can't speak for foreigners, but there are generally five types of people when it comes to how U.S. citizens think about drugs. Hopefully you belong to none of the following groups and so you can join me in the winner's circle below at the end of this article (beneath the heading for "Right-Thinking American", that is). But here is my list of wrongheaded Yankees when it comes to drugs. (Don't hate on me for calling out Libertarians on this one. I only do so because Milton Friedman himself said some very problematic things about drugs, at least in his early career.)
1) THE TYPICAL AMERICAN: Thinks that the Drug War is probably a bad idea, but agrees that some drugs are horrible and that people need to get off them and that drugs have very few if any benefits to offer. Believes that words like "clean" and "junk" and "dope" are actually unbiased terminology. Some in this category are slowly wakening to the idea that drugs may have benefits, though. An example in this latter subcategory is Michael Pollan1, who still favors prohibition, though he claims to be fascinated by the potential curative powers of plants and fungi.
2) THE REDNECK AMERICAN: Thinks the Drug War is a good idea, and that anyone who does not think so is anti-American or at least stupid. Thinks that it makes sense to have alcohol and guns protected by special amendments while doing everything possible to punish the use of less inherently dangerous substances. You know, DeSantis and his tribespeople. And Trump. Sadly, Biden has come close to full-fledged membership in this class, as the promoter of the law that punished Black Americans far more harshly than whites for possession of cocaine2.
3) THE LIBERTARIAN AMERICAN: Agrees that drug use is generally a bad idea, but thinks that people have a right to go to hell in their own way. Milton Friedman stands out in this category3. In 1972, he opined that good folk can have different views about drug legalization - to which I would add, "Yes, but only if they are historically ignorant and philosophically challenged - not to mention unaware of the natural law upon which America was founded, which, if it guarantees anything, guarantees our right to what Mother Nature grows at our very feet."
4) THE MATERIALIST AMERICAN: Thinks that drugs are great for recreation but that "real" cures must come from reductionist science, that the goal is to manipulate brain chemicals rather than to treat an individual holistically. Carl Hart4 is an example. Also Rick Doblin5 and Dj Nutt6. In his book "Drug Use for Grownups," Carl insists that drug use is for recreation only and that the depressed, in effect, should just keep taking their meds. (This scientistic version of materialism is all based on the cold and icy Behaviorist psychology of JB Watson, which says that feelings and desires don't count: only cold, hard "facts" -- which means anything that can be quantified. And so dreams and aspirations count for nothing -- nor do anecdote or history when it comes to positive drug usage. Did drug use inspire religions? So what? The materialist still has to decide for us if such drugs "really" work! Adieu, common sense! See my essay on Behaviorism and Drugs for more on this long-ignored linkage.)
5) THE SHAMANIC-FRIENDLY AMERICAN: Thinks that psychedelic and entheogenic drugs are wonderful, but thinks that there are no good reasons for using drugs like cocaine or opium and is often even in favor of the continued outlawing of such drugs. Terence McKenna7 is one of this sort. Also Alexander Weil8. Terence associated cocaine use with some of his dissolute friends and so concluded that it was a bad drug.
I have not bothered to specify yet where each of these groups have gone wrong when it comes to their thoughts about drugs and drug use. This is because they are all wrong in the exact same way. They believe that drugs can be judged "up" and "down," depending upon whether they are thought to be safe for American teenagers. Not all of these people would want to criminalize drugs, but they can definitely understand the impulse to criminalize them.
This is about as anti-scientific as you can get, to vote drugs "up" or "down" like this.
And it is anti-progress. It used to be common sense that all substances have positive potential uses, at some dose, in some cases, for somebody. Even cyanide has potential uses in the fight against diabetes9. When you criminalize a drug, you keep it out of the hands of researchers and visionaries who might find uses for it that we have never dreamed of. So your drug laws simply veto human progress. It's also a way to hide real problems. When we blame drugs instead of poverty or lack of housing or poor education, we try to make a virtue of our selfish and niggardly values. It shows we would rather spend money on prisons than social programs of any kind.
Also, none of these groups understand basic psychology - tho' they should not feel bad, because today's psychologists do not understand basic psychology either10. That's why progress is so glacial when it comes to the approval of psychoactive drugs. We fail to acknowledge the obvious, that drugs that cheer you up actually do cheer you up (whatever materialists may or may not observe under a microscope) - and that this is a good thing, to be cheered up, something far better than electroshock therapy or suicide11. Unfortunately, the Drug Warriors have convinced us that we can never use drugs wisely, and so we ignore the endless safe protocols that one can imagine for drug use once we re-legalize psychoactive medicine. For all drugs that elate and inspire are antidepressants when used advisedly.
In this case, drug dealers are far more knowledgeable than our dogma-ridden professionals12. And it's not just the fact that drugs can cheer you up, it's that their use is something one can look forward to, which also cheers one up. It's a virtuous circle, especially when managed in such a way that dependency need not develop for any particular substance.
But Americans have been brainwashed to think that the use of outlawed drugs will cause addiction. To the extent that this is true, however, it is BECAUSE of the Drug War, which refuses to teach safe use while also corrupting the drug supply and limiting what is available on the street to so few options that it's no surprise that dependency develops for whatever's readily available.
Of course, the Drug War is all about limiting our knowledge about drugs, so it shouldn't come as a surprise when I say that all of the members of the above groups tend to have very little knowledge of how drugs have been used for positive reasons by whole societies in the past, and, in fact, have played a vital role in the founding of religions, in Latin and South America and in India, where the psychoactive substance soma inspired the Vedic-Hindu religion13.
