Norman Ohler

But Sidney Godley, the head of MKUltra, he really didn't want LSD to be on the market.

He wanted, not because he thought it's,

not good or dangerous for anybody.

He just wanted to control LSD.

He wanted LSD to be his, so he could use it for MKUltra, for experiments.

But he couldn't really stop.

There was also legit LSD research always going on until it was prohibited in 1966.

There was legit LSD research done in universities, which came to all kinds of conclusions.

But the decisive thing was a visit

by Gottlieb in the office of Stoll in Basel, where he basically says he comes with a suitcase with 240,000 US dollars to buy the world supply of LSD.

And because he has the information from the American...

ambassador like he has he said like I think we think by now Sandoz has produced like 400 kilograms of LSD so that was the price for these 400 and Stoll said no actually we have produced only 400 grams and but I'll sell everything to you of course I mean because the pressure that he received from the CIA was because the CIA and the FDA they're like quite friendly organizations and

So the CIA has a certain influence on the FDA, at least back then, you know.

So the pressure was, if you want to put your medicines on the market, which is, of course, the biggest market in the world, and Sandoz, you know, I'm sure you want to thrive as a pharmaceutical company, then LSD is not going to be one of these products.

And Stoll basically betrayed LSD, right?

So he said, okay, and LSD was only distributed as a research drug.

It was never sold by the company.

So researchers could actually write to Sanders and say, I'm doing this and this test, and I'm a neuroscientist, I need LSD, and then they would receive it.

But mostly what happened to the LSD was it went into the CIA's hands and then it was used in MKUltra.

But then it spilled out, obviously, because one of the guinea pigs was Ken Kesey.