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Medicine United States Politics

Oregon Becomes First State To Legalize Psychedelic Mushrooms (oregonlive.com) 111

Oregonians have voted to pass Measure 109 to become the first state in the country to legalize psilocybin. OregonLive reports: Measure 109 was passing by 59.25% Tuesday when the polls closed in Oregon. Multiple cities have decriminalized the substance, but Oregon will become the first to permit supervised use statewide if that majority holds. The measure [...] will allow regulated use of psychedelic mushrooms in a therapeutic setting.

It creates a two-year period during which regulatory details will be worked out, including what qualifications are required of therapists overseeing its use. [P]silocybin could help people struggling with issues from depression to anxiety to addiction. The new law will allow anyone age 21 or older who passes a screening to access the services for "personal development." But the law won't mean that "magic" mushrooms have the same legal status as cannabis. Instead, it will allow psilocybin to be stored and administered at licensed facilities.
Oregonians also voted to pass Measure 110, which will decriminalize possession of small amounts of drugs, including psychedelic mushrooms.
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Oregon Becomes First State To Legalize Psychedelic Mushrooms

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  • by zenlessyank ( 748553 ) on Tuesday November 03, 2020 @11:49PM (#60682268)

    Excellent. It is good to see states coming to their senses about natural substances. The control freaks can now go play with themselves in the woods and leave us alone.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Excellent. It is good to see states coming to their senses about natural substances. The control freaks can now go play with themselves in the woods and leave us alone.

      Or they can go with themselves with animals and leave us all alone. Either way, I couldn't care less.

      • by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @12:49AM (#60682340) Homepage Journal

        We're gonna do some toad. You in?

        • by thegreatbob ( 693104 ) on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @01:01AM (#60682360) Journal
          Will it make me one of the cool kids?
      • Or they can go with themselves with animals and leave us all alone.

        You and your goat are all good with me, bro; I'm libertarian about such things.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ClueHammer ( 6261830 )
      "natural substances" I have some hemlock for you, cures all and 100% natural. No? What about some deadly nightshade? Also 100% nature so its got to be good for you right? WRONG! natural does not mean good. It means your a sucker for marketing.
      • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

        by zenlessyank ( 748553 )

        Bleach is also all natural. Git U sum!

        Don't be obtuse, I don't need the government to tell me I can't use bleach properly or improperly. If a person is stupid enough to consume bleach or hemlock then that is on them not the government.

        Sad to see you so brainwashed.

        • by fazig ( 2909523 )
          GP didn't say anything about the government telling you what you can do and what not.
          It's all about natural = good being bullshit.

          There's plenty of harmful if not lethal stuff occurring in nature, which humans had to figure out over the millennia. Like with most things in existence, what's good and what's bad has to be determined on a case by case basis.
          A better criteria than just natural might be time proven to be relatively safe or something along those lines.
          • by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @06:46AM (#60682824)

            Seems to me they (and you) are the only ones even mentioning the "natural=good" bullshit here.

            I read "natural = impossible to realistically eliminate", or more specifically that "natural = legal" should be the assumption. After all, "legal=good" is largely bullshit as well.

            • by fazig ( 2909523 )
              I was explaining the GP I was referring to.
              Though it might be a nit picking deflection, it's technically correct. And it wasn't making any claims towards whether something ought to be legal or not.
              Hence answering a deflection, that is technically correct, with a straw man fallacy isn't making a good argument to refute the deflecting assertion.


              Personally I have a Libertarian stance on the issue. A duty of the state is to prevent people from hurting each other, but not from hurting themselves.
              Yes, yes,
          • I'm totally in favor of national legalization of cannabis but I fucking scream at my monitor when legalization advocates (which isn't really fair to *thinking* legalization advocates) spout off some nonsense about "it's just a plant, how can you ban a plant?"

            I guess the only sense I can make about is an argument along the lines of actual plants being defacto legal to grow and use for personal use unless there is some overwhelming public safety risk -- like, my "natural plant" also happens to be an invasive

            • Look at the Poppy

              Anybody can grow poppies in America, even though they are a source of Opium, a much more dangerous chemical than THC

              Parity is important, and a good question is, "Why was cannabis singled out?"

