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      A new study shows more Americans are dropping acid. Why? | John Semley

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      In 1995, Jerry Garcia, singer/guitarist of the Grateful Dead and a figure almost singularly associated with America’s psychedelic subculture, died. Then something weird happened: a nationwide downturn in LSD consumption. It was no coincidence. As the author Jesse Jarnow notes in Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America, for decades the Grateful Dead’s expansive, coast-to-coast live concert infrastructure was “the distribution network for LSD”. No Jerry meant no Dead tours, which meant, for many, no LSD. Garcia’s death effectively signalled the end of the Psychedelic Sixties.But now, drugs like LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are enjoying a vogue. They’re finding second lives as clinical tools in the pharmacological battle against depression and anxiety. They’re also being illicitly gobbled in sub-hallucinogenic “micro-doses” as daily supplements, reportedly boosting energy and creativity. In November, Oregonians will vote on whether to legalize psilocybin therapy statewide. And a new study in the July issue of the international journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence reports that LSD use increased 56% between 2015 and 2018 (including a rather massive 223% increase among people aged 35 to 49). It’s all part of what’s being termed the “psychedelic renaissance”.This revival is curious. It doesn’t seem to be about restoring the bygone heyday of hippie-era psychedelic culture, as renaissance art of the 14th century turned back to the glories of antiquity. For some, the sun setting on this subculture was just as well. The concept of “the sixties” – with its long hair and wide-eyed, pupil-dilated idealism – has sometimes proved an impediment. Michael Pollan, whose bestseller How To Change Your Mind popularized the current resurgence, notes that the very word psychedelic “carries a lot of countercultural baggage”. Mind-expansion, we’re being told, may be beneficial – but please leave the tie-dye shirts and frilly vests and marching teddy bear bumper stickers in the past. More

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      The Fight review – a walk-and-talk with the activists tackling Trump

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      The title is apt for a documentary about the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who got their always combative existence stepped up a notch with the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Now they found themselves fighting with the White House itself. This film features an Aaron Sorkin-style walk-and-talk tour around the ACLU offices in Brooklyn, New York, with its array of talented lawyers and heroic idealists.It concentrates on four cases fought by them: the right of a migrant to an abortion, the right of transgender people to serve in the military, the right of migrants not to be separated from their children, and the right of US residents not to answer a new census question about whether they are US citizens. This apparently innocuous query was cunningly designed to reduce the ostensible population size (and federal aid budgets while creating space for tax cuts etc) as migrants fearfully decline to answer.It also, insidiously, is intended to start a media row on this very point and crank up a value-for-money Kulturkampf against the alien outsider, a census question costing so much less than a wall. It should also be said – and this film could and should have said it – that the grotesque policy of separating migrants from their children was specifically designed to create a spasm of horror in the media (and the ACLU) for its deterrent effect, certainly, but mostly, yet again, to provide raw material for the Fox News Theatre of Cruelty.This film is a lively and watchable account of the full-tilt battle being fought by the ACLU, with its chief lawyer, Lee Gelernt, at the helm, a man addicted to Diet Coke and stress, at one point heading to emotional meltdown as he realises he doesn’t know where or how to plug in his smartphone charger. The film’s structural flaw is that it doesn’t quite know how to handle the most controversial moment in ACLU history: sticking toughly to the principle of free speech for all, it defended the right of racist Charlottesville protesters to rally in 2017, an event that led to a fatality. Maybe the whole film should have been about that one case. Well, the census-question case gives this its rousing finale. It creates, however, a possibly misleading impression of victory.• The Fight is available on digital platforms from 31 July. More

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      Now, more than ever, America must make water a human right | Bernie Sanders and Brenda Lawrence

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      Clean water should be an American human right, not a government profit machine When it comes to water infrastructure, America’s challenges resemble those of a developing country. It’s time for that to change ‘Before the coronavirus pandemic hit, nearly 14m households were unable to afford their water bills.’ Illustration: Erre Gálvez/The Guardian How can it […] More

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      The right cannot resist a culture war against the 'liberal elite', even now | Nick Cohen

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      The right cannot resist a culture war against the ‘liberal elite’, even now Nick Cohen The highest rates of Covid-19 casualties are in countries run by know-nothing populists Coronavirus – latest global updates See all our coronavirus coverage A woman holds up a placard at an anti-lockdown, anti-vaccine, anti-5G and pro-freedom protest in London, on […] More