Science Forums 2

[Ganoderma]

Something that seemed to slip my mind recently was the legalities of studying various things, not the study so much as the physical experimentation.

Recently (last few years) i have been devoting my free time to plant research, mostly of cacti, and in the last year have been getting more and more into the biochemistry aspects of plants. One thing i have been increasingly interested in is the chemical makeup of cacti, and other plants, especially in relation to plant relationships and related chemicals (chemotaxonomy?)

naturally when one studies cacti, especially the chemicals of, there is an abundance of study in Peyote. The cactus itself is legal here and no problems, but the thing i just realized was that the alkaloid mescaline is pretty much illegal in most countries.

So there lies my problem, and question. How does a private person study such things legally? not everyone has a company, institution or the like to back up a study and, for lack of an appropriate word, "legitimize" it.

So what does a person do that is seriously interested in something do in such a scenario....thus far i have just simply given up on this aspect, but i am sure many others are/were in the same boat.....and that MUST slow down scientific knowledge in many cases.