              Basically, the end of prohibition left a lot of G-men facing losing their jobs. Cannabis was only used by minorities and threatened the paper products of the largest newspaper publisher in America (Randolph Hearst).

              After the Supreme Court threw out anti-cannabis laws in the late 1960's, Nixon wanted a

              • Yeah, but a single plant of moderate effort cannabis growing can yield several ounces of decent product.

                Raw Opium yields are like 0.08 *grams* per square foot of planted poppy. It takes a dozen square feet of poppies to get a gram of raw opium. It would taking planting my entire back yard in poppies to get like 80 grams of raw opium, maybe 10 or so grams of morphine if I did some basic (but still exotic to the layman) chemistry and converted it.

                So it's not like cannabis is singled out, it's just that the

                • Correction, is it fairly easy to grow crappy cannabis. Growing something that compares to what is commercially available requires a long learning curve and commitment.

                  In spite of your opinions on poppies, there are a large number of people growing and consuming poppy-tea [sciencedaily.com] , this article focuses on the use of bulk poppy seed, not to mention using the poppy straw and seed heads. I think that they are getting a lot more than you indicate, where did you get those numbers?

                  • I'm too lazy to re-find and cut and paste URLs, but the yield numbers come from "Opium: A History" referenced in an article on some guy in NC who was busted with 2-3 acres of poppies, a book which I also happen to own. The original figures are relative to hectares of poppies and pounds of raw opium extracted via slits and collecting the sap as is done in large-scale commercial/illicit grow operations in Asia.

                    I don't know what you actually get out of poppy tea, but it's not exactly going to turn into a wid

                    • ...and whatever the potency cannabis will not kill you, the link I gave on poppy tea had to do with people dying, because opium depresses breathing

                      and still, poppy seeds can be bought in any gardening shop, all the while cannabis was treated like number one public enemy

            • I'm totally in favor of national legalization of cannabis but I fucking scream at my monitor when legalization advocates (which isn't really fair to *thinking* legalization advocates) spout off some nonsense about "it's just a plant, how can you ban a plant?"

              I think the point of that quote is simply to point out that any attempt to ban something that is both desired and easily cultivated is doomed to epic failure.

              Do you think the government could successfully ban, say, tomatoes? How about corn? Or tea? The stupidity and futility of trying to ban those things would be instantly apparent to everyone, not sure why anyone thinks cannabis is somehow special in this regard.

              You could not ban poison ivy either if it was something people actually wanted. It's a dumb

              • Yeah, stamping out cannabis as a plant is nearly impossible but some of this is due to the unique confluence of factors.

                Single plants with minimal care have useful yields with psychoactive properties. It grows in almost any climate. It grows in simple indoor growing operations, making it easy to hide. It takes almost no processing to reach its usable product stage. All of this makes larger yields possible, making it relatively inexpensive and popular, which further incentivizes people to keep growing it

                • I agree with what you say, but my point remains it is obvious that if there is a demand for something to be grown, it will happen. Even banning poppies on a global scale is not possible short of going to war and massive aerial spraying of Agent Insert Your Color Here as you note.

                  Sure, growing poppies in small areas will not yield much. Much like wheat, rice, and other staple crops. Most people could not keep themselves supplied with bread by growing their own wheat either, but no chance in hell you could

                  • I actually suspect that opium poppies could be controlled much more intensively if the greatest growing environments didn't also happen to be profit centers for guerilla/terrorist militias and located in totally remote regions with hostile governments.

                    I mean let's just say by some weird chance the "national building" exercise in Afghanistan actually worked. You'd get a bunch of farmers who quit growing poppies because it was illegal and/or legit crops actually had demand and working markets (or other jobs

                    • I mean let's just say by some weird chance the "national building" exercise in Afghanistan actually worked. You'd get a bunch of farmers who quit growing poppies because it was illegal and/or legit crops actually had demand and working markets (or other jobs besides village farmer opened up), and then the illegal guys would probably face pressure from their own local police forces, who would also crack down on cooking the opium down to morphine base and smuggling of the finished base.

