If someone purchases prescription medications from a non-regulated online pharmacy in a remote, third-world country is that simply a legal risk too?
Unless you synthesized it yourself or have the ability to analyze it in a lab, you absolutely cannot be certain of quality or authenticity. This is what legally enforced regulatory standards are all about ensuring. The illegal nature of the drug trade not only lacks provision for that, it influences and informs the behavior of participants on the supply side for economic reasons too.
In a logical vacuum, yes, it is a legal risk. In practical application, the legal risk is often correlated with the quality risk too.
Risk of manufacturing error in prescription drugs: "Dr. Collazo recently worked with a drug manufacturer that had a baseline rate of 4.7 errors per thousand units manufactured."
Risk of ??????:
"Three batches of Nurofen Plus in pharmacies in south London have been found to contain another drug, Seroquel XL 50mg, which is manufactured by AstraZeneca – a completely separate drug company."
That's all entirely fair to point out - clearly serious breaches happen, even in heavily regulated environments! I don't think failings in those arenas undermine the notion that legal risk and quality/authenticity risk of illegal drugs is very often intertwined.
I think even folks over at Erowid advise caution in dealing with these things. In that regard, conflating legal risk & qualitative risk isn't really a non sequitur. That's really all I was trying to say.
I understand your point, but - as you identify - LSD users are more aware of the risks and have a higher perception of risk.
Although I don't have evidence either way, my suspicion is that this results in a comparatively low risk in truth. It's not immediate that the legal status impacts on the risk at all.
Non sequitur. Its legality has no bearing on quality control or authenticity.
LSD is illegal so you are taking a legal risk.