Whatever we call the drug-war mindset, it exists, and, in my view, is part of a centuries-long pathology of western culture, which clings to the following anti-democratic assumptions:
Right wing "ends" justify any "means" in South America.
It's okay to torture our enemies.
Developing thermonuclear bombs makes sense.
Folks can be hounded out of society for non-crimes, like being communists.
Natural Law and due process can be overruled in "drugs" cases.
We can bomb "them" into submission
Treaties with native populations are meant to be broken.
Thermonuclear bombs were worth pursuing.
Concern for civil and human rights stops at our border.
It's no surprise therefore that those who hold this mindset are opposed to drug re-legalization . Empathogenic drugs like psilocybin and MDMA could bring us all together and make these politicians, and their politics, irrelevant. That's why the powers that be feed us the unscientific lie that godsend medicines have no positive uses whatsoever, for anyone, ever.
Author's Follow-up:
May 29, 2025
This two-year-old post captures a truth about the Drug War that almost no one notices: namely, that there is method to the madness of the Drug Warrior. The Drug War is not just a bunch of bad laws. It is just one of many bad ideas flowing from the pathological mindset of an insecure westerner.
Who is the Drug Warrior, after all?
The Drug Warrior is a bigoted hypochondriac who reacts to ALL perceived problems with simplistic, short-sighted and ultimately counterproductive initiatives. These are the guys who sold guns to seemingly friendly nations during the Cold War, never stopping to think that those countries might someday become enemies and use those weapons on us; these are the guys who "saved" white American "junior" from himself by creating the Mafia and drug cartels that would kill minorities and foreigners; these are the guys who selfishly insist on economic growth at all costs, heedless of the fact that we are leaving our descendants with a toxic Earth, like so many opportunistic butlers making off with the family jewels; these are the guys who "protected" our country in the 20th century by amassing thousands of thermonuclear weapons, completely oblivious to the obvious fact that such weapons would someday be aimed at ourselves.
The Drug War is just one symptom of a pathological western mindset that includes the following traits:
1) selfishness
2) simple-mindedness
3) an inability to wait for deferred gratification
4) an inability to recognize, let alone to act on, principles
5) a visceral hatred of political foes
6) a callous indifference to the rights of their own descendants to live on a clean and thriving planet
Okay, so that's the diagnosis. What is the cure? How do we eradicate this grade-school mindset from American politics?
We need to establish a new social norm, one in which political discussion between supposed adversaries actually takes place -- one in which the only unforgivable sin is our hatred of "the other." We need, in short, to start using drugs for human benefit. Clearly, that is our only hope for saving a species which is on the brink of self-destruction because of its penchant for fearing rather than understanding.
We need to stop censoring reports of positive drug use and to start emulating them instead.
What positive reports of drug use? Consider the following user reports from "Pihkal,"1 reports that reveal the great potential for strategic drug use to help bring the world together in peace and understanding.
"I am experiencing more deeply than ever before the importance of acknowledging and deeply honoring each human being. And I was able to go through and resolve some judgments with particular persons."
"I believe that it would be impossible to harm anything. To commit an overt harmful or painful act on anyone or anything is beyond one's capabilities."
"I felt less of a need to talk, but the intimate closeness with the others was maintained."
" All the next day I felt like 'a citizen of the universe' rather than a citizen of the planet."
Such results were not just achieved in drug trials. Such drug-inspired feelings resulted in unprecedented peace, love and understanding on the British dance floors in the 1990s, as is clear from the following quotes from DJs of that time2:
"It was the first time that black-and-white people had integrated on a level... and everybody was one." -- DJ Ray Keith.
"It was black and white, Asian, Chinese, all up in one building," -- MC GQ.
"Everyone's loving each other, man, they're not hating." - DJ Mampi Swift.
Naturally, the British authorities saw no benefit in peace, love and understanding. In response to these love fests, they cracked down on the use of Ecstasy, and what was the result? The dance floors erupted into such alcohol-fueled violence that concert organizers had to bring in special forces troops to keep the peace. Special forces. Another "victory" for the harebrained Drug Warrior.
CONCLUSION
The sensible mindset toward drugs would come about naturally if the western world embraced just two principles.
1) The only people whom we should mistrust and fear are haters.
2) Opponents on political matters must "engage" with their adversaries in a spirit of peace, each recognizing the humanity of the other.
Regarding principle 1: Haters would be scorned and stigmatized in a free world. Why? Because we would all know that there are drugs that the haters could have used wisely in order to stop being haters. The fact that they fail to do so would render them stigmatized in a sane world. Why? Because we would consider hatred like body odor, as something that a person is responsible for insofar as everyone knows that remedies for the condition are ready to hand.
Regarding principle 2: In the utopian world that I am attempting to evoke here, we would insist as a kind of social norm that pundits must regularly demonstrate their ability to chat amicably with their political opponents as a condition of that pundit being taken seriously. This second principle would help bridge the enormous divide in modern politics, where both "sides" talk only to themselves. Note that this problem seems incurable (at least to any self-styled "realist") until we finally start recognizing the increasingly obvious power of drugs to inspire compassion, patience, and understanding.
Note that I am not getting on any high horse here. I myself could clearly benefit from the wise use of empathogens to help me get my views across to my opponents viz. the imperative for drug re-legalization 3 . When passionate "sober" minds meet, a discussion like that can quickly devolve into a shouting match. Not so when we place the humanity of our opponents front and center with the help of empathogens and thereby work with them constructively to achieve understanding, if not actual agreement.
Alcohol is a drug in liquid form. If drug warriors want to punish people who use drugs, they should start punishing themselves.
I'm looking for a United Healthcare doctor now that I'm 66 years old. When I searched my zip code and typed "alternative medicine," I got one single solitary return... for a chiropractor, no less. Some choice. Guess everyone else wants me to "keep taking my meds."
The DEA stomped onto Thomas Jefferson's estate in 1987 and confiscated the founding father's poppy plants in violation of everything he stood for, politically speaking. And the TJ Foundation helped them! They sold out Jefferson.
Properly speaking, MDMA has killed no one at all. Prohibitionists were delighted when Leah Betts died because they were sure it was BECAUSE of MDMA/Ecstasy. Whereas it was because of the fact that prohibitionists refuse to teach safe use.
I could tell my psychiatrist EXACTLY what would "cure" my depression, even without getting addicted, but everything involved is illegal. It has to be. Otherwise I would have no need of the psychiatrist.
Many in the psychedelic renaissance fail to recognize that prohibition is the problem. They praise psychedelics but want to demonize others substances. That's ignorant however. No substance is bad in itself. All substances have some use at some dose for some reason.
Almost every mainstream article about psychology and consciousness is nonsense these days because it ignores the way that drug prohibition has stymied our investigation of such subjects.
In his treatise on laws, Cicero reported that the psychedelic-fueled Eleusinian Mysteries gave the participants "not only the art of living agreeably, but of dying with a better hope."
I will gladly respect the police once we remove them from Gestapo duty by ending the war on drugs. Police should also learn to live on a budget, without deriving income from confiscating houses and dormitories, etc.
I knew all along that Measure 110 in Oregon was going to be blamed for the problems that the drug war causes. Drug warriors never take responsibility, despite all the blood that they have on their hands.
Alcohol is a drug in liquid form. If drug warriors want to punish people who use drugs, they should start punishing themselves.