                      It might be that while there would still be some illegal growing, it could fall below the point where its practical for outside interests to run the risks or total yields so low that its no longer profitable.

                      Profit is proportional to risk, and legit crops will never be more profitable. Could be universal laws.

                      I mean it may be that some of the driving force behind fentanyl is that you can create it from total chemical synthesis, you don't need a supply chain that starts in some lawless hinterland with peasants growing poppies and boiling down the opium in 55 gallon drums and then more processing, dealing with armed militia, and transshipment to the other side of the world.

                      If you can do it in a lab easier than in a field, yeah that is how it is gonna go. But synthesized cannabis has been a thing for a long time and not sure if anyone actually uses it. I'll posit that the typical cannabis user is simply more discerning than the typical heroin addict.

                    • But poppy growers in a war zone aren't exactly maximizing their return on investment, they're growing poppies because there's not much in the way of functional markets for anything else (cf. war zone) and the criminals and warlords reap all the profit.

                      While sure, profit is proportional to risk, why don't we see poppy growing operations in the US? We sure get marijuana grows here.

                      Cannabis is *already* heading in the "lab synthesized" direction in the form of edibles, and more influentially, in the form of e

                    • Since we legalized cannabis in Canada I have been partaking much more in edibles, just because the variety (at least on the gray market) has become substantial, and its usage is much more simple and discreet. It is certainly way beyond baking hash brownies at home like in the past, and dosing is easy to be consistent. So far as I can tell the extracts used are all still taken from actual plants though. I use a vaporizer for flower, but have yet to get one that uses "vape juice". I do have some concerns

        • Knowing what is safe isn't always that easy. A psychedelic mushroom grows around where I live. So I went out to hunt for it. Turns out I'm terrible at identifying that mushroom. So which mushrooms did I pick up? 100% deadly mushrooms! The only reason I didn't eat one is because by the time I came home the hand that held the mushrooms had gone numb. The mushroom I picked up looked like the safe psychedelic mushroom. I used pictures and descriptions of it and I failed miserably. That deadly mushroom looked id

          • You might want to just stick with Tide pods. You precious government says its ok.

            • Was that comment really necessary? Are you having a bad day?

              • It is called humor. Every day is a bad day without psychedelic mushrooms.

                By the way, the shrooms you are looking for grow out of cowshit and have a light copper coloring on top with black fins underneath. Make sure you toss out the stems cuz they have small amounts of Strychnine that cause tightness in your muscles after your trip.

                • by cas2000 ( 148703 )

                  stop spreading bullshit myths.

                  there is no strychnine in magic mushrooms. none in LSD either.

                  educate yourself. start with erowid.org or shroomery.org

          • The mushroom that is being legalized is the Psylocibin. There is a remote chance of confusing it with the Death Cap mushroom, but most people who eat a Death Cap are mistaking it for a different form of edible mushroom.

            Of course, the primary benefit of legalization is that people are not going though a field looking under cow patties (where other dangerous mushrooms could be found), but going to a store that will sell them something safe and effective.

      • That's really not the argument, you don't even know what your [sic] attacking.

        The argument is that it's insensible to make a natural plant illegal, not because it's good for you because it's natural, but because it's part of the background in which we evolved. There's simply no scientific basis for prohibition.

      • by PPH ( 736903 )

        Mercury is natural. And was used as a drug at one time.

      • by hey! ( 33014 )

        Sure, but you could make essentially the same point about saying magic mushrooms should be illegal because they're "drugs".

        We could just as easily call them a "dietary supplement"; the question of whether they meet that legal definition is purely dependent on your feelings toward them. People don't consume, say, Saint Johns Wort except in hopes of altering their mental state, yet that is a "dietary ingredient" that is taken by mouth.

      • Though I would not go as far as banning natural substances. In fact, I would not ban any substances at all. Banning substances is a bit like banning numbers. We can regulate the use of certain substances, e.g. restrict the to be prescription only, but that's about it.

    • It is good to see states coming to their senses about natural substances.

      More like precisely the opposite once they eat a bunch of the decriminalised mushrooms.

    • At one time, I would have agreed with that. But having seen how these things usually work out, color me skeptical.

