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This is the city, Los Angeles California. A quiet town full of hard-working Americans who still know the meaning of the word "obey." That said, there are always a few renegades who attempt to improve their lives through the unsanctioned use of natural substances such as poppies and mushrooms. That's where I come in, guns a-blazin'. My name is Friday and I carry a Sig Sauer 556 Classic SWAT rifle with a 30-round magazine and a Viridian laser sight.
Wednesday, June 21, 1 p.m.
FRIDAY: We had just gotten the call here at DEA HQ. It seems some octogenarian hippy from the north side was using psychoactive plants to improve her spiritual life. Claims she's in a "blue funk" and wants to see behind the so-called "veil of Maya" before she dies.
I decided to pay grandma a visit, see if I could talk some sense into her - or better yet, catch her red-handed with the goodies and thus shut her away for life, lest young people everywhere should infer from her ongoing freedom that they too can use natural plants and fungus in just any way that they see fit. (Humph!) After all, it's not like our Founding Fathers relied on anything more than grit and determination to make it in the world, blue funk or no blue funk.
FRANK: Say, Joe, didn't Benjamin Franklin use opium 1 ?
FRIDAY: Just the propaganda, Frank. Just the propaganda.
1:35 p.m.
FRIDAY: I had pictured this aged flower child smoldering away in some dilapidated bungalow near the Los Angeles River Basin, annoying her low-class neighbors with the reek of her oversized bong decorated with Amazonian rain gods. To my surprise, however, I encountered the surprisingly recherche crone in the midst of high-class respectability, in her very own 6-bedroom mansion on Ivarene Avenue in the Hollywood 2 Hills, tastefully appointed with mid-century décor and modern art, complete with private bath, solarium and even a billiard room.
"Hubba-hubba, " I says to Frank. "Crime seems to be paying here, huh, Frank? It's about time that we put a stop to that - the more so in that this place could easily net 6 million dollars for law enforcement when it's put up for auction after we throw old grandma into the hoosegow."
So thinking, I addressed the beldame as follows:
FRIDAY: You do realize, ma'am, that it's illegal to use plants and fungi as you see fit?
WOMAN: Oh, I'm sorry, I thought I lived in a free country.
FRIDAY: Not since the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914.
FRANK: Hey, she's got a mushroom, Joe, just to her right!
FRIDAY: Step away from the mushroom, ma'am!
WOMAN: But—
FRIDAY: All right, you asked for it, Janis Joplin! Now I have to throw you on the ground and threaten you with immediate death if you so much as move an inch!
WOMAN: WHY?
FRIDAY: Because... Because... Oh, how the hell do I know: it's just standard DEA procedure in these cases!
WOMAN: I was just trying to improve my mind!
FRIDAY: Yeah, ma'am, well, have you ever stopped to think what it would be like if EVERYBODY were to try to improve their mind like you?
WOMAN: Um... the world would be a better place?
FRIDAY: No! The world would be full of criminals!
FRANK: Well said, Joe.
FRIDAY: You know what, Frank?
FRANK: What's that, Joe?
FRIDAY: If everybody had her attitude, the world would be full of broken doors.
FRANK: How's that, Joe?
FRIDAY: Because the DEA would be obliged to perform a traditional SWAT raid on every single house in America, kicking in doors as we go.
FRANK: Hey, not a bad idea: sounds like there'd be a lot of valuable overtime in that arrangement.
FRIDAY: You took the bullets right out of my gun, Frank.
[Frank and Friday chuckle as "Janis Joplin" is violently hauled off to the already-overcrowded federal penitentiary system behind the credit roll]
On October 29, trial was held in the district court of Los Angeles County.
The old crone was found guilty of conspiring to obtain psilocybin mushrooms for the express purpose of improving her life. The Judge sentenced her to 25 years in the slammer, as a lesson to anyone who still thinks that Mother Nature's pharmacopoeia is actually open to the public. (Humph!)
The war on drugs has destroyed America's faith in the power of education. In fact, it has made us think of education as WRONG in and of itself. It has made us prefer censorship and fear-filled ignorance to education!
If we let "science" decide about drugs, i.e. base freedom on health concerns, then tea can be as easily outlawed as beer. The fact that horses are not illegal shows that prohibition is not about health. It's about the power to outlaw certain "ways of being in the world."
Q: Where can you find almost-verbatim copies of the descriptions of religious experiences described by William James? A: In descriptions of user reports of "trips" on drugs ranging from coca to opium, from MDMA to laughing gas.
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 Prohibition is a crime against humanity. It outlaws our right to take care of our own health.
That's how antidepressants came about: the idea that sadness was a simple problem that science could solve. Instead of being caused by a myriad of interrelated issues, we decided it was all brain chemistry that could be treated with precision. Result? Mass chemical dependency.
Do drug warriors realize that they are responsible for the deaths of young people on America's streets? Look in the mirror, folks. People were not dying en masse from opium overdoses when opiates were legal. It took your prohibition to accomplish that! Stop arresting, start teaching safe use!
"There has been so much delirious nonsense written about drugs that sane men may well despair of seeing the light." -- Aleister Crowley, from "Essays on Intoxication"
Governor Kotek is "dealing" with the homelessness problem in Oregon by arresting her way out of it, in fealty to fearmongering drug warriors.
Amphetamines are "meds" when they help kids think more clearly but they are "drugs" when they help adults think more clearly. That shows you just how bewildered Americans are when it comes to drugs.
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