Drug prohibition is a meta-injustice. It seeks to get inside our very biochemistry and control the way that we think and feel about the world around us. How does it do this? By denying us all the godsend medicines that could give us a blessed respite from ourselves, from our negative inner voices, drugs which could open up new worlds for us and keep us from being psychologically lorded over, night and day, by an oppressive psychological status quo. The Drug War politician is like a despot who is not satisfied with simply oppressing his people by denying them their inalienable right to Mother Nature's bounty: he wants to make sure that his people never successfully "rise above" this oppression, even in their own minds. He wants them to eat their hearts out, to always recognize their subservient status in the world. He wants a total psycho-political victory over his people, one in which each and every one of them are forever consciously aware of the government's ownership of their very minds and moods.
In the anglophile tradition, one's home is said to be one's castle -- a sanctuary into which government dare not intrude -- and yet one's body clearly belongs to the state in the age of the Drug War, right down to the chemicals that course through that body at any given moment. This is the apotheosis of the nanny state. And yet this enormously invasive status quo is championed by conservatives who claim to be enemies of Big Government? What?! Please! These are the guys who tool around in cars with license plates reading "Don't tread on me," meanwhile encouraging the use of government to decree how and how much we are each allowed to think and feel in this life. Talk about TREADING!? That is downright stomping!
It is as if the conservative were telling government: "Don't tread on me! However, please keep limiting my ability to transcend negative mental states by outlawing the kinds of medicines that have inspired entire religions in the past. Please keep telling me which plants and fungi I may access as a resident of planet Earth. Please keep telling me how and how much I can think and feel in this life. Other than that, you'd better keep your hands off me. Oh, except for drug testing 1 , of course. Feel free to keep me from earning a living in the United States if my urine should be found to contain godsend medicines of which racist and fearmongering politicians disapprove."
It is a truism to say that we cannot change the world and that therefore we have to change ourselves -- but the Drug War outlaws even this latter option for most people. How? By denying them the kinds of substances that alone could help them transcend the status quo.
And so drug prohibition is not just an example of a bad social policy: it is the ne plus ultra of bad social policies. It is the ultimate tyranny. It not only puts oppressive power in the hands of the government, but it limits our ability to make our peace with that injustice. And so the Drug Warrior can not only pass oppressive legislation, but they can demand through drug prohibition that we feel as badly as possible, as often as possible, about that legislation.
This is what happens when we allow the government to limit our mental flexibility and resilience through the unprecedented wholesale criminalization of psychoactive medicine.
And yet this disempowerment is just the beginning of the downsides of the racist policy of drug prohibition -- which include the destruction of inner-cities, the mass arrest of minorities and the end of the rule of law in Latin America -- not to mention the election of Donald Trump himself, who is only in office today because drug law has effectively removed over a million minorities from the voting rolls.
This is the real reason why drug use is outlawed in historically despotic countries today. Our modern mandarins do not simply want to control the lives of their fellow human beings -- they want it to be UNDERSTOOD that they exercise such control. That is why they favor drug prohibition: they want to outlaw the use of all drugs that could help the hoi polloi to inhabit mental realities in which the government does not even exist, or else exists only as a kind of comic relief, worthy only of magnanimous and good-natured scorn. In short, such Drug War despots reason as follows: "WE are the ones calling the shots in this world -- and the people must be made to understand that fact and to FEEL IT to be true, 24/7."
According to Donald Trump's view of life, Jesus Christ was a chump. We should hate our enemies, not love them.
One merely has to look at any issue of Psychology Today to see articles in which the author reckons without the Drug War, in which they pretend that banned substances do not exist and so fail to incorporate any topic-related insights that might otherwise come from user reports.
Folks point to the seemingly endless drugs that can be synthesized today and say it's a reason for prohibition. To the contrary, it's the reason why prohibition is madness. It results in an endless game of militaristic whack-a-mole at the expense of democratic freedoms.
I could tell my psychiatrist EXACTLY what would "cure" my depression, even without getting addicted, but everything involved is illegal. It has to be. Otherwise I would have no need of the psychiatrist.
The Drug War is the ultimate example of strategic fearmongering by self-interested politicians.
"When two men who have been in an aggressive mood toward each other take part in the ritual, one is able to say to the other, 'Come, let us drink, for there is something between us.' " re: the Mayan use of the balche drink in Encyc of Psych Plants, by Ratsch & Hofmann
Check out the 2021 article in Forbes in which a materialist doctor professes to doubt whether laughing gas could help the depressed. Materialists are committed to seeing the world from the POV of Spock from Star Trek.
In the 19th century, poets got together to use opium "in a series of magnificent quarterly carouses" (as per author Richard Middleton). When we outlaw drugs, we outlaw free expression.
The healthcare industry turns all the emotional downsides of drug prohibition into "illnesses."
We should hold the DEA criminally responsible for withholding spirit-lifting drugs from the depressed. Responsible for what, you ask? For suicides and lobotomies, for starters.
According to Donald Trump's view of life, Jesus Christ was a chump. We should hate our enemies, not love them.
