"The substantial reason for rejecting a philosophical theory is the 'absurdum' to which it reduces us." --Alfred North Whitehead, Concept of Nature3
"The right to chew or smoke a plant that grows wild in nature, such as hemp (marijuana), is anterior to and more basic than the right to vote." --Thomas Szasz, Our Right to Drugs --p xvi14
"Imagine how many people would have benefited during the past half-century had the government respected their autonomy and their right to self-medicate." --Jeffrey A. Singer, Your Body, Your Health Care --p. 9715
"Lacking the usual grounds on which people congregate as a nation, we [Americans] habitually fall back on the most primitive yet most enduring basis for group cohesion, namely, scapegoating." --Thomas Szasz, Our Right to Drugs --p 3218
No substance is bad in and of itself. Fentanyl has positive uses, at specific doses, for specific people, in specific situations. But the drug war votes substance up or down. That is hugely anti-scientific and it blocks human progress.
In America, they save the depressed from cocaine and opium by turning them into patients for life with dependence-causing "meds." Now 30-year-old doctors get to treat 67-year-olds like children, with new visits every damn three months.
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.
After over a hundred years of prohibition, America has developed a kind of faux science in which despised substances are completely ignored. This is why Sci Am is making a new argument for shock therapy in 2023, because they ignore all the stuff that OBVIOUSLY cheers one up.
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.
Mad in America publishes stories of folks who are disillusioned with antidepressants, but they won't publish mine, because I find mushrooms useful. They only want stories about cold turkey and jogging, or nutrition, or meditation.
Despite the 50 year-long war on drugs, the global cocaine supply has grown by 400%. --Elma Mrkonjic
It's "convenient" for scientists that their "REAL" cures happen to be the ones that racist politicians will allow. Scientists thus normalize prohibition by pretending that outlawed substances have no therapeutic value. It's materialism collaborating with the drug war.
Even fans of sacred medicine have been brainwashed to believe that we do not know if such drugs "really" work: they want microscopic proof. But that's a western bias, used strategically by drug warriors to make the psychotropic drug approval process as glacial as possible.
SWAT raids have increased by 15,000 percent from the late 1970s to today, resulting in 50,000 to 80,000 SWAT raids annually in the US alone. --War On Us
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