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As of 2004, most hallucinogens are illegal in most Western countries. One notable exception to the current criminalization trend is in parts of Western Europe, especially in the Netherlands, where hallucinogenic mushrooms are considered to be so-called " soft drugs", along with cannabis. While the possession of soft drugs is technically illegal, the Dutch government has decided that using law enforcement to combat their use is largely a waste of resources. As a result, public "coffeeshops" in the Netherlands openly sell cannabis, and "smart shops" sell drugs like psilocybin mushrooms and ayahuasca for personal use (See Drug policy of the Netherlands).
Since the latter part of the twentieth century, this attitude has spread throughout Europe; many European countries no longer actively pursue anti-drug policies, and rarely enforce extant legal penalties for personal-use quantities of hallucinogenic drugs. This is especially true with mild hallucinogens such as cannabis, which is rapidly gaining acceptance in western Europe as a harmless and socially acceptable intoxicant, much as alcohol is considered throughout the West. Despite being scheduled as a controlled substance in the mid 1980s, ecstasy's popularity has been growing since that time in western Europe and in the United States.
Attitudes towards hallucinogens other than cannabis have been slower to change. Several attempts to change the law on the grounds of freedom of religion have been made. Some of these have been successful, for example the Native American Church in the United States, and the international Santo Daime . Some people argue that a religious setting should not be necessary for the legitimacy of hallucinogenic drug use, and for this reason also criticize the euphemistic use of the term " entheogen". Non-religious reasons for the use of hallucinogens including spiritual, introspective, psychotherapeutic, recreational and even hedonistic motives, each subject to some degree of social disapproval, have all been defended as the legitimate exercising of civil liberties, including freedom of thought.
Hallucinogens can be classified by quality of action, mechanisms of action, or by chemical structure. These classifications often correlate to some extent. The classification system below attempts to blend these three approaches in order to create a balanced and simple overview that is as clear and easy to grasp as possible.
Almost all hallucinogens contain nitrogen and are classified as alkaloids. THC and Salvinorin A are exceptions. Many hallucinogens often have chemical structures similar to those of human neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, and temporarily interfere with the action of neurotransmitters and/or receptor sites.
A classical classification is that of Lewin (Phantastica, 1928):
Class I Phantastica roughly correspond to the psychedelics, which is a more modern term usually used as synonym to "hallucinogen" by people with positive attitudes towards them. Here the term is used a bit differently to discriminate one particular class of hallucinogens which it seems to describe best. They typically have no sedative effects (sometimes the opposite) and there is usually a clearcut memory to their effects.
Class II Phantastica correspond to the other classes in this scheme. They tend to sedate in addition to their hallucinogenic properties and there often is an impaired memory trace after the effects wear off.
Entries marked with a # are naturally occurring.
Commentary: The tryptamines, LSD, and phenethylamines cause more or less identical effects despite their different chemical structure. At lower doses, these include sensory distortions such as the warping of surfaces, shape suggestibility, and color variations. Users often report intense colors that they have not previously experienced, and repetitive geometric shapes are common. Higher doses often cause intense and fundamental distortions of sensory perception such as synaesthesia or the experience of additional spatial, temporal, or time dimensions. Some compounds, such as 2C-B, have extremely tight "dose curves," meaning the difference between a non-event and an overwhelming disconnection from reality can be very slight.
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