Addiction Condition brought about by drug prohibition thanks to which users have limited choices and are not educated in the rules of safe drug use. This condition is aggravated by the Iron Law of Prohibition, which states that the outlawing of one drug leads to the sale of more potentially dangerous replacements on the black market1.
Drug A psychoactive substance of which racist and xenophobic politicians disapprove, chiefly because they associate its use with people whom they dislike. As opposed to "med" (which see).
Drug testing A blatant violation of Fourth Amendment rights designed to remove Christian Science heretics from the workforce. Note that this testing is not designed merely to flag impairment: instead it flags the mere trace of substances of which politicians disapprove and uses such findings as an excuse to remove the heretic from the American workforce, through a non-judicial process, without so much as a trial or even the filing of charges. This is cruel and unusual punishment, denying the "flagged" individual the right to earn a living2345.
MDMA A substance that Drug Warriors hate because it brings about nothing but peace, love and understanding, which they cannot abide67.
Med A psychoactive substance of which politicians approve because it turns users into wards of the healthcare state without empowering them to live large8.
Opioid Use Disorder The correct name for this condition is actually Prohibition Disorder, but our government is in denial. Our country does everything it can to make drug use as dangerous as possible and then turns around and blames the victim when they have issues with use: nay, they invent entire new diseases to account for the problems that they themselves are causing with their drug prohibition, their refusal to educate, and their refusal to regulate product as to dosage and quality91011.
Self-censorship Practiced by almost all American authors, especially in the non-fiction genre. This is why one can enter an American library and search in vain for books that speak positively of time-honored panaceas like coca and opium1213.
The DEA The American Gestapo. The DEA uses America's ignorant terror of psychoactive medicines as an excuse to wreck houses, confiscate property and throw otherwise law-abiding citizens in jail141516.
Ann Lemke's case studies make the usual assumptions: getting free from addiction is a morality tale. No reference to how the drug war promotes addiction and how banned drugs could solve such problems. She does not say why daily SSRI use is acceptable while daily opium use is not. Etc.
I'm going to get on the grade-school circuit, telling kids to say no to horses.
"You think you can handle horses, kids? That's what Christopher Reeves thought. The fact is, NOBODY can handle horses!!!"
Drug prohibition has resulted in hundreds of thousands of completely unnecessary deaths thanks to totally preventable drug overdoses!
Drug use is judged by different standards than any other risky activity in the western world. One death can lead to outrage, even though that death might be statistically insignificant.
This is why America is creeping toward authoritarianism -- because of the prohibitionists' ability to get away with everything by blaming "drugs."
The Partnership for a Drug Free America should be put on trial for having blatantly lied to Americans in the 1980s about drugs, while using our taxpayer money to do so!
The massive use of plea deals lets prosecutors threaten drug suspects into giving up their rights to a fair trial.
"Abuse" is a funny term because it implies that there's a right way to use "drugs," which is something that the drug warriors deny. To the contrary, they make the anti-scientific claim that "drugs" are not good for anybody for any reason at any dose.
Here's the first step in the FDA process for evaluating a psychoactive drug:
Ignore all glaringly obvious benefits
Saying "Fentanyl kills" is philosophically equivalent to saying "Fire bad!" Both statements are attempts to make us fear dangerous substances rather than to learn how to use them as safely as possible for human benefit.