The Drug War is wrong root and branch. It was begun to disfranchise minorities while allowing the US to invade other countries at will, under the pretext of fighting the politically created boogieman called "drugs." We're legalizing pot today only because it's becoming overwhelmingly popular with Anglo-Americans. We keep cocaine criminalized because it is associated with Hispanics and Blacks (even tho' Freud himself considered cocaine 12 to be a godsend for his depression and it has been used for millennia by MesoAmericans, all without a lot of belly-aching about the supposed immorality of it all). What's the result? We're causing a Civil War in Mexico, empowering a self-described "Drug War Hitler" in the Philippines, and sending militarized police forces into hitherto sacrosanct American homes, all in an effort to keep the world from accessing the plant medicine that grows at their very feet (which is a violation of Natural Law, by the way, should America's legal system ever choose to wake up from their self-satisfied slumber and face this outrage head-on).
If we have to have a Drug War, let's jail everyone who has so much as a trace of alcohol or tobacco in their system. Let's remove them from the work force and force them to urinate for us upon demand. Let's remove them from the voting rolls and throw them into overcrowded prisons. That's a Drug War that would give the Drug Warriors a taste of their own medicine. (Of course, let's break down the doors of all these tobacco and alcohol "fiends," kick their family members in the groin while shouting, "Get down! Get Down!"
Even prohibition haters have their own list of drugs that they feel should be outlawed. They're missing the point. We should not drugs "up or down" any more than we should judge penicillin or aspirin in that way.
These are just simple psychological truths that drug war ideology is designed to hide from sight. Doctors tell us that "drugs" are only useful when created by Big Pharma, chosen by doctors, and authorized by folks who have spent thousands on medical school. (Lies, lies, lies.)
The Partnership for a Death Free America is launching a campaign to celebrate the 50th year of Richard Nixon's War on Drugs. We need to give credit where credit's due for the mass arrest of minorities, the inner city gun violence and the civil wars that it's generated overseas.
In a compassionate world, we would give laughing gas kits to the suicidal just as we now give epi pens to those with severe allergies.
The drug war is the defeatist doctrine that we will never be able to use psychoactive drugs wisely. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy because the government does everything it can to make drug use dangerous.
The line drawn between recreational and medical use is wishful thinking on the part of drug warriors. Recreation, according to Webster's, is "refreshment or diversion," and both have positive knock-on effects in the lives of real people.
All uplifting drugs are potential antidepressants. Science denies that fact by claiming that drug efficacy must be proven quantitatively. And so they ignore anecdote, history and psychological common sense.
The press is having a field day with the Matthew Perry story. They love to have a nice occasion to demonize drugs. I wonder how many decades must pass before they realize that people are killed by ignorance and a corrupted drug supply, not by the drugs themselves.
All of our problems with opioids and opiates could have been avoided had the busybody Chicken Littles in America left well enough alone and let folks continue to smoke regulated opium peaceably in their own homes.
The book "Plants of the Gods" is full of plants and fungi that could help addicts and alcoholics, sometimes in the plant's existing form, sometimes in combinations, sometimes via extracting alkaloids, etc. But drug warriors need addiction to sell their prohibition ideology.
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