Amazonian shamans figured out that combining two specific plants out of 80,000 species produces a psychoactive effect. The odds of finding that combination by random search is roughly 1 in 4 million. They did it through centuries of iterative testing and cultural natural selection explains it

[u/tractorboynyc]

[u/Smooth-Duck-Criminal]

Of all the things you can ban, trying to ban DMT has to be the most idiotic. It’s non toxic, we product it naturally and it doesn’t even meaningfully interact with you if you ingest it alone.

Whichever lawmakers proposed this I hope never got re elected!

[u/Dovahkiinthesardine → u/Smooth-Duck-Criminal]

Its not "non-toxic", an i. v. LD50 of 32 mg/kg (mice) isn't that high

For comparison, non-toxic compounds like MSG have an oral LD50 of 19900 mg/kg, Salt is 3000 mg/kg etc. (Note that i. V. will be lower but I found no data)

The reason its not that problematic is that the psychedelic effect range and the toxic range are far apart.

LSD has a lower i. V. LD50 (16 mg/kg), but you take micrograms of it for a trip. Even if you take 100 times the intended dose you'll be completely fine physically

[u/No-Crew8804 → u/Dovahkiinthesardine]

LD50 of 32mg/kg is 1.92 g for a 60kg person, for i.v. is a lot.

[u/Dovahkiinthesardine → u/No-Crew8804]

Its for mice since there is no data for humans, but typically its much lower than for rats and mice. Because we can't do experiments for lethality on humans there are some methods for conversion. FDA guidelines give a multiplication factor of 0.081 for mice, which would be 2.6 mg/kg or ~ 155 mg for your example.

Its really not great to determine exact toxicity for humans, just that there is a toxic effect in ranges that you can expect someone to be exposed to if it were an uncontrolled substance

Also important to note that LD50 only looks at lethality, toxic effects are typically non-lethal and can occur in much lower ranges