LSD chemist Leonard Pickard, free at last
A drug war victim, he talks about 20 years in prison, Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht and the psychedelic renaissance
America’s war on drugs is not just misguided; it is misnamed. It is, in truth, a war on people — millions of people who, in a just society, would have the right to decide what to put into their bodies. William Leonard Pickard, a brilliant, Ivy League-educated chemist with a mysterious past, is one of its victims.
Pickard, who is 76, has been convicted three times of making psychedelic drugs, including LSD. Sentenced to life in prison, with no hope of parole, he was locked up for 20 years until a judge granted him a compassionate release, because of the threat of Covid-19, in 2020.
“Half of my adult life has been in a cage,” Pickard says.
Last month, at Horizons 2021, a conference about psychedelics, Pickard described in a hushed voice the indignities of life in a maximum security prison. The 30-foot walls, the razor wires, the guard towers. The killings and fights, the screams in the night, the clanging of doors. The leg chains, arm chains and belly chains. The cramped cell with its metal bed and toilet. His bleak future.
