I just noticed your affiliation with the US Preventive Services Task Force and wanted to share my views with you about Task Force recommendations. With all due respect, I think that the Task Force is reckoning without the Drug War. When the Task Force tells Congress that there is a need to fight anxiety, they fail to point out that we have outlawed almost all the substances that could help with that condition. Seen in this light, the report amounts to little more than a sales pitch for Big Pharma 's addictive pills.
The use of MDMA 1 fights anxiety. Coca wine2 and the chewing of the coca leaf fights anxiety. The use of ayahuasca fights anxiety. So does the intermittent use of laughing gas . Even the use of opium fights anxiety -- although fearmongers have been telling us for 100+ years now that humankind cannot use such drugs wisely.
I realize that the Task Force has to work within the limits of existing law, but that does not mean that you need to pretend that the Drug War does not exist, especially when its prohibitions so drastically limit the suggestions that you can pass on to Congress.
You would be doing a great service to the country and the memory of Thomas Jefferson (who rolled in his grave when the DEA confiscated his poppy plants in 1987) by adding at least a footnote to all your recommendations about mental health, pointing out that prohibition has outlawed (not only in America but now worldwide) almost all the substances that are known to combat the conditions against which you are calling for action.
I shared the above thoughts with the Task Force itself. Below you can read the response that I received from an anonymous "USPSTF Coordinator." As you'll notice, he or she completely ignores the point I made, but sticks by the Task Force's implication that the world is fine, that there is no Drug War, and that we have wonderful treatments for anxiety without the hundreds that we have outlawed. [sigh]
Thank you for your email and interest in the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (Task Force). The role of the Task Force is to improve people's health by making evidence-based recommendations about the benefits and harms of specific preventive services.
The Task Force does not make recommendations on how to treat conditions once diagnosed. However, several treatment options were reviewed to help inform whether screening is beneficial. The Task Force found that there are multiple treatment options available that can be effective, including medications, counseling, or desensitization therapies (which combine relaxation techniques with gradual exposure to help someone slowly overcome a phobia). We recommend that adults diagnosed with anxiety disorders decide together with their healthcare professional what treatment is right for them.
Thank you again for your email.
USPSTF Coordinator
Related tweet: June 22, 2023
Here's my response to the Preventive Services Task Force: "You guys are scared of even mentioning the Drug War, aren't you? This is self-censorship at work."
The outlawing of hundreds of substances that could fight anxiety is HUGELY relevant to your work. The fact that you do not even mention this makes your work political and anti-scientific.
Author's Follow-up: November 29, 2024
The mainstream attitude is rabid Christian Science. The UK just passed a bill legalizing assisted dying. This means that it is okay to kill someone with drugs, but it is not okay to use drugs to make that person want to live. My lifelong depression would end right now if I could smoke an opium 3 pipe just once a week, and/or inhale laughing gas on occasion, or use the non-addictive drugs synthesized by Alexander Shulgin: you know, the ones that inspire and elate? The evil of drug prohibition can be clearly seen here. People would actually prefer that their grandparents die than that they should use "drugs." It is cruel lunacy.
Author's Follow-up:
May 13, 2025
The US Preventive Services Task Force is just an arm of the Drug War establishment, and will be so until such time as drug prohibition ends. Their job is to drum up business opportunities for pharmaceutical companies. Check out the closing line of that response I received two years ago from the agency:
"We recommend that adults diagnosed with anxiety disorders decide together with their healthcare professional what treatment is right for them."
And who are these healthcare professionals that we are supposed to contact? They are the materialist doctors who are dogmatically and legally blind to all positive uses of psychoactive substances. They are the guys who have no ability to prescribe any treatment that actually works for you -- they can only prescribe medicines that are assumed to work "scientifically" according to modern materialist theory -- especially when this "scientific" approach turns the users into a Big Pharma 45 client for life.
You say that laughing gas 6 and phenethylamines inspire you with rapture and self-content -- and so get rid of your anxiety, or at least render it moot?
"Oh, pooh!" cries the doctor. "That is no kind of cure! The only thing that can be allowed to work for you is a one-size-fits-all pill that insurance providers will pay for and which treats a series of psychological symptoms that have been reified into a discrete 'illness' in the Diagnostic Statistics Manual."
Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.
I don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.
Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the drug war ideology of substance demonization.
There are no recreational drugs. Even laughing gas has rational uses because it gives us a break from morbid introspection. There are recreational USES of drugs, but the term "recreational" is often used to express our disdain for users who go outside the healthcare system.
Today's Washington Post reports that "opioid pills shipped" DROPPED 45% between 2011 and 2019..... while fatal overdoses ROSE TO RECORD LEVELS! Prohibition is PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE.
Trump's lies about America's voting process are typical NAZI and DRUG WAR strategy: raise mendacious doubts about whatever you want to destroy and keep repeating them. It's what Joseph Goebbels called "The Big Lie."
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.
Drug testing labs should give high marks for those who manage to use drugs responsibly, notwithstanding the efforts of law enforcement to ruin their lives. The lab guy would be like: "Wow, you are using opium wisely, my friend! Congratulations! Your boss is lucky to have you!"
I personally hate beets and I could make a health argument against their legality. Beets can kill for those allergic to them. Sure, it's a rare condition, but since when has that stopped a prohibitionist from screaming bloody murder?
Many prohibition haters have their own list of drugs that they feel should be outlawed. They're missing the point. Drugs cannot be judged up or down. Prohibition is the problem. Say otherwise and you open the door to endless substance demonization by politicians.
Some fat cat should treat the entire Supreme Court to a vacation at San Jose del Pacifico in Mexico, where they can partake of the magic mushroom in a ceremony led by a Zapotec guide.
When folks banned opium, they did not just ban a drug: they banned the philosophical and artistic insights that the drug has been known to inspire in writers like Poe, Lovecraft and De Quincey.
Psychedelic retreats tell us how scientific they are. But science is the problem. Science today insists that we ignore all obvious benefits of drugs. It's even illegal to suggest that psilocybin has health benefits: that's "unproven" according to the Dr. Spocks of science.
There are no recreational drugs. Even laughing gas has rational uses because it gives us a break from morbid introspection. There are recreational USES of drugs, but the term "recreational" is often used to express our disdain for users who go outside the healthcare system.
