A reader of this site, especially one raised on Drug War propaganda (which is to say literally everyone these days), may say to themselves: "Gee, this guy is awfully hung up about drugs. "
But that's got the whole situation backwards. The fact is that the whole world has been "hung up" about drugs, ever since the Harrison narcotics act of 1914 criminalized a mere plant (the poppy plant) in contravention of the natural law upon which America was founded. Since then, "drugs" have become the national (and, alas, international) boogeyman and scapegoat, responsible for all social ills and therefore something that the police and military have mobilized around the world to combat, letting civil liberties fend for themselves.
It is thus society that is hung up about "drugs," not me. My whole goal in writing these essays is to stop the world from superstitiously scapegoating drugs. Drugs are not the problem. To the extent that there's a problem that's ASSOCIATED with drug use, it stems from a lack of education, not the substances themselves. To think otherwise, is to reason like our prehistoric ancestors: if they got hit by lightning, then the evil lightning was to blame, not the fact that they had stupidly stood out in the open and attracted the lightning bolt.
There was no drug problem in Ancient Egypt. There was no drug problem in Ancient Greece. There was no drug problem in Ancient Mesopotamia. There was no drug problem in Ancient Rome. There was no drug problem in the Mongol Kingdom. There was no drug problem in the Viking Age.
Why then is there suddenly a huge "drug" problem today? Answer: Because racist politicians (especially Francis Burton Harrison and Nixon) wanted to punish the people with whom they associated certain substance use, and since they could not enact any laws that were OBVIOUSLY racist, they drafted drug laws that would throw their enemies in jail, often for life, for using their substance of choice, thus often taking away their right to vote in American elections and ensuring the future election of yet more drug-warrior racists.
The Drug War thus created has nothing to do with America's health. If it did, then its first targets would be Big Pharma antidepressants, to which 1 in 4 American women are addicted. Then it would move on to crack down on "liquor abuse," which one could plausibly argue is "rampant" in America. Yet the Drug Warrior is blind to such problems. When they say they want to crack down on "drug use," they are using the word "drugs" as they have defined the term for their own strategic political purposes: namely, a substance that fails to enrich Big Pharma and Big Liquor, and a substance whose ingestion could help Americans bypass the expensive and highly addictive pill mill of psychiatry, thus leaving the medical establishment out of the loop when it comes to the profits to be reaped by addicting one's fellow human beings.
So the Drug Warrior willfully lies about these substances that they have hypocritically labelled "drugs" for political reasons, claiming that such substances have no therapeutic value, thus lying in the teeth of contrary anecdotal evidence that dates back millennia. They say coca is pure evil: yet it was an Incan God and helped Jules Verne and HG Wells create the best sci-fi stories in the world. They say opium is even PURER evil: yet Benjamin Franklin and even Thomas Jefferson himself partook.
No, I'm not the one who's hung up about drugs: it's the racist politicians who are fixated on "drugs," but not any drugs, mind: just the drugs that they have decided to demonize in order to achieve their racist political goals (namely, getting elected by marginalizing their opponents through the enactment of harsh drug laws). Sadly, they have hoodwinked liberals to play along, by convincing them that it's all about health, encouraging leftists to embrace the superstitious reasoning that amoral substances can be blamed for problems, rather than the lack of free and objective education that could render drug misuse impossible.
Author's Follow-up: August 28, 2022
Speaking of America's obsession with "drugs": "Just say no" classes are like DIY instruction for rebellious kids. They say, in effect: "If you ever decide to rebel, kids, here are some nasty substances that you can take to really piss off your parents and other authority figures." Besides that, such classes are anti-scientific, because they promote the pernicious idea that some substances can be bad without regard for how, when, or why they are used. In reality, there are no such substances in the world. Even the highly toxic Botox can have positive uses in the correct context. Moreover, it is this lie about substances that, even as we write, is censoring scientists by outlawing their thorough research of psychoactive medicines, some of which have great promise for combating Alzheimer's disease and autism. But American drug policy is all about scaring Americans, not educating them. That's why Joe Biden's Office of National Drug Control Policy was originally set up with a charter that prevented its board members from even considering positive uses for the substances that politicians had outlawed.
One wonders when scientists are going to recognize this fact, come out soundly against the status quo, and insist that we stop politicizing substances -- and thus science -- altogether.
Re-affirm natural law and forbid politicians from barring the world's use of medicines simply because they do not pass moral muster with racist WASP politicians.
Ten Tweets
against the hateful war on US
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.
Today's war against drug users is like Elizabeth I's war against Catholics. Both are religious crackdowns. For today's oppressors, the true faith (i.e., the moral way to live) is according to the drug-hating religion of Christian Science.
Democratic societies need to outlaw prohibition for many reasons, the first being the fact that prohibition removes millions of minorities from the voting rolls, thereby handing elections to fascists and insurrectionists.
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.
Opium could be a godsend for talk therapy. It can help the user step outside themselves and view their problems from novel viewpoints.
We need a scheduling system for psychoactive drugs as much as we need a scheduling system for sports activities: i.e. NOT AT ALL. Some sports are VERY dangerous, but we do not outlaw them because we know that there are benefits both to sports and to freedom in general.
Most psychoactive substance use can be judged as recreational OR medicinal OR both. The judgements are not just determined by the circumstances of use, either, but also by the biases of those doing the judging.
Attention People's magazine editorial staff:
Matthew Perry was a big boy who made his own decisions. He didn't die because of ketamine or because of evil rotten drug dealers, he died because of America's enforced ignorance about psychoactive drugs.
Drug use is judged by different standards than any other risky activity in the western world. One death can lead to outrage, even though that death might be statistically insignificant.
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.
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.