      These things always get presented as a libertarianish live and let live proposition. "What do you care what I do in my own home? It's nobody's business but mine!".

      More likely, as soon as drugs are legalized, they'll get promoted to a "human right", which will, of course, need to be subsidized with tax payer funding.

      We'll have a new set of anti-discrimination laws, preventing people from getting

      • The legalization of alcohol has shown that it's entirely possible to legalize drugs while still restricting when and where they can be used in public. Nearly a century later, New York still isn't hosting drunk pride parades -- even if there are lots of parades where people are drunk.

      • You make a good case for keeping some drugs illegal.

        Not your words, mind, but whatever the fuck it is that you're smoking that inspired that ridiculous diatribe should absolutely be kept away from humans.

    • Yep, there's sooo many natural substances out there ... like arsenic, asbestos and radium ... that those control freaks should just leave regulating them alone, right?

  • I think more care is required with substances which are quite readily lethal with one small dose, that small amount being too much in pure form. I would think pre-measured doses from a pharmacist and a locked device that releases safe doses as appropriate upon an number of hours or daily basis. You file for a prescription, with identity and proof of age, basically self administering an addictive substance by individual choice. I would recommend monthly group therapy sessions with other registered addicts by

    • *Everything* is potentially lethal. You can kill yourself drinking too much water, should that require a prescription?

      As I see it, in a free country the government has no business protecting adults from themselves, and prescriptions should be required for only one class of drug: those which present a risk to *other people* when misused.

      So - antibiotics (since misuse breeds antibiotic resistant diseases that are a threat to everyone else), and *maybe* highly addictive, expensive substances (since feeding a

      • Addendum - I can however see wisdom in protecting adults from predatory marketing practices. For example I'm all for a complete prohibition on any form of advertising or other marketing of *any* addictive substance. I wouldn't even object to requiring all such substances to be sold only in plain brown packaging with text-only black and white labels that follow specific guidelines for fonts and sizes, despite the inconvenience that would cause at the liquor store.

        I wouldn't necessarily advocate for it, but

        • I think you're spot on about limiting the use of marketing, branding and other forms of commercial persuasion with addictive substances.

          I think the most dangerous aspects are the public advertising, though, and the least dangerous is the specific packaging. Probably all packaging of addictive substances should have 1/3 of the container reserved for the plain-font official description of the product, it's risks and some danger-threshold consumption quantity. This leaves consumers more easily able to make c

          • >I think the most dangerous aspects are the public advertising, though, and the least dangerous is the specific packaging.

            I think you're mostly right - but that packaging is itself a form of advertising. Maybe not so much of a problem if, like many stores have, there is a dedicated "alcohol room" to buy alcohol, so that the only people who see the ads are those who have already (presumably) decided to buy alcohol, so its really just marketing competition between brands.

            However, if you legalize all drugs

            • You maybe overstating the importance of advertising here. Street pot dealers do not advertise in any visual form, yet they do have steady clientele [addiction notwithstanding].
              You are proposing to "protect" the weakest form of consumers, who are "controlled" by advertising.
              • And people smoked tobacco before anyone started advertising it - but the advertising became increasingly widespread and effective until we've reached the point that advertising bans reliably show a reduction in new smokers (though very few existing smokers are likely to quit)

                Say "influenced" rather than "controlled", and you're talking roughly 99.9% of the population. Advertising has become a scientific affair, to the point where it's quite possibly the branch of psychology closest to a hard science. The

    • by fermion ( 181285 )
      The general argument against modern drugs is they are more pharmaceutical that not. For instance even marijuana, I am told by me older friends, became more engineered and less about just zoning out.

      I think anything you can grow in your garden and processed with limited equipment should be legal. Poppy seeds unprocessed are good, so are other plants that are maybe just cured.

      For sales, it cant really be like buying cherries on the side of the road, but maybe not to the level of pot shops, which as far as

    • Only danger about magic mushrooms is eating a mushroom that's not a magic mushroom, because you misidentified it. Psilocybin is very safe, more than THC, and definitely more than alcohol. Also Psilocybin does not lend itself to abuse, it's not something you'd take every day (except for microdosing), and is not recreational like Marijuana is.

