The FDA is not qualified to judge psychoactive drugs
Here's why.
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 14, 2024
The FDA sets a ridiculous standard of safety for drugs like MDMA. This is because they focus only on the downsides of use. They do not care in the least about the millions who suffer in silence thanks to the outlawing of such drugs. This is why the approval of psychoactive drugs is always based on philosophical assumptions. For the question is not just, "How dangerous is a drug?" but rather "How important are freedom of thought and the power to control one's own mind?" And the FDA has no expertise in deciding such philosophical matters!
By ignoring the needs of such would-be beneficiaries of the drug, the FDA is essentially telling us that freedom of the mind is not important and that the prime imperative in life is to avoid risk at all costs, even if it means the silent suffering of vast swaths of humanity. Of course, this default philosophical premise is a mistake, even on its own terms, for it fails to calculate, or to even consider, the risk of leaving the world full of dissatisfied people, who may take out that dissatisfaction on themselves or others.
Author's Follow-up:
April 05, 2025
This is the same FDA that approves of Big Pharma drugs whose side effects as advertised on prime-time television include death itself. This is the same FDA that thinks that brain-damaging shock therapy is a valuable treatment. They will not let you improve your mood with phenomenally safe drugs, many of which grow at our very feet, but not to worry: if you get TOO depressed, the FDA is ready to help you damage your brain. It may not make you thrive in life, but it will take your mind off of your problems -- and everything else for that matter.
The important thing is, you will no longer be a problem for the nursing staff that you will henceforth require. You will be all compliance and not put up a fight.
This is proof that the materialist approach to mind and mood medicine is perverted and sick. It causes the behaviorist to ignore all obvious benefits to drugs and to prefer suicide to drug use. When is America going to wake up?
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against the hateful war on US
America is insane: it makes liquor officially legal and then outlaws all the drugs that could help prevent and cure alcoholism.
When the FDA tells us in effect that MDMA is too dangerous to be used to prevent school shootings and to help bring about world peace, they are making political judgments, not scientific ones.
Guess who's in charge of protecting us from AI? Chuck Schumer! The same guy who protected us from drugs -- by turning America into a prison camp full of minorities and so handing two presidential elections to Donald Trump.
It's disgusting that folks like Paul Stamets need a DEA license to work with mushrooms.
America takes away the citizen's right to manage their own pain by making opium illegal. Then psychiatrists treat the resulting epidemic of depression and anxiety by damaging the patient's brain with shock therapy.
All drugs have potential positive uses for somebody, at some dose, in some circumstance, alone or in combination. To decide in advance that a drug is completely useless is an offense to reason and to human liberty.
My depression would disappear overnight if religiously intolerant America would just allow me to live as freely as Benjamin Franklin.
It is a truism to say that we cannot change the world and that therefore we have to change ourselves -- but the drug war outlaws even this latter option.
The MindMed company (makers of LSD Lite) tell us that euphoria and visions are "adverse effects": that's not science, that's an arid materialist philosophy that does not believe in spiritual transcendence.
Most people think that drugs like cocaine, MDMA, LSD and amphetamines can only be used recreationally. WRONG ! This represents a very naive understanding of human psychology. We deny common sense in order to cater to the drug war orthodoxy that "drugs have no benefits."
America is insane: it makes liquor officially legal and then outlaws all the drugs that could help prevent and cure alcoholism.