he title of this essay is so controversial in the age of the Drug War that I despair of defending it in the traditional way, by reasoned argument. The metaphorical hooting and jeering of the average reader would drown me out long before I came to my otherwise ineluctable conclusion, namely that outlawing mother nature's medicines creates infinitely more problems than treating them for what they are: to wit, a botanical fact of life with which we are naturally surrounded as denizens of planet Earth.
So instead of even trying to advance my own arguments for the re-legalization of what after all is mere plant medicine, let us consider what the Drug War has "accomplished" by outlawing opium in 1914 -- and subsequently outlawing coca, marijuana, and finally virtually every potentially helpful psychoactive substance in the world (to the astonished approbation of the burgeoning health-care industry in the early 1900s, which suddenly had a monopoly, not simply on treating physical ills, but on treating psychological ills as well).
Drug War "Accomplishments"
It has created a psychiatric pill mill upon which 1 in 4 American women are chemically dependent for life, the largest chemical dependency in human history.
It has denied godsend pain medicine to dying children under the theory that drugs like morphine are somehow evil without regard to why they are used.
It has forced us to allow our elderly parents to die miserably, by "withholding life support" rather than allowing them to drift off painlessly to sleep with the help of an opium derivative such as morphine.
It has REQUIRED the use of brain-damaging electroshock therapy in severe cases of depression that might otherwise have been treated with no-brainer godsends like MDMA, psilocybin and laughing gas.
It has turned inner cities into shooting galleries, thanks to Drug War prohibition which created armed gangs out of whole cloth.
It has imprisoned millions of minorities, thereby removing them (either officially or effectively) from the voting rolls, thereby facilitating the election of drug-warrior demagogues.
It has created civil wars overseas, which the US can leverage as an excuse to intervene in foreign countries.
It has forced US soldiers to go for four decades now without the use of MDMA to fight PTSD, thanks to the self-serving DEA which ignored the advice of its own council in 1985 in order to maintain its workload when it comes to cracking down on "Ecstasy."
It has outlawed plant medicines that have inspired entire religions in the past, thereby outlawing the very fountainhead of the religious impulse in humankind
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It has censored scientists by barring them from effectively investigating criminalized plant medicines, censorship made all the more insidious by the fact that most scientists do not even recognize that it exists.
But in perhaps the greatest irony of all, the criminalization of opium in particular has led to... wait for it, folks... an opioid epidemic!
When will the Drug Warriors learn: you can outlaw substances but you cannot outlaw the human desire for self-transcendence?
The answer is obvious. We must make it as safe as possible for folks to pursue self-transcendence, through education and a safe drug supply.
The Drug Warrior, on the other hand, reminds us of the governess in 'The Turn of the Screw' by Henry James. Mrs. Grose is so myopically determined to protect Miles and Flora from the perceived dangers of an illusory phantom (the ghostly former valet known as Peter Quint) that she ends up causing Miles' death and estranging herself from Flora forever: just the sort of Pyrrhic victory that the Drug War has achieved by myopically outlawing naturally occurring medicines like opium.
Here's the first step in the FDA process for evaluating a psychoactive drug:
Ignore all glaringly obvious benefits
Rick Strassman isn't sure that DMT should be legal. Really?! Does he not realize how dangerous it is to chemically extract DMT from plants? In the name of safety, prohibitionists have encouraged dangerous ignorance and turned local police into busybody Nazis.
We drastically limit drug choices, we refuse to teach safe use, and then we discover there's a gene to explain why some people have trouble with drugs. Science loves to find simple solutions to complex problems.
America's "health" system was always screaming at me about the threat of addiction from drugs. Then what did it do? It put me on the most dependence-causing meds of all time: SSRIs and SNRIs.
Science knows nothing of the human spirit and of the hopes and dreams of humankind. Science cannot tell us whether a given drug risk is worthwhile given the human need for creativity and passion in their life. Science has no expertise in making such philosophical judgements.
Q: Where can you find almost-verbatim copies of the descriptions of religious experiences described by William James? A: In descriptions of user reports of "trips" on drugs ranging from coca to opium, from MDMA to laughing gas.
Being a lifetime patient is not the issue: that could make perfect sense in certain cases. But if I am to be "using" for life, I demand the drug of MY CHOICE, not that of Big Pharma and mainstream psychiatry, who are dogmatically deaf to the benefits of hated substances.
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.
It's really an insurance concern, however, disguised as a concern for public health. Because of America's distrust of "drugs," a company will be put out of business if someone happens to die while using "drugs," even if the drug was not really responsible for the death.
Prohibitionists have nothing to say about all other dangerous activities: nothing about hunting, free climbing, hang-gliding, sword swallowing, free diving, skateboarding, sky-diving, chug-a-lug competitions, chain-smoking. Their "logic" is incoherent.
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, Re-Legalize Opium Now published on August 21, 2022 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)
he title of this essay is so controversial in the age of the Drug War that I despair of defending it in the traditional way, by reasoned argument. The metaphorical hooting and jeering of the average reader would drown me out long before I came to my otherwise ineluctable conclusion, namely that outlawing mother nature's medicines creates infinitely more problems than treating them for what they are: to wit, a botanical fact of life with which we are naturally surrounded as denizens of planet Earth.
You have been reading an article entitled, Re-Legalize Opium Now published on August 21, 2022 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)