  • We tried legalizing mushrooms in Amsterdam but that didn't work with people on the 5th floor of a hotel thinking that they could fly.

    • 'Therapeutic setting' - learn how to read

    • by Camel Pilot ( 78781 ) on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @01:15AM (#60682380) Homepage Journal

      I am witnessing a long-term friend die from alcoholism - liver failure and now kidney failure. Psychedelic mushrooms seem tame by comparison. Also, I don't have the data but I suspect for every jumper, there are probably 100+ DUI deaths of innocent people.

      • by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @07:54AM (#60682934)
        I tried to look up the number of jumping deaths due to drugs and could only find a few examples, mostly people on bath salts. We had over 10k alcohol related deaths. It looks closer to 1000 deaths from alcohol to jumping because you are high (and not sober suicides). Virtually no drug takes away common sense as well as alcohol does, even bath salts don’t seem to do as good a job.
        • Does that also count jumping a motorcycle "over" an obstacle after shouting "hold my beer!"?

        • by hey! ( 33014 )

          Does the actual *means* of suicide matter? Stories of jumping are dramatic and evoke a kind of moral horror, but is it any worse than shooting or hanging themselves? We should look at the overall rate of suicide among psychedelic users.

          I did a quick literature search and there are some papers that have found a positive correlation between psychedelic use and suicide rates. However that correlation is deeply confounded because illegal drug use is much more common among marginalized groups (e.g. sex worke

          • I purposely did not count jumping deaths where the person was drunk or suicides where the person was drunk because there are so many. Alcohol tends to be a mild depressant and usually does not mix well with suicidal thoughts or depression. I specifically tried to compare normal people who had no intention of dying where one took alcohol and one some other drug and then compare the risk of doing something truly stupid to get themselves killed. Even controlling for the fact people use more alcohol than alm
      • Psychedelic mushrooms seem tame by comparison.

        Being biased by an incredibly difference in numbers does not make mushrooms tame. It's kind of like dying by being burnt alive vs accidentally breaking a bone. The former affecting people far less people than the latter does not make it "tamer".

        The two things that are not considered:
        1. At what rate does it affect people severely: Alcohol's severe effect vs rate of consumption in the population is actually incredibly low, to say nothing of the fact that DUI isn't to do with alcohol but rather the combination

        • by hey! ( 33014 )

          Actually, when weighing the social ills caused by a practice like drug or alcohol use, the sheer volume of use matters. Also the degree to which the drug's use becomes a compulsion matters.

          What makes alcohol damaging to society is the same thing that makes cocaine dangerous: that users can't stop using it even when it is clearly harming them and people around them. Scientific reviews of the evidence agree that psychedelics' dependency potential is probably low, and that long term negative consequences are

        • I am not what you consider low but Alchohol related deaths is estimated at 95,000 in the US - the third leading preventable cause of death.

          Concerning my friend... drank for 20 years saw the signs of liver scarring but continued. I just visited him in the hospital - limbs are twigs, abdomen enlarged and he has wires coming out of everywhere and he sits there daily staring at the ceiling waiting to die.

        • People jumping off buildings because they were high on mushrooms and/or LSD and "thought they could fly" is an urban legend based on the story of Diane Linkletter who fell to her death while under the influence. The story was invented by her grieving father, radio personality Art Linkletter, who refused to believe his daughter would commit suicide. Because of his fame it was then spread widely in the anti-drug, anti-hippie circles of the time. (Of course, nowadays every city has a version of the story that

      • The president of Alcoholics Anonymous actually used psychedelics to relieve himself of his alcohol addiction. They never tell you this part.

    • by Cyberax ( 705495 )
      If somebody jumps and dies - that's their own business. They are highly unlikely to kill anybody else by doing this.

      On the other hand, DUIs kill thousands of people every year.
  • Sorry, my bad. I just took some mushrooms and trusted the purple Ogre that showed me the election results.

    Never trust the purple Ogre.

