antiquity even if in many cases we can only interpret it from our current situation. It provides insights through showing how humans evolutionarily have existed. Not to say we can't gleam wisdom from the latest and greatest of technology/western culture or that every single practice from every single culture was healthy and of great benefit to society either.
It seems as a species, for things we want to be on point with, we tend be very much off the mark, so for a lot of the systems we have, a lot of information may be superfluous and arbitrary. We are always growing and evolving, and so are our systems, and so I like balancing the then with the now.
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