You don't have to search the novels of Philip K. Dick to find tyrannous governments that punish pre-crime. Pre-crime punishment has been a feature of American law ever since the Harrison Narcotics Act began criminalizing plants and fungi in 1914. No longer was it necessary for you to commit a crime - to play music too loudly, to rob a bank, to strip in public, to threaten neighbors with a pistol. No, you merely had to possess a politically ostracized substance, one that had been slandered with the epithet "drug," one that superstitious politicians believed (or purported to believe) had no possible effect but to render the user a threat to society. This, of course, was the lie par excellence of fascist governance, since if it were true, then the "drug" use of Benjamin Franklin, HG Wells, and Richard Feynman would make no sense. How can these men be heroes in their respective domains and yet have liberally availed themselves of opium 1 , coca, and speed respectively?
Of course, you've probably never heard of their "drug" use because to talk about it is to embarrass the Drug Warriors with an inconvenient truth, and anyone who speaks on Oprah or The View has to toe the party line, the one that's enriching Big Pharma 23 , psychiatry, and the movie industry, which makes a pretty penny by producing films about drug-war violence, never stopping to think that the real villain of the "piece" is not Pablo Escobar and co. but the unscientific American idiots who had the gall and fascist tendencies to criminalize Mother Nature in the first place.
(Gee, we outlawed natural substances and what do you know, an ultra-violent black market was formed to meet continuing demand: who would have thunk it? Answer: any rational person who wasn't intent on using drug laws to punish people that he or she didn't understand.)
That's why De Quincey's "Confessions of an Opium Eater" remains such a radical read even today: because that author did not take drugs in order to rob a bank or to strip in public - he took "drugs" (horror of horrors) in order to better enjoy the opera! How evil is that?
No, the punishment of pre-crime is old hat, much to the cost of tens of thousands of Americans who are jailed as we speak for having dared to use substances that so palpably benefited the lives of the world's hypocritically admired heroes.
{^It's never too early to familiarize your child with the circumscribed freedoms of Drug War America. Be sure to make a big thing of their first drug test. Take plenty of photos and celebrate with a trip to the amusement park after they pass! They'll no doubt have plenty of other drug tests to come, but their first one will always be special for them. After all, it's the first time that they will fully renounce their rights to use Mother Nature's plants as they see fit.}{
The DEA should be put on trial for crimes against humanity for withholding godsend medicine from the depressed. Here is just one typical drug-user report that appeared in "Pihkal": "A glimpse of what true heaven is supposed to feel like..."
Assisted suicide cannot be discussed meaningfully without discussing the drug prohibition that renders it necessary in the first place.
Here's one problem that supporters of the psychiatric pill mill never address: the fact that Big Pharma antidepressants demoralize users by turning them into patients for life.
Outlawing opium was the ultimate government power grab. It put the government in charge of pain relief.
It wasn't until western prudery and racism came along that we started to judge people by the substances that they chose to ingest, rather than by their actual behavior in the world.
We need a Controlled Prohibitionists Act, to get psychiatric help for the losers who think that prohibition makes sense despite its appalling record of causing civil wars overseas and devastating inner cities.
Here is a sample drug-use report from the book "Pihkal":
"More than tranquil, I was completely at peace, in a beautiful, benign, and placid place."
Prohibition is a crime against humanity for withholding such drug experiences from the depressed (and from everybody else).
New article in Scientific American: "New hope for pain relief," that ignores the fact that we have outlawed the time-honored panacea. Scientists want a drug that won't run the risk of inspiring us.
Drug Warriors will publicize all sorts of drug use -- but they will never publicize sane and positive drug use. Drug Warrior dogma holds that such use is impossible -- and, indeed, the drug war does all it can to turn that prejudice into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Who would have thought back in 1776 that Americans would eventually have to petition their government for the right to even possess a damn mushroom. The Drug War has destroyed America.
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