I hope it goes without saying that I personally disapprove of all of the group attitudes noted above. But this begs the question: what is the RIGHT way to think about drugs.
I'm glad you asked! RIGHT-THINKING AMERICAN: Thinks that drugs are capable of marvelous things: increasing energy, renewing our interest in Mother Nature, giving us an almost surreal level of concentration, inspiring a new understanding of ourselves and helping us to get rid of counterproductive behavior patterns. Knows that drugs have inspired entire religions and that it is therefore anti-religion to outlaw such drugs. Drug use is dangerous, yes, but in the same way that horseback riding is dangerous and rock climbing and car driving. Drugs are never responsible for anything, however, as they are inanimate substances. Goodness and badness reside in how a substance is used. This group also believes that it is always wrong to demonize drugs in the abstract, because scare campaigns about irresponsible drug use have been shown to lead to more irresponsible drug use. That fact has long been used by the DEA to promulgate drug scares (think crack, ice, PCP, oxy, fentanyl...) through publicity that turns local misuse into national problems, thereby justifying the DEA's multi-billion-dollar budget14.
The media need to take these facts onboard and stop writing articles that scapegoat drugs for social problems, including anti-constitutional laws that deny us our once-obvious right to gifts of Mother Nature.
Author's Follow-up: December 20, 2024
My main beef with Libertarians is that they emphasize the fact that people should be allowed to "go to hell in their own way" when it comes to drugs. I'm kind of like, "Well, yes, but..."
Their dictum is a very harsh way of saying something that I could probably agree with after some qualifications. But the statement also suggests that the Libertarians are unaware of the many potential positive uses of drugs, uses that will become apparent once we jettison Drug War biases -- like the bizarre ideas that addictive drugs can only be used addictively and that drugs that make you feel good cannot be used as part of a creative protocol to treat depression. This is a claim that is advanced these days both on religious and scientific grounds, i.e., the grounds of reductive materialism which determines efficacy by looking under microscopes, not by listening to laughter or crediting accounts from time-honored historical use.
We do need to recognize that if substance RE-legalization leads to downsides, it is because of American attitudes towards drugs, not because of drugs themselves.
Meanwhile, we must learn to think of drug deaths in the exact same way that we now think of deaths from mountain climbing or driving a car: our response to them must be more and better education -- not criminalization. The problem with the Libertarian dictum noted above is that it tends to imply that there are no good reasons to use drugs -- and to imply that is to yield much ground to the Drug Warrior.
It's easy to think there are no benefits to drugs because all examples of productive use have been censored from media for the last one hundred years. Here's just one example of what we are not meant to know. In "Tale of the Ragged Mountains," Edgar Allan Poe shows how morphine use can lead (in the properly disposed and educated individual) to an almost surreal appreciation of Mother Nature. Now, that is a drug benefit -- a marvelous drug benefit, in fact -- and it is just one of an endless list of benefits that the Drug Warriors have been censoring from all media -- and I need hardly add the fact that drugs have inspired religions.
So we should be screaming out the good side of drugs that the Drug Warrior has censored for us for our entire lifetimes and continues to do so to this very day.
Should self-interested pen-pushers at the FDA be in charge of deciding whether we are allowed to have an almost surreal appreciation of Mother Nature? ABSOLUTELY NOT! END SUBSTANCE PROHIBITION NOW!
The Cabinet of Caligari ('62) ends with a shameless display of psychiatric triumphalism. Happy shock therapy patients waltz freely about a mansion in which the "sick" protagonist has just been "cured" by tranquilizers and psychoanalysis. Did Robert Bloch believe his own script?
I'm interested in CBD myself, because I want to gain benefits at times without experiencing intoxication. So I think it's great. But I like it as part of an overall strategy toward mental health. I do not think of CBD, as some do, as a way to avoid using naughty drugs.
Think you can handle a horse? So did Christopher Reeves. The fact is, NOBODY can handle a horse. This message brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.
The main form of drug war propaganda is censorship. That's why most Americans cannot imagine any positive uses for psychoactive substances, because the media and the government won't allow that.
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!"
Now the US is bashing the Honduran president for working with "drug cartels." Why don't we just be honest and say why we're REALLY upset with the guy? Drugs is just the excuse, as always, now what's the real reason? Stop using the drug war to disguise American foreign policy.
Imagine the Vedic people shortly after they have discovered soma. Everyone's ecstatic -- except for one oddball. "I'm not sure about these experiences," says he. "I think we need to start dissecting the brains of our departed adherents to see what's REALLY going on in there."
Problem 2,643 of the war on drugs:
It puts the government in charge of deciding what counts as a true religion.
Drug warriors are too selfish and short-sighted to fight real problems, so they blame everything on drugs.
Here's the first step in the FDA process for evaluating a psychoactive drug:
Ignore all glaringly obvious benefits
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, Five wrong ways to think about drugs: Which are you guilty of?, published on June 21, 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)
can't speak for foreigners, but there are generally five types of people when it comes to how U.S. citizens think about drugs. Hopefully you belong to none of the following groups and so you can join me in the winner's circle below at the end of this article (beneath the heading for "Right-Thinking American", that is). But here is my list of wrongheaded Yankees when it comes to drugs. (Don't hate on me for calling out Libertarians on this one. I only do so because Milton Friedman himself said some very problematic things about drugs, at least in his early career.) 
You have been reading an article entitled, Five wrong ways to think about drugs: Which are you guilty of?, published on June 21, 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)