Drug War propaganda in the movie summary for The Other Side of the Mirror
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
May 26, 2020
It's interesting how Drug War propaganda shows up in places you least expect it. Check out this summary of the movie "The Other Side of the Mirror" on the Internet Movie Database:
In 1905, amidst the largest drug epidemic in American history, a teenage Alice has just moved to the Pacific Northwest. She follows a mysterious man down a rabbit hole, leading her into Wonderland; a dark and curious world inhabited by characters from turn-of-the-century America and the Pacific Northwest. - Anonymous
Here's my response to Anonymous, which I sent to IMDB in the hopes that they will expunge the Drug War propaganda from the movie description:
The anonymous reviewer says "In 1905, during America's largest drug epidemic..." That is Drug War propaganda. There wasn't a drug epidemic in 1905, except in the minds of racists, who associated opium 1 use with the Chinese, marijuana use with Mexicans, and cocaine 23 use with blacks. America's largest drug epidemic is RIGHT NOW, when 1 in 8 American males, and 1 in 4 American females, are addicted to Big Pharma 45 antidepressants 6, many of which are harder to kick than heroin 7 (SOURCE: Psychiatrist-author Julie Holland). Moreover, this addiction was caused by the Drug War itself (which began in 1914 with the Harrison Narcotics Act) and its criminalization of far less addictive therapeutic godsends from Mother Nature.
Only a pathological puritan would say that there's no place in the world for substances that lift your mood, give you endurance, and make you get along with your fellow human being. Drugs may not be everything, but it's masochistic madness to claim that they are nothing at all.
Musk and co. want to make us more robot-like with AI, when they should be trying to make us more human-like with sacred medicine. Only humans can gain creativity from plant medicine. All AI can do is harvest the knowledge that eventually results from that creativity.
Outlawing substances like laughing gas and MDMA makes no more sense than outlawing fire.
My approach to withdrawal: incrementally reduce daily doses over 6 months, or even a year, meanwhile using all the legal entheogens and psychedelics that you can find in a way likely to boost your endurance and "sense of purpose" to make withdrawal successful.
We throw people out of jobs for using "drugs," we praise them for using "meds." The categories are imaginary, made up by politicians who want to demonize certain substances, but not cigs or beer.
I just asked New York Attorney General Letitia James how much she was getting paid to play Whack-a-Mole. I pointed out that the drug war created the gangs just as liquor prohibition created the Mafia.
This is why it's wrong to dismiss drugs as "good" or "bad." There are endless potential positive uses to psychoactive drugs. That's all that we should ask of them.
In "How to Change Your Mind," Michael Pollan says psychedelic legalization would endanger young people. What? Prohibition forces users to decide for themselves which mushrooms are toxic, or to risk buying contaminated product. And that's safe, Michael?
I hope that scientists will eventually find the prohibition gene so that we can eradicate this superstitious way of thinking from humankind. "Ug! Drugs bad! Drugs not good for anyone, anywhere, at any dose, for any reason, ever! Ug!"
I'm told that most psychiatrists would like to receive shock therapy if they become severely depressed. That's proof of drug war insanity: they would prefer damaging their brains to using drugs that can elate and inspire.
Only a pathological puritan would say that there's no place in the world for substances that lift your mood, give you endurance, and make you get along with your fellow human being. Drugs may not be everything, but it's masochistic madness to claim that they are nothing at all.
