The interests of capitalism dictate what politician-led Americans can think about substances. Psychoactive plant medicine need merely cause a problem for one demented youth and our politicians easily convince us that the substance must be eradicated from the face of the earth. Meanwhile if a Big Pharma 12 antidepressant causes weight gain and suicide, we dismiss these as "bad reactions," essentially blaming the victim for their oddball reaction to the drugs, while insisting that the substance in question is a godsend for the vast majority of the depressed.
This is not surprising since unfettered capitalism has a history of keeping problems from being solved if the solution would negatively affect stock values. That's why we have no quick answers to heart problems and cancer, since the obvious solution would be for Americans to cut back drastically on red meat, and yet the American Heart Association is supported by precisely those industries that would lose out given such a truly scientific approach. Therefore such agencies are like OJ Simpson vowing to spend his life searching for the guy who killed his wife. If they truly wanted to find the reason for heart disease (etc.) in America, they'd take one long look in the mirror.
We'd have been driving electrically powered cars a century ago, using free electricity and cell phones too, except that capitalism quashed these inventions because they merely empowered humanity rather than the all-important stockholder.
Author's Follow-up:
It seems that capitalism requires a Drug War to exist. capitalism depends on the glorification of things and the money to buy them -- and if we legalize the sorts of medicine that inspired the Hindu religion, God knows how American priorities would change. Surely, the need to keep up with the Jones's would be jettisoned.
In "The Man in the Crowd," Edgar Allan Poe quoted the philosopher La Bruyère to the following effect:
"Ce grand malheur, de ne pouvoir être seul."
In other words, the main problem with today's Homo sapiens is their inability to be alone, that is, to live with themselves. I think of this quote whenever I see male protestors on the street wrecking the place in the name of doubtful causes. It is interesting that these are usually males, by the way, that women generally seem to be able to live with themselves and stay at home without feeling that they are missing out. These arsonists and vandals are people who never feel so alive as when they are in a crowd and acting up -- but place them at home alone with themselves with time on their hand, and they go crazy.
Now, drugs that elate and inspire can actually change that status quo. If you allow a human being to see a world in a grain of sand -- or simply to see Mother Nature more clearly and profoundly -- their need for superfluous commodities would be mitigated -- or rather they would suddenly be aware of the superfluous nature of many if not most of the commodities that the capitalist requires them to purchase.
No wonder capitalism outlaws drugs that elate and inspire. Such drugs inspired the Hindu religion. The capitalist does not want their potential customers to reimagine the world in a way that money and products matter less. Hence the obvious connection between capitalism and the Drug War.
This is something that you can bet is not covered in most political science classes: i.e., capitalism 's inherent antagonism to the legalization 3 of psychoactive medicine. But the connection is obvious and has consequences. Just go into any drug store and check out the shelves: what you will see there are treatments for discrete human ailments based on a totally non-holistic and disease-mongering approach to human illness, one that ignores the ability of holistic-working psychoactive substances to improve overall health. capitalism has to ignore such holism, otherwise these drug-store shelves would disappear, and all the profits with them.
capitalism 4 requires disease-mongering -- and disease-mongering requires the suppression of medicines that work holistically, that work by improving mood and elating the individual AND THEREFORE improving their health overall.
This is why the foes of suicide are doing absolutely nothing to get laughing gas into the hands of those who could benefit from it. Laughing is subjective after all. In the western tradition, we need a "REAL" cure to depression.
Imagine someone starting their book about antibiotics by saying that he's not trying to suggest that we actually use them. We should not have to apologize for being honest about drugs. If prohibitionists think that honesty is wrong, that's their problem.
Prohibition is wrong root and branch. It seeks to justify the colonial disdain for indigenous healing practices through fearmongering.
Rick Strassman reportedly stopped his DMT trials because some folks had bad experiences at high doses. That is like giving up on aspirin because high doses of NSAIDs can kill.
The problem with blaming things on addiction genes is that it whitewashes the role of society and its laws. It's easy to imagine an enlightened country wherein drug availability, education and attitudes make addiction highly unlikely, addiction genes or no addiction genes.
All mycologists should denounce the criminalization of mushrooms. Those who don't should be drummed out of the field.
MDMA legalization has suffered a setback by the FDA. These are the people who think Electro Shock Therapy is not used often enough! What sick priorities.
Katie MacBride's one-sided attack on MAPS reminds me of why I got into an argument with Vincent Rado. Yes, psychedelic hype can go too far, but let's solve the huge problem first by ending the drug war!!!
The idea that "drugs" have no medical benefits is not science, it is philosophy, and bad philosophy at that. It is based on the idea that benefits must be molecularly demonstratable and not created from mere knock-on psychological effects of drug use, time-honored tho' they be.
"Judging" psychoactive drugs is hard. Dosage counts. Expectations count. Setting counts. In Harvey Rosenfeld's book about the Spanish-American War, a volunteer wrote of his visit to an "opium den": "I took about four puffs and that was enough. All of us were sick for a week."
This is why the foes of suicide are doing absolutely nothing to get laughing gas into the hands of those who could benefit from it. Laughing is subjective after all. In the western tradition, we need a "REAL" cure to depression.