I can't speak for foreigners, but there are generally five types of people when it comes to how U.S. citizens think about drugs. Hopefully you belong to none of the following groups and so you can join me in the winner's circle below at the end of this article (beneath the heading for "Right-Thinking American", that is). But here is my list of wrongheaded Yankees when it comes to drugs. (Don't hate on me for calling out Libertarians on this one. I only do so because Milton Friedman himself said some very problematic things about drugs, at least in his early career.)
1) THE TYPICAL AMERICAN: Thinks that the Drug War is probably a bad idea, but agrees that some drugs are horrible and that people need to get off them and that drugs have very few if any benefits to offer. Believes that words like "clean" and "junk" and "dope" are actually unbiased terminology. Some in this category are slowly wakening to the idea that drugs may have benefits, though. An example in this latter subcategory is Michael Pollan1, who still favors prohibition, though he claims to be fascinated by the potential curative powers of plants and fungi.
2) THE REDNECK AMERICAN: Thinks the Drug War is a good idea, and that anyone who does not think so is anti-American or at least stupid. Thinks that it makes sense to have alcohol and guns protected by special amendments while doing everything possible to punish the use of less inherently dangerous substances. You know, DeSantis and his tribespeople. And Trump. Sadly, Biden has come close to full-fledged membership in this class, as the promoter of the law that punished Black Americans far more harshly than whites for possession of cocaine 2.
3) THE LIBERTARIAN AMERICAN: Agrees that drug use is generally a bad idea, but thinks that people have a right to go to hell in their own way. Milton Friedman stands out in this category3. In 1972, he opined that good folk can have different views about drug legalization - to which I would add, "Yes, but only if they are historically ignorant and philosophically challenged - not to mention unaware of the natural law upon which America was founded, which, if it guarantees anything, guarantees our right to what Mother Nature grows at our very feet."
4) THE MATERIALIST AMERICAN: Thinks that drugs are great for recreation but that "real" cures must come from reductionist science, that the goal is to manipulate brain chemicals rather than to treat an individual holistically. Carl Hart4 is an example. Also Rick Doblin5 and Dj Nutt6. In his book "Drug Use for Grownups," Carl insists that drug use is for recreation only and that the depressed, in effect, should just keep taking their meds. (This scientistic version of materialism 7 is all based on the cold and icy Behaviorist psychology of JB Watson 89, which says that feelings and desires don't count: only cold, hard "facts" -- which means anything that can be quantified. And so dreams and aspirations count for nothing -- nor do anecdote or history when it comes to positive drug usage. Did drug use inspire religions? So what? The materialist still has to decide for us if such drugs "really" work! Adieu, common sense! See my essay on Behaviorism and Drugs for more on this long-ignored linkage.)
5) THE SHAMANIC-FRIENDLY AMERICAN: Thinks that psychedelic and entheogenic drugs are wonderful, but thinks that there are no good reasons for using drugs like cocaine or opium 10 and is often even in favor of the continued outlawing of such drugs. Terence McKenna 1112 is one of this sort. Also Alexander Weil13. Terence associated cocaine 1415 use with some of his dissolute friends and so concluded that it was a bad drug.
I have not bothered to specify yet where each of these groups have gone wrong when it comes to their thoughts about drugs and drug use. This is because they are all wrong in the exact same way. They believe that drugs can be judged "up" and "down," depending upon whether they are thought to be safe for American teenagers. Not all of these people would want to criminalize drugs, but they can definitely understand the impulse to criminalize them.
This is about as anti-scientific as you can get, to vote drugs "up" or "down" like this.
And it is anti-progress. It used to be common sense that all substances have positive potential uses, at some dose, in some cases, for somebody. Even cyanide has potential uses in the fight against diabetes16. When you criminalize a drug, you keep it out of the hands of researchers and visionaries who might find uses for it that we have never dreamed of. So your drug laws simply veto human progress. It's also a way to hide real problems. When we blame drugs instead of poverty or lack of housing or poor education, we try to make a virtue of our selfish and niggardly values. It shows we would rather spend money on prisons than social programs of any kind.
Also, none of these groups understand basic psychology - tho' they should not feel bad, because today's psychologists do not understand basic psychology either171819. That's why progress is so glacial when it comes to the approval of psychoactive drugs. We fail to acknowledge the obvious, that drugs that cheer you up actually do cheer you up (whatever materialists may or may not observe under a microscope) - and that this is a good thing, to be cheered up, something far better than electroshock therapy or suicide20. Unfortunately, the Drug Warriors have convinced us that we can never use drugs wisely, and so we ignore the endless safe protocols that one can imagine for drug use once we re-legalize psychoactive medicine. For all drugs that elate and inspire are antidepressants 21 when used advisedly.
In this case, drug dealers are far more knowledgeable than our dogma-ridden professionals22. And it's not just the fact that drugs can cheer you up, it's that their use is something one can look forward to, which also cheers one up. It's a virtuous circle, especially when managed in such a way that dependency need not develop for any particular substance.
But Americans have been brainwashed to think that the use of outlawed drugs will cause addiction. To the extent that this is true, however, it is BECAUSE of the Drug War, which refuses to teach safe use while also corrupting the drug supply and limiting what is available on the street to so few options that it's no surprise that dependency develops for whatever's readily available.
Of course, the Drug War is all about limiting our knowledge about drugs, so it shouldn't come as a surprise when I say that all of the members of the above groups tend to have very little knowledge of how drugs have been used for positive reasons by whole societies in the past, and, in fact, have played a vital role in the founding of religions, in Latin and South America and in India, where the psychoactive substance Soma inspired the Vedic-Hindu religion23.
