Erowid is great, and I've made use of it many times in the past. I think the real strength of Erowid is in the "experience vaults" where you can really get a lot of high-quality subjective information that can help guide your choices.
The safety and legality information is useful also, of course.
Aside from their more practical value, I've often thought that the Erowid experience vaults would make a great jumping off point for a short story collection or novel. There are so many memorable stories and voices buried in there (many quite sad, of course, but others that resemble a 21st century, anonymous version of gonzo journalism, like the witches doing intravaginal DMT or the hardy soul who combined crack and MDMA at Disney World).
I always found the pharmacology and safety sections to be the most informative, especially when trying psychedelics (and, more importantly, MDMA) for the first time. It taught me what to watch out for, what NOT to worry about, the role "set and setting" plays into your experience on almost every drug, etc.
I feel like the strength of Erowid stems from it's non-judgmental stance. There's no encouragement or discouragement towards any substances, they just try to convey the knowledge that is available about psychoactive substances.
Other resources:
https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page
Tends to be faster to get new drug info up. I feel like their effects are done better, since you can click on them.
http://wiki.tripsit.me/wiki/Main_Page
Part of an IRC chat room that promotes harm reduction and helps with bad trips. They have data on drugs the fastest.
An example would be MXM which has a page on tripsit, but not either of the other two.
There are other forums too on the net if you want information on the latest RC's, bluelight of course, just googling too. Erowid is still the best for good quality reports and information on well known drugs.
I'm friends with an ER nurse. Her and her coworkers read Erowid to learn about the street perception of drugs, like what is becoming popular, what risks are the public aware of, what dangerous mixtures are people trying, etc. She mentioned the site to me once and was surprised that I had heard of it, since I don't work in medicine.
I am glad to hear this. Erowid probably saves a lot of lives due to their encyclopedic coverage of "research chemicals" alone. If medical professionals can use Erowid as a step-off point for treatment, people could really be helped at the bleeding edge of drug use/abuse.
Erowid is more like a library for banned books than it is a pub, because Erowid has a lot of useful information about psychedelics that is especially hard to come by in this era of prohibition. The dosage information alone has probably saved lives, and at the very least prevented people from becoming very ill or having a bad trip.
Could you provide some more reasoning? I don't follow.
Maybe the article phrased this sentence wrong, but I think the basis is true. Anyone who has tried to find accurate information about drugs on the Internet has likely visited Erowid.
As some evidence I've tried some queries I might search if I wanted to learn more about psychedelic drugs. Erowid is on the first page of Google results for:
"psychedelic drug information"
"lsd mushrooms"
"magic mushrooms"
I'm not dave, but the comment seems to point at the fact that alcohol is a much more destructive substance, on a national scale, than the substances covered on Erowid. Given the phrasing of the sentence, I don't think he is out of line. It would be charitable to say that the phrasing was wrong. The paragraph breaks the audience of the website into two sets: those who are "unfazed by strangeness", or toxicologists and E.R. doctors. Anybody familiar with media coverage of bitcoin or tor should immediately recognize the template.
The safety and legality information is useful also, of course.