



The FDA announced today that MDMA and related compounds could help save the planet by teaching people to love each other. "This is fantastic," raved researcher Nancy Rimkin of the NIH. "These drugs actually help you feel real love toward your fellow human being. The strategic use of such medicine could help world leaders understand each other and so pull the world back from the brink of nuclear war 4 5 !"
Rimkin stresses that MDMA is but one of many similar compounds called phenethylamines that show incredible potential, not just for increasing compassion, but also for ending crippling depression and anxiety and weaning problem drinkers off of alcohol. FDA head Jim Bowden agrees. He is demanding the immediate legalization 6 of all such drugs in synch with a national education campaign about safe use. "This is a game changer," Bowden says. "Everyone talks about the lousy human condition, but now we have a chance to actually do something about it!"

Drug prohibition represents the biggest power grab by government in human history. It is the state control of pain relief and mental states.
Scientists are not the experts on psychoactive medicines. The experts are painters and artists and spiritualists -- and anyone else who simply wants to be all they can be in life. Scientists understand nothing of such goals and aspirations.
In a sane world, we'd package laughing gas for safe use and give it to the suicidal -- saying, "Use before attempting to kill yourself." But drug warriors would rather have suicide than drug use.
In the age of the Drug War, the Hippocratic Oath has become "First, do no good."
What are drug dealers doing, after all? They are merely selling substances that people want and have always had a right to, until racist politicians came along and decided government had the right to ration out pain relief and mystical experience.
Of course, prohibitionists will immediately remind me that we're all children when it comes to drugs, and can never -- but never -- use them wisely. That's like saying that we could never ride horses wisely. Or mountain climb. Or skateboard.
Drug War censorship is supported by our "science" magazines, which pretend that outlawed drugs do not exist, and so write what amount to lies about the supposed intransigence of things like depression and anxiety.
Americans won't be true grown-ups until they learn to react to drug deaths the same way that they react to deaths from horseback riding and mountain climbing. They don't blame such deaths on horses and mountains; neither should they blame drug-related deaths on drugs.
The press is having a field day with the Matthew Perry story. They love to have a nice occasion to demonize drugs. I wonder how many decades must pass before they realize that people are killed by ignorance and a corrupted drug supply, not by the drugs themselves.
It's disgusting that folks like Paul Stamets need a DEA license to work with mushrooms.