I think it is amazing that you equate the use of Mother Nature's psychedelic plants with child abuse. It shows how far the Drug War has gone in superstitiously turning mere physical substances into demons, into the very incarnation of evil, something to be feared and reviled rather than to be analyzed dispassionately with an eye toward their potential benefits for humankind.
If you are keeping up on world events, you surely know that psychedelics are now being shown to grow new neurons in the brains of the depressed and, when properly administered, to give new hope and mental resilience to cases that had hitherto been impervious to all other treatments. Moreover, you're surely aware that Nixon rendered psychedelics illegal, not to protect America's health, but to punish his political enemies by making them felons and thus removing them from the voting rolls - and that, at the time Nixon did this, psychedelics were showing unprecedented benefit in actually curing alcoholics. You're surely also aware that many legal antidepressant drugs are so addictive that they have to be taken for life - whereas the naturally-occurring psychedelics that you demonize are non-addictive and can sometimes facilitate mental cures in just one session!
As for the old Drug War canard that drugs "fry your brain," psychedelics have been shown to actually grow new neurons. If any drugs fry the brain, it is modern antidepressants, which are increasingly implicated in causing anhedonia in long-term users.
In other words, there is no evidence that legalized psychedelics would destroy America, least of all when those substances are used in a religious setting. No doubt you could cobble together a few statistics to the contrary, but any damage you may document would be minuscule compared to that done by alcohol, cigarettes, and the legal drug therapy on which more than 1 in 10 Americans are now chemically dependent, destined to be drug users for a lifetime thanks to the "rights" of Big Pharma (business rights which, as a conservative, you no doubt think are just and proper despite their catastrophic effect on actual human lives!)
It's funny that you should bring up the Christian Science attitude toward "childhood vaccination" in arguing against excessive religious rights - because the Drug War is nothing but Christian Science as applied to mental health: that is, the Drug War is based on the metaphysical premise that we should not use Mother Nature's psychedelic medicines to improve our mental health. That is a religious belief itself that cannot even in theory be proven: it is a faith, one that many Americans do not share. So you show your religious intolerance in deciding that everyone must respect your jaundiced view of Mother Nature's plants and fungi by eschewing the therapeutic use of those God-given substances. In short, if the anti-vaccination movement is ignorant, then so is the Drug War: for both argue against the use of demonstrably therapeutic substances.
You claim that the young people known as "nones" are on your side, philosophically speaking. I doubt that, but if you're right, this won't last for long. Research from the new psychedelic renaissance is proving that the guided use of Mother Nature's psychedelic bounty can increase mental resilience and clarity and help one think outside the box - which is the very definition of a psychotherapeutic godsend. The "nones" are going to be smart enough to realize that the Drug War is all about keeping them from these naturally-occurring therapies - at which point these "nones" will take the lead in denouncing the folly of criminalizing Mother Nature's therapeutic bounty.
It is my sincere hope that this pushback against the Drug War will result in new churches, in which Americans will seek transcendence together through the ritual use of Mother Nature's psychedelic plants.
This would not represent the claiming of some new exotic right as you seem to think: it would be the re-claiming of a God-given right to the therapeutic bounty that grows at our very feet, a right guaranteed by natural law until it was first unconstitutionally usurped by common law in 1914 with the Harrison Narcotics Act.
Author's Follow-up: January 1, 2025
The above was written five years ago when I was still quite young -- scarcely 60 years old. Today, I might have tried to be just a tad more diplomatic -- but I still agree with every word I said -- and even more so than before, having studied the Drug War in depth from a philosophical angle in the intervening years.
Marci's viewpoint is so repellant to me and based on so many anti-democratic, anti-scientific and anti-philosophical premises, that I hardly know where to begin in responding to it.
If kids are growing up to hate drugs these days as Marci assures us, then it is only because of Drug War propaganda which has expunged all positive news about drugs from the media, meanwhile brainwashing grade schoolers in the drug-hating principles of Mary Baker-Eddy12. It has censored academia and wasted billions of dollars on police and military, meanwhile causing the senseless deaths of tens of thousands of American young people by refusing to teach safe use and refusing to regulate drug supply -- thereby leading to completely unnecessary drug overdoses3.
Americans used opium peaceably at home before 1914. But anti-Chinese Drug Warriors imposed their Christian Science intolerance on America and those users became criminals overnight. Now those who want to use opiates are dying in the streets. Being a Drug Warrior, though, means never having to say you're sorry. It is the ultimate case of denial. But then the Drug War is based on two enormous lies: 1) that drugs have no positive uses and 2) that prohibition has no downsides.
