I seldom get responses to my unsolicited harangues2, so this is quite refreshing! It's good to know that these concerns are on the radar at MAPS3.
I believe that materialist science has a role to play when it comes to leveraging the power of psychoactive drugs for new treatments for cancers, etc. (if only scientists can resist the lucrative temptation to create only the kinds of drugs that require daily and lifetime usage!) But I feel it's a category error to believe that scientists as such should be in charge of approving psychoactive substances for use (which I would argue need no approval in the first place, especially when they are a gift from Mother Nature, and/or are inspired by her). Having scientists opine on the propriety of using MDMA in particular is like having Dr. Spock of Star Trek tell us whether hugging is worthwhile4. Should we really have to pretend that we do not know the answer to that question until such time as a reductive scientist catches up with common sense and simple human feeling? Spock's entire world view makes him incapable of rendering a fair judgment on that topic. Indeed, that's the fundamental problem in playing ball with the FDA: they really have a different world view, one that eschews holistic evidence in favor of the microscopic -- and in so doing helps normalize prohibition, by helping us believe that the glaringly obvious benefits of certain drugs are somehow not "real" benefits after all (which is really a metaphysical conclusion, not a scientific one).
But given that the approval process does exist, it should consider so much more than potential dangers of use: it should consider the many costs of disapproval (i.e., of prohibition), including the censorship of science5, the abnegation of the 4th amendment, and the promotion of unsafe use. Extracting DMT from tree bark, for example, is extremely hazardous, and yet no one seems to realize that prohibition of DMT incentivizes such dangerous activity. A fair approval process would also consider the millions of silent stakeholders (including the depressed6 and the suicidal) who go without potential godsends when we outlaw substances like MDMA. It would consider the non-stop deaths in inner cities due to gun violence, for as Heather Ann Thompson wrote in The Atlantic in 2014: "Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist." It would consider the thousands of young people whose lives would be saved if their drug of choice was almost anything other than alcohol. It would consider the 60,000+ who have been "disappeared" in Mexico due to violence related to substance prohibition7. (A young female activist investigating such deaths was recently dismissed as a "necrophiliac" by Mexican President Obrador8, a fact that reminds us that the War on Drugs is really a war on people, not on drugs -- and not just on any people, either, but on the perceived enemies of the state: especially minorities, the poor, and activists.)
That said, I think Rick Doblin and MAPS have achieved something worthwhile by playing ball with the FDA, even if it is not yet the outcome they were after: they have awoken scientists to the potential benefits of drugs like MDMA, to which they had formerly been blinded by their unconscious acceptance of drug-war orthodoxy. However, I believe that the next step forward should be to question the FDA's expertise when it comes to psychoactive medicines -- or rather question their ability to analyze them without a western materialist bias9. Had I been notified about the recent FDA meeting a few days earlier, I would have signed up for a three-minute time slot in which I would have done just that. I would have highlighted their extreme bias with such questions as: "How can you nix a drug that brought peace and love to the dance floor in Britain at the same time as you approve electroshock therapy and the widespread use of antidepressants, upon which 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life? Some of us would call that the greatest mass pharmacological dystopia of all time." I would have even been so rude as to point out that some prescription drugs advertised on prime-time television list death itself as a potential side effect -- and yet a drug like MDMA10 which kills literally nobody (except for those whom we have refused to educate about safe use) gets the chop? Really, people?11
Perhaps the clearest sign of the FDA's biased world view is the fact that they insist that a psychoactive drug be approved (or disapproved) for one specific psychological condition at a time. (I've heard of a death by a thousand cuts, but this could be called death by a thousand approvals.) Holistic medicines should not be required to prove efficacy in this glacial manner. The whole point of such medicines is that they improve the person's sense of well-being in general. The amelioration of any one specific pathology (physical, psychological, or both) is just so much gravy. But the FDA demands that these drugs function outside of the context that holism always assumes. The FDA says that drug A must be shown to cause outcome Z. But when drugs work holistically, A may cause C, D and F, and so on, only eventually to cause Z by a string of interconnected actions that are themselves dependent on the attitudes and actions of the "user." So when you take a psychoactive drug out of all context and expect it to show you that A causes Z in a sterile laboratory setting, you are using a biased approach. You are essentially demanding that holistic medicines perform in a non-holistic fashion.
Thanks again for your response! I wish you much luck in your ongoing work to awaken the world to the power of entheogens and psychedelics of all kinds!
PS I was originally going to open this message by granting that materialist science has a role to play in warning us of the downsides of certain drug use. This is obviously true, of course. For instance, science should warn ketamine users of potential urinary trouble that they may experience from long-term ketamine use. But the materialist scientist is apt to overemphasize potential downsides because they study them out of context. For just as holistic drug A causes benefit Z only in certain contexts, so drug A often causes downside Z only in a specific context as well. This is where investigation usually stops, with the researcher concluding triumphantly that "A causes downside Z," with the implication being that the drug should probably not be approved for use. But this is an ethnocentric extrapolation. I think of the shamanic use of tobacco in the Andes, which has not yet been shown to have the same grave effect on bodily health as in the west. Moreover, even if A can cause downside Z, A may also cause upsides E, F and G, which collectively either obviate the effects of downside Z or remove that downside altogether. These are holistic subtleties which materialist researchers tend to gloss over, thereby giving an unearned aura of omniscience to modern science.
