"The outlawing of drugs has shunted me off onto dependence-causing Big Pharma meds for life. And now Big Pharma is trying to belittle drug use by judging it by materialist standards and outside of all context. They are determined to deprive me of use of every holistic-acting drug on the planet. This is the pharmacological colonialism that has turned me into a Big Pharma patient for life. If we took this materialistic view of drugs to the rainforest, we could find "reasons" to outlaw every psychoactive plant in the world. It is easy to do so in a world in which Drug Warriors ignore all the GLARINGLY OBVIOUS reasons why drugs are considered godsends for actual users -- as opposed to passion-free materialist scientists. When is the media going to stop normalizing drug prohibition by judging drugs based on RISKS only!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have spent a lifetime on dependence-causing BIG PHARMA drugs thanks to the mindset that one-sided articles such as yours help to justify!!!!!!!!"
"If we argue from principle, then it is moot whether drug prohibition works, because it is problematic what should count as its 'working.' The very existence of such a mass movement of scapegoating-- uniting a diverse people in a common hatred-- may be regarded as evidence that, simply put, it is working."
"Actually, as a slogan, 'Just say no to drugs' is simply witless, in both senses of that word: It is at once humorless and stupid, leaving unsaid to what drugs, in what doses and under what circumstances one ought to say no."
"The laws that deny healthy people 'recreational' drugs also deny sick people 'therapeutic' drugs."
"Although there is no evidence that the American consumer ever complained about the free market in drugs, there is plenty of evidence that his self-appointed protectors complained bitterly and loudly."
"Lacking the usual grounds on which people congregate as a nation, we [Americans] habitually fall back on the most primitive yet most enduring basis for group cohesion, namely, scapegoating."
The U.S. government created violence out of whole cloth in America's inner cities with drug prohibition -- and now it is using that violence as an excuse to kick the people that they themselves have knocked down.
Psychedelics and entheogens should be freely available to all dementia patients. These medicines can increase neuronal plasticity and even grow new neurons. Besides, they can inspire and elate -- or do we puritans feel that our loved ones have no right to peace of mind?
No substance is bad in and of itself. Fentanyl has positive uses, at specific doses, for specific people, in specific situations. But the drug war votes substance up or down. That is hugely anti-scientific and it blocks human progress.
In a free world, almost all depressed individuals could do WITHOUT doctors: these adult human beings could handle their own depression with the informed intermittent use of a wide variety of psychoactive substances.
Oregon has decided to go back to the braindead plan of treating substance use as a police matter. Might as well arrest people at home since America has already spread their drug-hating Christian Science religion all over the world.
The Drug War shows us that American democracy is fundamentally flawed. Propaganda and fearmongering has persuaded Americans to give up freedoms that are clearly enunciated in the U.S. Constitution. We need a new democracy in which a Constitution actually matters.
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.
If Fentanyl kills, then alcohol massacres. The problem is drug prohibition, not drugs.
We would never have even heard of Freud except for cocaine. How many geniuses is America stifling even as we speak thanks to the war on mind improving medicines?
AI is inherently plagiaristic technology. It tells us: "Hey, guys, look what I can do!" -- when it should really be saying, "Hey, guys, look how I stole all your data and repackaged it in such a way as to make it appear that I am the genius, not you!"
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