Today's Saturday, guys. I had planned to take a vacation from the whole topic of drugs. Unfortunately, I just took a quick peek at Twitter and saw Canadian columnist Cory Morgan spreading the same old Drug War propaganda that has militarized police forces around the world, turning American inner cities into no-go zones, and destroyed the rule of law in Latin America.
I've vowed not to spend time on this today, but Cory's harangue plucked my single solitary last and final nerve. So I'll just post my response to Cory here (which I sent to him via his email account at Western Standard). The offending Tweet, by the way, was his attempt to blame "meth" for the sins of the world, rather than the fearmongering and corrupt supply that leads to its misuse. That's typical "Drug Warrior" strategy for you, folks: blame the drug, but never the social policies that lead to its misuse.
With all due respect Cory, you are like all Drug Warriors: you judge drugs based on their worst possible use. This is anti-scientific. It makes such drugs unavailable for any use at any dose for any reason ever. And please stop confusing the issue: there IS such a thing as safe supply. To claim otherwise is at best to misuse words and at worst to lie. The dangers of meth are caused by prohibitionists who insist that we teach fear rather than safe use. Those who are "thin as a rail" need medical help and education: not a multi-billion-dollar military campaign that turns inner cities into shooting galleries and destroys the rule of law in Mexico and knocks down the doors of American grandmothers with stormtroopers shouting GO GO GO on a highly choreographed scene for the six o'clock news.
It is fearmonger attitudes like yours that have forced me to go a lifetime without godsend medicines, shunting me off onto dependence-causing Big Pharma 12 drugs that turn me into an eternal patient.
Please stop the anti-scientific practice of judging drugs based on their worst possible use. That practice has stopped us from finding treatments for Alzheimer's 3 and autism by outlawing drugs that grow new neurons in the brain. It has turned America into an anti-scientific country and censored scientists.
Here's more I might have added:
Thanks, Cory, for that one-hour-long grilling I got when I entered Canada as a 30-year-old male 30 years ago. I was a drug suspect because folks like you were blaming every problem in the world on drugs. That Nazi grilling put me off Canada for years. I'd like to see Cory grilled for alcohol use and see how he comes thru it. I'd like to show him some drunkards in an alley going through DTs and blame their problems on alcohol proponents like Cory. For every one speed user who's "thin as a rail," I'll show him 20 graves of alcoholics.
Fortunately, for Cory, I am not like him. I do not judge substances based on their worst imaginable use. I know that that is anti-scientific. What's more I want to help alcoholics, not send them to jail. Nor do I wish to stop everyone in the world from using alcohol because Americans tend to misuse that drug.
Cory's attitude is extremely hypocritical. Prohibition causes all of the problems that folks like Cory love to blame on the political boogieman they call "drugs."
July 15, 2023 To our younger readers, bless them, the title of this essay is an allusion to the Guess Who hit of 1970 entitled "American Woman."
Author's Follow-up: January 4, 2025
Had I written this today, I trust I would have been more diplomatic. I don't think Cory was purposefully being wrong-headed. Like all of us westerners, she lives, breathes and eats Drug War ideology. Had the world chosen to demonize skateboarding in the same way -- by censoring all stories of "safe use," by threatening to execute skateboard dealers, and by throwing skateboard users in jail for 20 years at a time -- I think Cory would have been throwing down just as single-mindedly on the evils of skateboards.
The Drug War is all about fearmongering, after all. Shooting guns is considered safe, driving cars is considered safe, climbing a cliff face without climbing gear is considered safe: Only when it comes to "drugs" are we taught that safety is simply impossible.
It's a load of nonsense, of course, but it helps fascist politicians win elections. How? By incentivizing vastly lucrative drug dealing among the poor and thereby ultimately throwing millions of minorities in jail. That's what the Drug War is all about: eroding democracy by facilitating the election of tyrants.
