Combatting the Drug War is like peeling an onion. Each of the Drug Warrior's harebrained assumptions turns out to be based on yet other harebrained assumptions, which have to be identified in their turn if one is to have any hope of convincing the mind-muddled masses, who continue to follow the logic-challenged ghost of Richard Nixon like he's the Pied Piper of Drug-Free Hamelin.
Take the following drug-war proposition, for instance:
"Substances should be illegal if they are subject to misuse."
What nonsense. Should driving be illegal because that privilege can be abused?
The Drug Warrior thinks that's a bad analogy, of course, but only because they fail to recognize that Mother Nature's pharmacy is the birth right of all residents of planet Earth and that the so-called drugs it contains have been used for religious and psychological purposes for millennia, not just for "getting high" as the Drug Warrior seems to believe. One of the world's first religions was founded around the worship of a psychedelic plant-based substance known as Soma. The Eleusinian mysteries lasted 2,000 consecutive years and sharpened the minds of Plato and Cicero1. Benjamin Franklin used opium to spur his creativity. HG Wells and Jules Verne swore by Coca Wine in writing their famous stories. Francis Crick used liberal amounts of psychedelic to think "outside the box," and thus he discovered the DNA helix. It's only in the suspicious and parochial mind of Drug Warriors like Richard Nixon that we associate psychoactive substances exclusively with riffraff -- by which we generally mean those ethnic groups that the Drug Warrior hates. Thus opium was outlawed because it was associated with the Chinese, just as cocaine was outlawed for its association with blacks, and marijuana for its association with Mexicans.
Yet we still say that "Substances should be illegal if they are subject to misuse"?
I don't know how the Drug Warrior can make that statement with a straight face, given the fact that more than 1 in 8 American males are chemically addicted to modern antidepressants and 1 in 4 American females -- and these drugs can be harder to quit than heroin - Yet the average Drug Warrior has absolutely nothing to say about that fact. It's an addiction problem that the APA (the American Psychiatric Association) and Big Pharma "hush up" by claiming that these drugs need to be taken for life. That's fine, except that the coalition never started making that claim until the addiction problem was first noticed. Only then did it conveniently occur to the drug pushers in question that these drugs required lifelong administration. What a coup by psychiatrists: they thus rendered lawsuits moot, while casting themselves as the saviors of the patients that they themselves had turned into addicts - not to mention the fact that the shrinks were now guaranteed to have clients for life.
But then under this rationale, we could solve the heroin problem in one fell swoop by announcing that heroin has to be taken for life. Problem solved. If we notice withdrawal symptoms, so what? It just means that the addict hasn't taken his or her daily meds yet. (But don't hold your breath waiting for psychiatry to "sign off" on this corollary to their self-serving logic on addiction.)
Putting aside this corporate-biased hypocrisy, why should the physical and emotional needs of millions of law-abiding Americans be ignored in favor of cracking down on a minority of those who cannot use a substance responsibly? For make no mistake: many currently illegal drugs have positive effects -- as Benjamin Franklin knew about opium, as HG Wells knew about cocaine, and as the American Air Force once knew about amphetamines. As for psychedelics, they have been repeatedly shown to produce the sort of self-critical insight that has been the holy grail of psychiatry for the last 50 years.
And yet we still say:
"Substances should be illegal if they are subject to misuse"?
Nonsense.
Drug warriors always try to muddy the water with lies, false premises and newspeak. But there is only one thing that the critics of the Drug War have to know: that is the fact that it was a violation of natural law to criminalize Mother Nature's bounty in the first place.
But if you Drug War critics want to know more, now hear this:
When viewed closely, you will find that all the so-called drug problems that we claim to be fighting are actually caused by the Drug War itself, by its vindictive and anti-minority criminal penalties, by its willful lies about Mother Nature's plant medicine, and by the fact that it bars us from using all manner of natural godsends that when, used wisely, could provide us with self-insight and happiness while being immensely less addictive than the status quo: that status quo that ironically makes America the most addicted country in the world for all its Drug War posturing -- addicted not to opium, not to cocaine, and not to psychedelics, but rather to Big Pharma meds, pills which doctors even have the nerve to tell us that it's our duty to take every day of our life.
Of course, the moral thing for them to do would be to recognize that they've addicted Americans in droves and to acknowledge and apologize for that glaring and outrageous fact, but since they're determined not to commit professional hari kari, they string Americans along with the myth of their scientific infallibility, a message that Big Pharma keeps spreading on shows like Oprah with the help of the highly paid psychiatrists that they have hired for that purpose.
Since the Drug Warrior thus has no problem with addiction whatsoever, we can only conclude that their real problem is with freedom itself: they don't want Americans to get too much of that, especially when that freedom could lead to the use of plant medicines that help people see through the shortcomings of 21st-century American life, perhaps to the point where they become less-than-perfect consumers from the point of view of the Fortune 500.
September 14, 2022
To put it another way, the Drug Warriors don't want to get America off drugs -- they want to get America on the RIGHT drugs from the point of view of Big Pharma and Wall Street. Julian Buchanan justly refers to this state of affairs as Drug Apartheid.
This is religious tyranny disguised, because the Drug War bans precisely those kinds of medicines that have inspired entire religions in the past, as Soma inspired the Vedic-Hindu faith.
Author's Follow-up: October 27, 2022
Here's another thing that Drug Warriors don't want us to know: that even crack cocaine and methamphetamines can be used non-addictively. That's hard for Americans to believe because they have been taught the following lie by Drug Warrior propaganda: that any drug that CAN be used addictively MUST and WILL be used addictively. If that is true, it is only because of a self-fulfilling prophecy caused by the fact that Drug Warriors never educate users how to use substances wisely: instead they focus on arresting folks who dare to use demonized substances at all.
We need a Controlled Prohibitionists Act, to get psychiatric help for the losers who think that prohibition makes sense despite its appalling record of causing civil wars overseas and devastating inner cities.
Trump supports the drug war and Big Pharma: the two forces that have turned me into a patient for life with dependence-causing antidepressants. Big Pharma makes the pills, and the drug war outlaws all viable alternatives.
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.
In a free future, newspapers will have philosophers on their staffs to ensure that said papers are not inciting consequence-riddled hysteria through a biased coverage of drug-related mishaps.
The whole drug war is based on the anti-American idea that the way to avoid problems is to lie and prevaricate and persuade people not to ask questions.
It's disgusting that folks like Paul Stamets need a DEA license to work with mushrooms.
I'm interested in CBD myself, because I want to gain benefits at times without experiencing intoxication. So I think it's great. But I like it as part of an overall strategy toward mental health. I do not think of CBD, as some do, as a way to avoid using naughty drugs.
The December Scientific American features a story called "The New Nuclear Age," about a trillion-dollar plan to add 100s of ICBM's to 5 states, which an SA editorial calls "kick me" signs. This Neanderthal plan comes from pols who think that compassion-boosting drugs are evil!
Someone needs to create a group called Drug Warriors Anonymous, a place where Americans can go to discuss their right to mind and mood medicine and to discuss the many ways in which our society trashes godsend medicines.
The DEA conceives of "drugs" as only justifiable in some time-honored ritual format, but since when are bureaucrats experts on religion? I believe, with the Vedic people and William James, in the importance of altered states. To outlaw such states is to outlaw my religion.
We need a Controlled Prohibitionists Act, to get psychiatric help for the losers who think that prohibition makes sense despite its appalling record of causing civil wars overseas and devastating inner cities.