I guess you're wondering why I pulled you over. It's because you haven't yet read all the relevant articles on this subject, to wit...
in which freelance writer Kate MacBride gets ahold of the wrong side of the stick in Slate Magazine12, calling out MAPS for the mote in their eye while ignoring the enormous BEAM in the eye of the drug-hating FDA.
The evidence, Kate? The evidence shows that the drug has been used for 50 damn years by hundreds of thousands of people and brought nothing but love and understanding to dance floors -- until Drug Warriors cracked down on the use and ravers switched to alcohol, and the venues became so violent that concert organizers had to bring in special forces troops to keep the peace!
Evidence? The FDA is deaf, dumb and blind to the obvious evidence -- and now makes the metaphysical claim that "real" evidence has to be microscopic -- or be turned to numbers that fit nicely on a spreadsheet. Unnecessary deaths are fine until anal scientists can be properly appeased.
Kate, please, give me something to work with here! MDMA WORKS! THE PROOF IS EXTANT!
Has she never seen the prime-time TV ads in which the side effects of an FDA-approved drug include DEATH ITSELF!? And yet Kate is going to tell us that the FDA is not biased for nixing a drug that creates nothing but peace, love and understanding? See, folks, this is what happens when one is brainwashed from childhood in the drug-hating religion of the Drug War. And how was Kate brainwashed, you ask? In the same way that we all were, by having ALL POSITIVE USE OF DRUGS CENSORED FROM TV, FILMS, MEDIA AND CLASSROOMS!!! All so that we can sleep well at night while embracing the hateful view of Francisco Pizarro himself when it comes to indigenous medicines -- that is, those that work holistically without so much as a "by your leave" from reductionist science!
The FDA is fine with shock therapy in which one knowingly damages the brain! That's Beam City, Kate. That's Beams R US. That's Beams a Billion.
Kate, please, before you write another article that's going to negatively affect my abilities to obtain godsend medicines, please wake up and smell the Drug War!
Materialism
Materialist scientists collaborate with the drug war by refusing to see glaringly obvious drug benefits. They acknowledge only those benefits that they believe are visible under a microscope. The Hindu religion would not exist today had materialist scientists held soma to such a standard. But that's the absurd pass to which prohibition eventually brings us in a society wherein materialist science is the new god: scientists are put in charge of deciding whether we are allowed to imagine new religions or not.
This materialist bias is inspired in turn by behaviorism, the anti-indigenous doctrine of JB Watson that makes the following inhumane claim:
"Concepts such as belief and desire are heritages of a timid savage past akin to concepts referring to magic."
According to this view, the hopes and the dreams of a "patient" are to be ignored. Instead, we are to chart their physiology and brain chemistry.
JB Watson's Behaviorism is a sort of Dr. Spock with a vengeance. It is the perfect ideology for a curmudgeon, because it would seem to justify all their inability to deal with human emotions. Unfortunately, the attitude has knock-on effects because it teaches drug researchers to ignore common sense and to downplay or ignore all positive usage reports or historic lessons about positive drug use. The "patient" needs to just shut up and let the doctors decide how they are doing. It is a doctrine that dovetails nicely with drug war ideology, because it empowers the researcher to ignore the obvious: that all drugs that elate have potential uses as antidepressants.
That statement can only be denied when one assumes that "real" proof of efficacy of a psychoactive medicine must be determined by a doctor, and that the patient's only job is to shut up because their hopes and dreams and feelings cannot be accurately displayed and quantified on a graph or a bar chart.
The FDA approves of brain-damaging shock therapy but will not approve MDMA for soldiers with PTSD. This is the same FDA that signs off on the psychiatric pill mill upon which 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life. This is the same FDA that approves Big Pharma drugs whose advertised side effects include death itself! (Can somebody say "follow the money"?)
Alexander Shulgin is a typical westerner when he speaks about cocaine. He moralizes about the drug, telling us that it does not give him "real" power. But so what? Does coffee give him "real" power? Coke helps some, others not. Stop holding it to this weird metaphysical standard.
Ketamine is like any other drug. It has good uses for certain people in certain situations. Nowadays, people insist that a drug be okay in every situation for everybody (especially American teens) before they will say that it's okay. That's crazy and anti-scientific.
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.
To understand why the western world is blind to the benefits of "drugs," read "The Concept of Nature" by Whitehead. He unveils the scientific schizophrenia of the west, according to which the "real" world is invisible to us while our perceptions are mere "secondary" qualities.
"In consciousness dwells the wondrous, with it man attains the realm beyond the material, and the peyote tells us where to find it." --Antonin Arnaud
"Users" can be kept out of the workforce by the extrajudicial process of drug testing; they can have their baby taken from them, their house, their property -- all because they do not share the intoxiphobic attitude of America.
To oppose the Drug War philosophically, one has to highlight its connections to both materialism and the psychiatric pill mill. And that's a problem, because almost everyone is either a Drug Warrior, a materialist, and/or has a vested interest in the psychiatric pill mill.
Drug warriors abuse the English language.
The line drawn between recreational and medical use is wishful thinking on the part of drug warriors. Recreation, according to Webster's, is "refreshment or diversion," and both have positive knock-on effects in the lives of real people.
It's really an insurance concern, however, disguised as a concern for public health. Because of America's distrust of "drugs," a company will be put out of business if someone happens to die while using "drugs," even if the drug was not really responsible for the death.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Constructive criticism of the MAPS strategy for re-legalizing MDMA published on September 11, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
hanks very much, Betty1! 
You have been reading an article entitled, Constructive criticism of the MAPS strategy for re-legalizing MDMA published on September 11, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)