Kevin Sabet reminds me of those cops in "Naked Gun" who inadvertently force bystanders off the edge of a cliff in an effort to protect them from potential danger. He sees problems with marijuana with wide-opened eyes and yet he's blind to the gargantuan damage being done by the Drug War ideology that he himself represents. He wants us to "follow the science 1," not realizing that American science has been censored for over a century now by the Drug War ideology of substance demonization. That's why all the academic articles about the government-defined category called "drugs" concern only abuse and misuse, without any reference to the fact that psychoactive medicines have inspired entire religions, given Plato his view of the afterlife, and formed the very basis of the long-lasting Inca society. That's why magazines like the Atlantic publish articles about depression and Alzheimer's without even mentioning the fact that the Drug War has outlawed all the substances that might help us end those scourges. Indeed, depression could end overnight in America if we re-legalized the coca leaf -- and school shootings would be reduced drastically by legalizing the empathogen called MDMA 2 , something that the mendacious DEA was on the verge of doing in 1985 until they vetoed the advice of their own counsel and criminalized the substance in order to protect their jobs, thanks to which they have denied godsend medicine for PTSD to America's "wounded warriors" for the last 37 years.
If you want to "follow the science 3," then the first step is to free science from drug-war censorship. But of course in reality, even "following the science" is not enough. Folks use psychoactive substances to help them achieve self-actualization in life, and for many of us, self-actualization trumps safety. The "good life" for a real human being is one in which they achieve their most heartfelt goals, whereas the "good life" for the scientist is one that maximizes safety in the abstract. If we merely "followed the science" about the statistically super-dangerous sport of free-climbing, we would criminalize the activity at once. But we do not do so. Why not? Because we recognize that the personal fulfillment of the climber trumps safety considerations. But when it comes to psychoactive medicines, Kevin wants safety to trump all else, in which case it follows that we must consider users criminal if they dare to follow their dreams.
But my real beef with Kevin is that the omnipresence of marijuana today is a direct result of the Drug War itself, the Drug War that he wants to salvage by making the scheduling system more honest (something that's never going to happen in a country that sells Big Pharma meds like lemonade on prime-time television). But like all Drug Warriors, the only stakeholder he sees when it comes to substance legalization 4 are uneducated white American youths (who are uneducated precisely because the Drug War spends money on arresting rather than teaching, on demonizing rather than creating safe use practices, which is clear from the fact that we have a drug ENFORCEMENT agency instead of a drug EDUCATION agency in America). Kevin has no interest in the other stakeholders: the Mexican children who have been orphaned by the civil war that the Drug War has created in Mexico, the scientists who are censored by the Drug War ideology of substance demonization, the 1 in 4 American women who are hooked on the Big Pharma 56 pill mill 7 , the opioid crisis caused by a Drug War which incentivizes dealers to sell whatever's ready to hand without regard for safety, and above all the millions who suffer in silence around the globe today because America has decided that we should fear psychoactive substances rather than learn how to use them as safely as possible.
The answer is too obvious for Washington insiders like Kevin to see: we need to get government out of the business of criminalizing Mother Nature in the first place. We need to teach, not arrest. For the Drug War causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some. The billions that we give to the army and law enforcement for cracking black heads in America and shooting Latinos south of our border should be channeled instead into education: real education, I mean, that teaches us the ups and downs of all drugs, including those of the anti-depressants upon which 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life. Most importantly, however, we need to recognize the original sin of the Drug War in outlawing Mother Nature's medicines in the first place, for as citizens of Planet Earth, we all have a natural right to the plants and fungi that grow at our very feet. Just ask Thomas Jefferson, whose ghost was spinning in his grave when the mendacious DEA stomped onto Monticello 8 in 1987 and confiscated the Founding Father's poppy plants in violation of the natural law upon which he had founded America.
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Related tweet: October 24, 2022
Rishi says he never takes drugs. No aspirin then? No coffee? Or does he just means "drugs" that politicians have concluded have no good uses -- like, say, the coca plant which Peruvian Indians used safely for millennia?
Related tweet: June 10, 2023
Check out these prohibitionists who whine about the popularity of weed. It's like they outlawed steak and pork and then they complained about the popularity of chicken. I'd be more than happy to diversify my medicine cabinet once these clowns stop outlawing Mother Nature.
I can't believe that no one at UVA is bothered by the DEA's 1987 raid on Monticello. It was, after all, a sort of coup against the Natural Law upon which Jefferson had founded America, asserting as it did the government's right to outlaw Mother Nature.
Don't the Oregon prohibitionists realize that all the thousands of deaths from opiates is so much blood on their hands?
Opium is a godsend, as folks like Galen, Avicenna and Paracelsus knew. The drug war has facilitated a nightmare by outlawing peaceable use at home and making safe use almost impossible.
Almost all of today's magazine articles about human psychology should come with the following disclaimer:
"This article was written from the standpoint of Drug War ideology, which holds that outlawed substances can have no beneficial uses whatsoever."
Many psychedelic fans are still drug warriors at heart. They just think that a nice big exception should be carved out for the drugs that they're suddenly finding useful. Wrong. Substance demonization is wrong, root and branch. It always causes more suffering than freedom.
I have nothing against science, BTW (altho' I might feel differently after a nuclear war!) I just want scientists to "stay in their lane" and stop pretending to be experts on my own personal mood and consciousness.
Being a lifetime patient is not the issue: that could make perfect sense in certain cases. But if I am to be "using" for life, I demand the drug of MY CHOICE, not that of Big Pharma and mainstream psychiatry, who are dogmatically deaf to the benefits of hated substances.
When it comes to "drugs," the government plays Polonius to our Ophelia:
OPHELIA: I do not know, my lord, what I should think.
POLONIUS: Marry, I'll teach you; think yourself a baby!
Health is not a quality, it's a balance. To decide drug legality based on 'health' grounds thus opens a Pandora's box of different points of view.
Americans are starting to think that psychedelics may be an exception to the rule that drugs are evil -- but drugs have never been evil. The evil resides in how we think, talk and legislate about drugs.
I can't believe that no one at UVA is bothered by the DEA's 1987 raid on Monticello. It was, after all, a sort of coup against the Natural Law upon which Jefferson had founded America, asserting as it did the government's right to outlaw Mother Nature.