Drugs

William Leonard Pickard Was Known As "The Acid King"

When you think about drug lords, El Chapo and Pablo Escobar probably come to mind first. But let's consider the drug lord of psychedelics: Meet William Leonard Pickard. Pickard is to LSD as Escobar is to cocaine. They don't call him the "king of acid" for nothing! When Pickard was busted by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 2003, the world's LSD supply decreased by 90%. That's a lot of acid trips.

Pickard manufactured LSD in an old nuclear missile silo in Kansas, which was bought by his partner Gordon Todd Skinner in the '90s. Skinner was a young psychedelic drug enthusiast with a lot of inheritance money to blow. Once he bought the mostly underground site (and subsequently turned it into something of a palace), Skinner got in contact with Pickard, a seasoned LSD manufacturer out of California. By 2000, Skinner grew paranoid of getting caught, and became an informant for the DEA. This led to the arrest of Pickard, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2003. Watch the video below to answer the question: Is LSD really that dangerous?