With all due respect, young people were not dying in the street from opiate use when opium 2 was legal, before it was outlawed by racist politicians. Fentanyl only kills in the sense that cars kill or alcohol kills. They kill when people are uneducated and lack alternatives and receive product of unknown quality and quantity -- all of which problems are brought about by drug prohibition!
prohibition is the problem 3 . It outlaws many inherently non-addictive alternatives to opiates. Even opiates can be used safely and without addiction, although the media refuses to publish any examples of that fact and the Drug Warrior refuses to teach safe and non-addictive use!!! In fact, the White House, since the Nixon years, has helped censor sitcoms and other TV shows 4 to conform to the drug-blaming ideology of the Drug Warrior, so that Americans will not even think that safe and non-addictive use is possible.
When we blame drugs rather than drug policy, we wage a Drug War that has revoked American liberties and destroyed the rule of law in Latin America. It has handed the presidency to Donald Trump by jailing over a million Blacks for gun violence 5 directly brought about by drug prohibition itself. Guns first entered the hood thanks to liquor and drug prohibition.
Drug prohibition has also given racist police officers carte blanche to be as evil as they want to be. The racist officers know this. That's why the police who killed George Floyd were shouting, "Just say no to drugs!" Meanwhile, minority kids die every day from drive-by shootings caused by drug prohibition.
There are positive uses even for cyanide, even for Fentanyl. When we outlaw substances based on misuse, we deny people godsend medicine, like the children in hospice in India where morphine 6 is difficult to find and use thanks to U.S.-inspired fears about opiate use.
The Hindu religion was inspired by drug use. Drugs are not the problem. Bad drug laws and a lack of education are the problems.
Every life is sacred, but that includes the lives of minorities like 15-year-old Niomi Russell, who was killed by a drive-by shooting in D.C. in 2024 thanks to drug prohibition, and that includes the 60,000 Mexicans who have been "disappeared" over the last two decades thanks to the War on Drugs.
America's attitudes and laws are the problem, not drugs. We have got to stop playing "whack-a-mole" with inanimate substances like Fentanyl, PCP 7, Ice, etc., and address the real problems: a lack of education, a lack of alternatives, and a lack of government regulation of drug supply.
Sincerely Yours
PS 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life on antidepressants 8. The antidepressant that I am on is harder to kick than heroin 9. The medical peddlers who sold me that "junk" never told me that it would make me a patient for life -- and yet no one is complaining on MY behalf. To the contrary, they are telling me to "just take your meds."
PPS Opiates cause less cravings than nicotine. See Andrew Weil's book, "From Chocolate to morphine 10 ."
The Drug War is all about fearmongering rather than solving problems. It causes suicides by outlawing all drugs that could inspire and elate without causing addiction. It causes unnecessary shock therapy for the depressed, by outlawing all alternatives. It denies godsend meds to the autistic, meds that could help them feel compassion for others!
For these reasons and many more, I urge you to start demanding education and a regulated drug supply instead of launching a war on an inanimate substance like Fentanyl.
Attention Teachers and Professors: Brian is not writing these essays for his health. (Well, in a way he is, actually, but that's not important now.) His goal is to get the world thinking about the anti-democratic and anti-scientific idiocy of the War on Drugs. You can stimulate your students' brainwashed grey matter on this topic by having them read the above essay and then discuss the following questions as a group!
If the depressed patient laughs, that means nothing. Materialists have to see results under a microscopic or they will never sign off on a therapy.
We deal with "drug" risks differently than any other risk. Aspirin kills thousands every year. The death rate from free climbing is huge. But it's only with "drug use" that we demand zero deaths (a policy which ironically causes far more deaths than necessary).
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.
Michael Pollan is the Leona Helmsley of the Drug War. He uses outlawed drugs freely while failing to support the re-legalization of Mother Nature. Drug laws are apparently for the little people.
Laughing gas inspired the philosophy of William James. Outlawing N20 is outlawing academic freedom. Laughing gas should be available for the suicidal. Drug prohibition is not a victimless crime.
Americans have learned nothing but half-truths and lies about cocaine and opium thanks to the total censorship of drug benefits.
NIDA is just a propaganda arm of the U.S. government -- and will remain so until it recognizes the glaringly obvious benefits of drugs -- as well as the glaringly obvious downsides of prohibition. We need a National Institute on Drug Use, not a National Institute on Drug Abuse.
My impression has been that the use of cocaine over a long time can bring about lasting improvement..." --Sigmund Freud, On Cocaine, 1884
"Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death." -Jean Cocteau
If anyone manages to die during an ayahuasca ceremony, it is considered a knockdown argument against "drugs." If anyone dies during a hunting club get-together, it is considered the victim's own damn fault.
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