How can a great botanist like Michael Pollan agree with the Drug War proposition that folks should be arrested for accessing the bounty of Mother Nature?
It's very simple. Like the majority of academia these days, Michael recognizes only one stakeholder in the War on Drugs: namely, the anxious American parents who don't want their Johnny to have a bad trip.
Of course, even if this were the only concern, it's not clear how the Drug War is going to help Johnny, since the policy of the Drug War is to demonize certain politically chosen substances, not to teach about them. That's why Leah Betts died after taking Ecstasy in 1995, not because Ecstasy was a horrible drug (in fact, it's one of the safest psychoactive substances on the planet) but because the Drug Warriors never told the 100-pound raver that she needed to stay hydrated while using it. Indeed, the original charter of Biden's Office of National Drug Control Policy tells members to avoid all mention of safe and beneficial uses of "drugs," for fear of "sending the wrong message," and so it's government policy itself which keeps folks like Leah in the dark.
But granting that Johnny would be harmed by re-legalizing all plant medicine, and granting that we don't have what Locke called a "natural right" to the use of the land "and all that lies therein," our hapless Johnny is not the only victim of the prohibition that Michael continues to champion (albeit reluctantly).
There are millions, if not billions, of silently suffering victims of the Drug War, who cannot reach down and use the medical bounty that grows at their feet, those "mass of men" who, according to Thoreau, "live lives of quiet desperation." But such stakeholders in the Drug War have no front page articles written about them, describing their desperation and desire for positive change. Their silent halfhearted wish to die is never chronicled on the evening news. Meanwhile, the Drug Warrior need dig up only one hapless, drug-addled ex-hippy to scream triumphantly in a front-page article in the New York Times that psychedelics are drugs from hell and that we must slow still further our glacial progress toward their re-legalization 1 in America.
And yet these are not the only stakeholders that Michael and company overlook in advocating continued prohibition. Scientists are adversely affected stakeholders as well, since the Drug War forbids and otherwise discourages them from finding cures for Alzheimer's 2 and autism. Yes, scientists are censored by the Drug War, though, unlike Galileo, they do not acknowledge such censorship, having been so thoroughly indoctrinated in the Drug War habit of demonizing medicines. There is, nonetheless, a prima facie case that psychedelics in particular, which can promote neuronal growth, could play a huge role in fighting conditions like Alzheimer's, and yet American scientists are afraid to go there -- or else they are daunted by the psychological and financial hurdles of pursuing such research, research that reputation-conscious funders are afraid to support.
There are still other stakeholders in the Drug War: the blacks who die yearly in inner cities from the gangs that were armed by prohibition. The kids who die in the civil wars in Mexico and Colombia, etc. The once law-abiding citizens who are denounced as "scumbags" for dealing in plant medicines that were considered divine by previous civilizations.
I could go on and on enumerating the unmentioned stakeholders in the Drug War whom Michael ignores. I might even mention the one in four American women who are chemically dependent on Big Pharma 34 for life, since the Drug War gave a monopoly to the psychiatric pill mill 5 .
But surely I've made my case already: that there are more stakeholders involved in drug-war prohibition than are dreamt of in Michael Pollan's philosophy.
Author's Follow-up: December 17, 2022
I've hitherto refrained from pointing this out, because Michael Pollan seems like a genuinely good guy, not to mention the fact that he is a writer who is many orders of magnitude in advance of my own feeble achievements. But the fact is that I find it irritating for any writer to use psychoactive substances themselves while yet telling us that we must keep these substances illegal for the masses. It smacks of hypocrisy and elitism, saying in effect, "I am, of course, intelligent enough to use these substances wisely, but the average Jane and Joe will never be able to do so." And this is, in fact, the pernicious party line of the Drug Warrior, who is constantly telling us by implication that the average human being will always be a baby when it comes to psychoactive medicine -- which, of course, is a self-fulfilling prophecy, since the government is officially pledged to the goal of scaring us about such medicines, not teaching us about them, let alone telling us how to use them as wisely as possible should we decided to partake.
And where did politicians get the idea that irresponsible white American young people are the only stakeholders when it comes to the question of re-legalizing drugs??? There are hundreds of millions of other stakeholders: philosophers, pain patients, the depressed.
"Abuse" is a funny term because it implies that there's a right way to use "drugs," which is something that the drug warriors deny. To the contrary, they make the anti-scientific claim that "drugs" are not good for anybody for any reason at any dose.
"Just ONE HORSE took the life of my daughter." This message brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.
In the age of the Drug War, the Hippocratic Oath has become "First, do no good."
In the board game "Sky Team," you collect "coffees" to improve your flying skills. Funny how the use of any other brain-focusing "drug" in real life is considered to be an obvious sign of impairment.
I think many scientists are so used to ignoring "drugs" that they don't even realize they're doing it. Yet almost all books about consciousness and depression (etc.) are nonsense these days because they ignore what drugs could tell us about those topics.
We've created a faux psychology to support such science: that psychology says that anything that really WORKS is just a "crutch" -- as if there is, or there even should be, a "CURE" for sadness.
Over 45% of traumatic brain injuries are caused by horseback riding (ABC News). Tell your representatives to outlaw horseback riding and make it a federal offence to teach a child how to ride! Brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.
The formula is easy: pick a substance that folks are predisposed to hate anyway, then keep hounding the public with stories about tragedies somehow related to that substance. Show it ruining lives in movies and on TV. Don't lie. Just keep showing all the negatives.
I can't believe people. Somebody's telling me that "drugs" is not used problematically. It is CONSTANTLY used with a sneer in the voice when politicians want to diss somebody, as in, "Oh, they're in favor of DRUGS!!!" It's a political term as used today!
And where did politicians get the idea that irresponsible white American young people are the only stakeholders when it comes to the question of re-legalizing drugs??? There are hundreds of millions of other stakeholders: philosophers, pain patients, the depressed.
