The authors suggest that opposition to illegal drugs is anchored in more than health concerns, with stigma and racial prejudices toward marginalised users likely playing a role, although the study did not test this directly.
“And, in our experiment, people disliked psychedelics more than depressants or stimulants, even when their harms were the same,” Hamrak and Simonovits added. “This suggests that deep-seated prejudices and stereotypes may resist even new information. People rely heavily on the status quo for information and guidance for what is right or wrong, and this makes it harder for the democratic process to correct biased policies.”
“More accurate information moves public preferences closer to what a purely harm-based assessment would suggest,” the authors explained. “But even for legal drugs, where the information effect is clear, two-thirds of the status quo bias survives. This suggests that factors other than a lack of information also drive the difference between how people evaluate real and hypothetical drugs. Future research should focus on the cultural norms that sustain people’s preferences for regulating both legal and illegal substances, above and beyond harm.”
