in response to an article by Maria Holynova on Psychedelic Spotlight
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 8, 2024
The following comment is in response to a 2023 article entitled "Oregon's First Licensed Psilocybin Center Charges $2800 for One Session: Are the Costs Justifiable?"1 I submitted it to the page in question, where it is now "awaiting moderation."
Oregon's drug policy is incoherent. They make psilocybin available to the rich and healthy, while locking up the poor and chemically dependent who could profit from it most. This half-baked attempt at a free market in psilocybin won't work until drug prohibition stops wildly distorting costs, thereby making psilocybin unavailable for those who need it most. (Psilocybin, after all, is available for free in mushroom form -- for free.2) For the latter demographic, it makes no difference if the price is reasonable in the long run: if they cannot afford it now when they need it, they are screwed.
Another problem is that Drug War fearmongering has taught us to treat psilocybin (and all other illegal drugs) like they were plutonium, causing liability costs to skyrocket, along with red tape. When I signed up for psilocybin therapy in Oregon, I complained about the endless paperwork. The facilitator apologized, noting that he himself had to fill out less paperwork when he purchased his first house. This implicit terror of drugs is so out of touch with common sense that it qualifies as a modern superstition.
That said, your point is well taken: the high prices are not a result of greed on the part of providers, but — like so many other problems in America today — are a result of an insane and counterproductive drug policy.
Author's Follow-up: May 8, 2024
There is a huge problem with the slow and piecemeal reform of drug laws -- as opposed to the instant repeal of drug prohibition. The problem is that the reform always ends up getting blamed for the problems that are created by the baseline environment of prohibition in which those reforms are enacted. The legalization 3 of opiate possession did not cause the misnamed "opioid crisis" in Oregon, but it provided a good scapegoat for which prohibitionists could blame the homelessness problem and the lack of proper healthcare on "drugs." But then this is the MO of the Drug Warrior -- and even their raison d'etre. They blame all social problems on "drugs," thereby helping selfish politicians like themselves in two ways: 1) saving them from spending time and money on real social problems and 2) providing someone to blame when anything goes wrong. Either they can blame those problems directly on "drugs," or (whenever that seems implausible even to gullible Americans) they can raise a hue and cry about "drugs" in order to distract the public mind from the real problems that the politicians have failed to solve.
High suicide rates? What a poser! Gee, I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that the US has outlawed all substances that elate and inspire???
The UK just legalized assisted dying. This means that you can use drugs to kill a person, but you still can't use drugs to make that person want to live.
Both physical and psychological addiction can be successfully fought when we relegalize the pharmacopoeia and start to fight drugs with drugs. But prohibitionists do not want to end addiction, they want to scare us with it.
Why don't those politicians understand what hateful colonialism they are practicing? Psychedelics have been used for millennia by the tribes that the west has conquered -- now we won't even let folks talk honestly about such indigenous medicines.
The U.S. Congress considered the following to be a scientific fact back in 1924:
"A person taking narcotics regularly impedes evolutionary progress and tends to degenerate backwards toward the brute." -- Richmond Hobson
Many articles in science mags need this disclaimer: "Author has declined to consider the insights gained from drug-induced states on this topic out of fealty to Christian Science orthodoxy." They don't do this because they know readers already assume that drugs will be ignored.
The U.S. government created violence out of whole cloth in America's inner cities with drug prohibition -- and now it is using that violence as an excuse to kick the people that they themselves have knocked down.
We need a scheduling system for psychoactive drugs as much as we need a scheduling system for sports activities: i.e. NOT AT ALL. Some sports are VERY dangerous, but we do not outlaw them because we know that there are benefits both to sports and to freedom in general.
At best, antidepressants make depression bearable. We need not settle for such drugs, especially when they are notorious for causing dependence. There are many drugs that elate and inspire. It is both cruel and criminal to outlaw them.
Google founders used to enthuse about the power of free speech, but Google is actively shutting down videos that tell us how to grow mushrooms -- MUSHROOMS, for God's sake. End the drug war and this hateful censorship of a free people.
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