Author's Follow-up: January 8, 2025
About 30 years ago, I flew on my own from Virginia to Montreal, where I was to join my sister and brother-in-law for a vacation in Quebec. Upon landing, I was singled out by customs for no stated reason and led to an office, where I was asked to sit down and wait. And wait I did... for almost an hour, before a grim-looking policewoman finally sat down across a desk from me and pawed listlessly through my French books, saying little or nothing. I thought to myself: "Either it's a crime for an American to bone up on their French language skills in Montreal or she thinks that I am carrying rotten, evil, dirty, hateful DRUGS!"
No other passengers were harassed -- but then they were almost all Canadian, and those who were not, were traveling in groups of two or more.
After another ten minutes or so of silence, they finally signaled that I could leave. I can only suppose in retrospect that they were waiting for me to "crack" and admit to being a drug courier.
This incident left a sour taste in my mouth about Canada that lasts to this day. I found it humiliating and a slap in the face. Here I was, enthusiastically attempting to speak the lingo, and the customs agents destroyed all my amicable feelings toward their province in one afternoon. When I conjure the event in hindsight, I picture the customs police as Nazi officers with German accents. Not that they talked much in any language, of course. They were apparently just hoping that I would get nervous and thereby betray my supposed guilt. Then they would surely pounce, lean over the table, get all up in my face, and ask:
"Vie did you really come to Montreal?! Vie? Vie? Vie?"
As a white American, this episode also gave me at least some idea of what it must be like to be driving while black: you are already considered a suspect in a crime merely for being who you are.
These are all downsides of the Drug War that are never acknowledged, mainly because we fail to associate them with the Drug War. People groan about "profiling," but why is profiling even a "thing"? There would be little or no profiling of blacks if the Drug War did not exist.
This is the whole problem: the Drug War will never end until we hold it responsible for the evil that it causes. Instead, the press calls inner-city violence inexplicable and writes about 60,000 disappeared in Mexico without even mentioning the causative Drug War in both cases. It is the Drug War that gave police carte blanche to harass blacks, but the media misdirects our indignation on that score by referring such harassment to "profiling." Voila. Magic-like, the drug-war is made to disappear.
Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.
I don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.
Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the drug war ideology of substance demonization.
The Drug War is the legally enforced triumph of human idiocy. We have rigged the deck so that our dunces can be right. The Drug War is a superstition. Indeed, it is THE modern superstition.
If any master's candidates are looking for a thesis topic, consider the following: "The Drug War versus Religion: how the policy of substance prohibition outlaws the attainment of spiritual states described by William James in 'The Varieties of Religious Experience.'"
I'm told antidepressant withdrawal is fine because it doesn't cause cravings. Why is it better to feel like hell than to have a craving? In any case, cravings are caused by prohibition. A sane world could also end cravings with the help of other drugs.
There are times when it is clearly WRONG to deny kids drugs (whatever the law may say). If your child is obsessed with school massacres, he or she is an excellent candidate for using empathogenic meds ASAP -- or do we prefer even school shootings to drug use???
Question: What's the difference between Big Pharma antidepressants and other drugs?
Answer: For other drugs, dependency is a bug; for antidepressants, dependency is a feature.
Drug use is judged by different standards than any other risky activity in the western world. One death can lead to outrage, even though that death might be statistically insignificant.
This is why "rock stars" use drugs: not just for performance anxiety (which, BTW, is a completely UNDERSTANDABLE reason for drug use), but because they want to fully experience the music, even tho' they may be currently short on money and being hassled by creditors, etc.
The drug war outlaws everything that could help both prevent addiction and treat it. And then they justify the war on drugs by scaring people with the specter of addiction. They NEED addiction to keep the drug war going.
The drug war has created a whole film genre with the same tired plots: drug-dealing scumbags and their dupes being put in their place by the white Anglo-Saxon establishment, which has nothing but contempt for altered states.
M. Pollan says "not so fast" when it comes to drug re-legalization. I say FAST? I've gone a whole lifetime w/o access to Mother Nature's plants. How can a botanist approve of that? Answer: By ignoring all legalization stakeholders except for the kids whom we refuse to educate.
The Drug War is the legally enforced triumph of human idiocy. We have rigged the deck so that our dunces can be right. The Drug War is a superstition. Indeed, it is THE modern superstition.