  • by swell ( 195815 ) <jabberwock@poetic.com> on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @12:54AM (#60682348)

    It seems a moot point as a practical matter. These mushrooms are quite common and easily accessible, unlike LSD and some other drugs that require competent laboratory fabrication. Whether or not they are legal to use is hardly a matter of concern for the adventurer who would experiment with them.

    The exception seems to be the clinical environment where the law must be followed. There seems to be a valid reason to believe that mushrooms may have therapeutic value. So good for Oregon for potentially allowing that option. But still- why on earth would such a drug be illegal in the first place.

  • by r1348 ( 2567295 ) on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @12:55AM (#60682354)

    yellow.

  • by Stormwatch ( 703920 ) <rodrigogirao@ h o t m a il.com> on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @01:23AM (#60682382) Homepage

    Congratulations to drugs for winning the war on drugs.

  • There’s more (Score:5, Informative)

    by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @02:55AM (#60682470)
    Oregon became the first state to legalize mushrooms and the first state to decriminalize pretty much all hard drugs too [theguardian.com]
  • And eat a few shrooms, does anyone know?

    In a more sensible post I'd point out that Psilocybin mushrooms seem to have some pretty amazing medical uses.
    Who'd have thought that?
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
  • Drugs should be legal, yes, since you own your own body.

    Still not a smart thing to do to take these.

    Cause they give you a baaad time, if you got mental problems at all or had a bad time.

    And everybody thinks they don't have mental problems until the bad trip hits them.

    (What I'm saying: Know yourself well, before taking them. And know the dosage/strength well.)

  • DC (Score:4, Informative)

    by PeeAitchPee ( 712652 ) on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @06:57AM (#60682834)
    Though it's not a state, the District of Columbia also voted to decriminalize shrooms [washingtonpost.com] last night.
    • DC allows distribution and home growth too.

      If it's treated like marijuana, it will effectively be legal for recreational use and sale (sale being buying a $35 T shirt that comes with a gift).
    • DC should become a state. The reason it isn't has to do with our country's history of racism, which hasn't stopped because otherwise why can't DC folks vote for Congress or Senate like everyone else?

      Move to DC from a State and you'll lose those rights and representation.
      • by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

        DC should become a state. The reason it isn't has to do with our country's history of racism, which hasn't stopped because otherwise why can't DC folks vote for Congress or Senate like everyone else?

        Move to DC from a State and you'll lose those rights and representation.

        What an uninformed thing to say. DC used to be all white, so it's not racist. Another big lie from the left. The District is also going back to white. You also show that you've never studied why it's a District. You also don't seem to know that the Virginia portion was given back to Virginia. Likewise if anything happens the District needs to go back to Maryland, where it came from. For many legal reasons, however I won't go into that here.

        DC also has a representative. Eleanor Norton holds that position rig

  • by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @07:09AM (#60682858)

    I'll walk the Oregon Trail then.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Can't wait to visit Oregon next year and power up.
  • Then I'd move there. Not to some hipster town like Portland, but someplace more backwoods. We can't count on all of them to destroy themselves [wikipedia.org]. At least, not quickly enough for my taste.

  • It turns out that Oregonians are libertarian communists.

    It works like this. It turns out that drug users tend to vote for "progressive" candidates, if they vote at all. Therefore it is in the interest of the "progressive" totalitarian state to facilitate recreational drug use. Thus, authoritarian leftists have found an issue on which they can be libertarians. Hurrah!

    • Religion is the opiate of the masses. Communism is the opiate of the machine elves [wikipedia.org].

      Note how it's kind of yin-yang conplementary, like eval-apply or something. Maybe God wrote the Universe in Lisp, but maybe not [xkcd.com].

  • When crap like this isn't on the ballot, the party animals don't show up to vote. When it is on the ballot, Democrats show up in droves which explains Colorado and now Arizona.

  • Psylocybin has a sweet spot for dosage where, when administered as part of a therapy regimen, are some of the most promising for PTSD or brain and nervous system injuries. They have actually been able to get nerve cells to re-grow and regenerate. Veterans and other survivors of harrowing experiences have good reason to listen up, here, and Oregon just might be a great place for them to heal.

    https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]

  • Just in time for the election.

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