If Marci is worried about our kids, it's a wonder that she's not sounding the alarm about alcohol which kills 178,000 a year4 or guns that kill 50,000 a year in America alone5. Surely, those who sell alcohol and those who sell guns are wicked in her book. But then consistency has never been the strong point of the Drug Warrior.
No, it's democracy that Drug Warriors hate. They hate freedom of religion and the whole concept of probable cause. Above all, they covet power, which they know they can receive by crafting laws that arrest millions of minorities thanks to the crime-incentivizing program called prohibition. Had Marci's viewpoint reigned in the Indus Valley 3,500 years ago, there would be no Hindu religion today, as its Vedic forerunner was inspired by the use of a psychedelic plant medicine known as soma6.
In Marci's view, moreover, Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were just so many druggie criminals. She was no doubt applauding when the DEA stomped onto Monticello in 1987 and confiscated Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants in violation of everything he stood for, politically speaking. And now the Thomas Jefferson Foundation refuses to even mention that raid to its visitors, knowing that it would show that the foundation had betrayed Jefferson's legacy in lockstep with Drug War ideology7.
Finally, we live in a world that is on the brink of nuclear annihilation because of haters like Drug Warriors8 -- and yet these same haters want to outlaw drugs that inspire compassion. The big threat for them is peace, love and understanding. They don't mind that we're surrounded by nuclear weapons that could go off at any moment now, on purpose or accidentally, and leave humanity to die out slowly in a nuclear winter.
The Drug War is a slow-motion coup against democracy.
It has crafted laws that lock up millions of minorities and in so doing facilitated the election of America's first dictator. Thanks for nothing, Marci.
Marci's stance on drugs is an illustration of my statement that the Drug War represents a complete inversion of common sense and humanistic values. It is the triumph of stupidity. It is brainless fearmongering on a scale that the witch hunters of New England could never have imagined.
Author's Follow-up: January 2, 2025
And because the Drug War is the ultimate example of fearmongering, it should be studied and exposed as such by modern researchers in the field of witchcraft. But Drug War propaganda has gotten to them as well. And so the leaders in that field pretend that ostensibly magical "herbs" are not "drugs" -- in the same way that the rest of us pretend that "meds" are not "drugs." It has nothing to do with the drugs themselves -- drugs are drugs, after all -- but merely with how we have been taught to FEEL about them.
The drug war is the ultimate case of fearmongering. And yet academics and historians fail to recognize it as such. They will protest eloquently against the outrages of the witch hunts of yore, but they are blind to the witch hunts of the present. What is a drug dealer but a modern service magician, someone who sells psychoactive medicine designed to effect personal ends for the user? They are simply providing an alternative to materialistic medicine, which ignores common sense and so ignores the glaringly obvious value of such substances.
We've all been taught since grade school that human beings cannot use psychoactive medicines wisely. That is just a big fat lie. It's criminal to keep substances illegal that can awaken the mind and remind us of our full potential in life.
We need to push back against the very idea that the FDA is qualified to tell us what works when it comes to psychoactive medicines. Users know these things work. That's what counts. The rest is academic foot dragging.
The front page of every mycology club page should feature a protest of drug laws that make the study of mycology illegal in the case of certain shrooms. But no one protests. Their silence makes them drug war collaborators because it serves to normalize prohibition.
When scientists refuse to report positive uses for drugs, they are not motivated by power lust, they are motivated by philosophical (non-empirical) notions about what counts as "the good life." This is why it's wrong to say that the drug war is JUST about power.
If drug war logic made sense, we would outlaw endless things in addition to drugs. Because the drug war says that it's all worth it if we can save just one life -- which is generally the life of a white suburban young person, btw.
A pharmacologically savvy drug dealer would have no problem getting someone off one drug because they would use the common sense practice of fighting drugs with drugs. But materialist doctors would rather that the patient suffer than to use such psychologically obvious methods.
Mariani Wine is the real McCoy, with Bolivian coca leaves (tho' not with cocaine, as Wikipedia says). I'll be writing more about my experience with it soon. I was impressed. It's the same drink "on which" HG Wells and Jules Verne wrote their stories.
We should no more arrest drug users than we arrest people for climbing sheer rock faces or for driving a car.
Pro-psychedelic websites tell me to check with my "doctor" before using Mother Nature. But WHY? I'm the expert on my own psychology, damn it. These "doctors" are the ones who got me hooked on synthetic drugs, because they honor microscopic evidence, not time-honored usage.
If there were no other problem with antidepressants, they would be wrong for the simple reason that they make a user dependent for life -- not as a bug (as in drugs like opium) but rather as a feature: that's how they "work," by being administered daily for a lifetime.
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, Marci Hamilton Equates Drug Use with Child Abuse published on July 27, 2019 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)
You have been reading an article entitled, Marci Hamilton Equates Drug Use with Child Abuse published on July 27, 2019 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)