I hope it goes without saying that I personally disapprove of all of the group attitudes noted above. But this begs the question: what is the RIGHT way to think about drugs.
I'm glad you asked! RIGHT-THINKING AMERICAN: Thinks that drugs are capable of marvelous things: increasing energy, renewing our interest in Mother Nature, giving us an almost surreal level of concentration, inspiring a new understanding of ourselves and helping us to get rid of counterproductive behavior patterns. Knows that drugs have inspired entire religions and that it is therefore anti-religion to outlaw such drugs. Drug use is dangerous, yes, but in the same way that horseback riding is dangerous and rock climbing and car driving. Drugs are never responsible for anything, however, as they are inanimate substances. Goodness and badness reside in how a substance is used. This group also believes that it is always wrong to demonize drugs in the abstract, because scare campaigns about irresponsible drug use have been shown to lead to more irresponsible drug use. That fact has long been used by the DEA to promulgate drug scares (think crack, ice, PCP 24, oxy, Fentanyl...) through publicity that turns local misuse into national problems, thereby justifying the DEA's multi-billion-dollar budget25.
The media need to take these facts onboard and stop writing articles that scapegoat drugs for social problems, including anti-constitutional laws that deny us our once-obvious right to gifts of Mother Nature.
Author's Follow-up: December 20, 2024
My main beef with Libertarians is that they emphasize the fact that people should be allowed to "go to hell in their own way" when it comes to drugs. I'm kind of like, "Well, yes, but..."
Their dictum is a very harsh way of saying something that I could probably agree with after some qualifications. But the statement also suggests that the Libertarians are unaware of the many potential positive uses of drugs, uses that will become apparent once we jettison Drug War biases -- like the bizarre ideas that addictive drugs can only be used addictively and that drugs that make you feel good cannot be used as part of a creative protocol to treat depression. This is a claim that is advanced these days both on religious and scientific grounds, i.e., the grounds of reductive materialism which determines efficacy by looking under microscopes, not by listening to laughter or crediting accounts from time-honored historical use.
We do need to recognize that if substance RE-legalization 26 leads to downsides, it is because of American attitudes towards drugs, not because of drugs themselves.
Meanwhile, we must learn to think of drug deaths in the exact same way that we now think of deaths from mountain climbing or driving a car: our response to them must be more and better education -- not criminalization. The problem with the Libertarian dictum noted above is that it tends to imply that there are no good reasons to use drugs -- and to imply that is to yield much ground to the Drug Warrior.
It's easy to think there are no benefits to drugs because all examples of productive use have been censored from media for the last one hundred years. Here's just one example of what we are not meant to know. In "Tale of the Ragged Mountains," Edgar Allan Poe shows how morphine 27 use can lead (in the properly disposed and educated individual) to an almost surreal appreciation of Mother Nature. Now, that is a drug benefit -- a marvelous drug benefit, in fact -- and it is just one of an endless list of benefits that the Drug Warriors have been censoring from all media -- and I need hardly add the fact that drugs have inspired religions.
So we should be screaming out the good side of drugs that the Drug Warrior has censored for us for our entire lifetimes and continues to do so to this very day.
Should self-interested pen-pushers at the FDA be in charge of deciding whether we are allowed to have an almost surreal appreciation of Mother Nature? ABSOLUTELY NOT! END SUBSTANCE PROHIBITION NOW!
Using the billions now spent on caging users, we could end the whole phenomena of both physical and psychological addiction by using "drugs to fight drugs." But drug warriors do not want to end addiction, they want to keep using it as an excuse to ban drugs.
Like when Laura Sanders tells us in Science News that depression is an intractable problem, she should rather tell us: "Depression is an intractable problem... that is, in a world wherein we refuse to consider the benefits of 'drugs,' let alone to fight for their beneficial use."
Alcohol is a drug in liquid form. If drug warriors want to punish people who use drugs, they should start punishing themselves.
"Like Christians burning mosques and temples to spread the word of Jesus, modem drugabuseologists burn crops to spread the use of alcohol." -- Ceremonial Chemistry, p. 48
I'm told that most psychiatrists would like to receive shock therapy if they become severely depressed. That's proof of drug war insanity: they would prefer damaging their brains to using drugs that can elate and inspire.
Suicidal people should be given drugs that cheer them up immediately and whose use they can look forward to. The truth is, we would rather such people die than to give them such drugs, that's just how bamboozled we are by the war against drugs.
The drug war tells us that certain drugs have no potential uses and then turns that into a self-fulfilling prophecy by outlawing these drugs. This is insanely anti-scientific and anti-progress. We should never give up on looking for positive uses for ANY substance.
Drug warriors aren't just deciding for us about drugs. They're telling us that we no longer need Coleridge poems, Lovecraft stories, Robin Williams, Sherlock Holmes, or the soma-inspired Hindu religion.
Talking about being in denial: drug warriors blame all of the problems that they cause on "drugs" and then insist that the entire WORLD accept their jaundiced view of the natural bounty that God himself told us was good.
We need to start thinking of drug-related deaths like we do about car accidents: They're terrible, and yet they should move us to make driving safer, not to outlaw driving. To think otherwise is to swallow the drug war lie that "drugs" can have no positive uses.
Using the billions now spent on caging users, we could end the whole phenomena of both physical and psychological addiction by using "drugs to fight drugs." But drug warriors do not want to end addiction, they want to keep using it as an excuse to ban drugs.
