The 2019 movie "Running with the Devil" features a DEA heroin 1 e who tortures one drug suspect and murders another - this latter murder being committed while the hypocritical heroine is smoking a cigarette containing tobacco, a drug that has killed far more Americans than the natural substances that the murder victim happened to be peddling at the time. Meanwhile, we have elected a president who has openly praised the murderous Duterte for killing so-called "drug suspects" in the Philippines, i.e. Filipinos who dared to access the plants and fungi of Mother Nature. This is a president who openly envies the power of dictators and thus would gladly turn America into a country where the film heroine's no-nonsense Drug War strategy was countenanced by law. In short, the nation (both its leader and its hoi polloi) is in the thrall of a Christian Science sharia, every bit as fanatical as the worst Islamic law of that name, dehumanizing enemies and treating them like garbage merely because they dare to partake of naturally occurring plant medicines provided by Mother Nature.
It may be said that the movie, at least, is fiction, but I have yet to hear a DEA spokesperson come out to denounce the film as libel. Meanwhile, the online reviews of the movie prove that the American people still don't get it. I have yet to see a review that slams the movie as dangerous Drug War propaganda, as making the case for torture and murder as government policy. To the contrary, I've read multiple reviews whose authors sympathize with the DEA murderess, regretting that still more can't be done to fight this menace from all those evil naturally occurring plants out there. Meanwhile the website Common Sense, though quick to warn parents about the movie's dirty words, has absolutely nothing to say about the anti-democratic lesson that the movie was peddling: namely that torture and murder are okay as long as the violence is directed toward scumbags who dare to access the plants that politicians have banned.
So if you're wondering what it's like to live under strict Islamic law, stop wondering: Americans are already living under a strictly enforced Sharia, targeted against those infidels who dare to look upon Mother Nature as a goddess rather than a drug kingpin.
Folks like Sabet accuse folks like myself of ignoring the "facts." No, it is Sabet who is ignoring the facts -- facts about dangerous horses and free climbing. He's also ignoring all the downsides of prohibition, whose laws lead to the election of tyrants.
I'm told antidepressant withdrawal is fine because it doesn't cause cravings. Why is it better to feel like hell than to have a craving? In any case, cravings are caused by prohibition. A sane world could also end cravings with the help of other drugs.
All uplifting drugs are potential antidepressants. Science denies that fact by claiming that drug efficacy must be proven quantitatively. And so they ignore anecdote, history and psychological common sense.
People talk about how dangerous Jamaica is -- but no one reminds us that it is all due to America's Drug War. Yes, cannabis and psilocybin are legal there, but plenty of drugs are not, and even if they were, their illegality elsewhere would lead to fierce dealer rivalry.
The press once again hauls out the easy answer. Reiner's son was using drugs! Aha! Of course, that explains EVERYTHING! [sigh]
The fact that some drugs can be addictive is no reason to outlaw drugs. It is a reason to teach safe use and to publicize all the ways that smart people have found to avoid unwanted pharmacological dependency -- and a reason to use drugs to fight drugs.
Meanwhile, no imaginable downside could persuade westerners that guns and alcohol were too dangerous. Yet the DEA lies about almost all psychoactive drugs, saying there are no good uses. That's a lie! Then they pass laws that keep us from disproving their puritanical conclusion.
The idea that "drugs" have no medical benefits is not science, it is philosophy, and bad philosophy at that. It is based on the idea that benefits must be molecularly demonstratable and not created from mere knock-on psychological effects of drug use, time-honored tho' they be.
Billboards reading "Fentanyl kills" are horrible because they encourage the creation of racist legislation that outlaws all godsend uses of opiates. Kids in hospice in India go without morphine because of America's superstitious fear of opiates.
Drug testing labs are the modern Inquisitors. We are not judged by the content of our character, but by the content of our digestive systems.
(up)