There is nothing more depressing than looking at the media coverage of laughing gas over the last few years. In 2023, I saw "presenters" on Channel 5 in England acting as cheerleaders for outlawing the gas in the United Kingdom.1 Not being satisfied with the nuanced discussion of their two pundits on the subject, these presenters goaded them on from the wings, in an obvious attempt to get them to denounce laughing gas more explicitly on air, telling them in effect: "How can we NOT outlaw laughing gas when we think of our poor children!" These presenters had apparently never heard of William James or of the concept of a free academia -- to say nothing of the rights of the depressed to godsend substances. (They had also never been told that the role of the presenter was to present, not to advocate!)“Sorry to be old n annoying but … Is no one gonna talk about how Galaxy Gas came out of nowhere and is being MASS marketed to black children? The government is doing NOTHING? Since when are we selling whip its at the store? Somebody protect the children.” 2
"There are more black Americans locked in US prisons or on probation or parole today than were slaves in 1850, before the US Civil War."3
"Nitrous oxide recreational use is linked to brain damage and sudden death − but ‘laughing gas’ is still sold all over the US"
"One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different."9
Even when laudanum was legal in the UK, pharmacists were serving as moral adjudicators, deciding for whom they should fill such prescriptions. That's not a pharmacist's role. We need an ABC-like set-up in which the cashier does not pry into my motives for buying a substance.
How else will they scare us enough to convince us to give up all our freedoms for the purpose of fighting horrible awful evil DRUGS? DRUGS is the sledgehammer with which they are destroying American democracy.
Wade Davis wrote in Rolling Stone that cocaine was outlawed because 400 people consumed toxic doses worldwide. SO WHAT?! 178,000 people die from alcohol every year in America alone.
In the 2015 movie "No Escape," the only place that was safe from anti-American hysteria was an opium den. How ironic that the U.S. forced Iran to outlaw opium.
There are a potentially vast number of non-addictive drugs that could be used strategically in therapy. They elate and "free the tongue" to help talk therapy really work. Even "addictive" drugs can be used non-addictively, prohibitionist propaganda notwithstanding.
Your drug war has caused the disappearance of over 60,000 Mexicans over the last 20 years. It has turned inner cities into shooting galleries. It has turned America into a penal colony. It has destroyed the 4th amendment and put bureaucrats in charge of deciding if our religions are "sincere."
The proof that psychedelics work has always been extant. We are hoodwinked by scientists who convince us that efficacy has not been "proven." This is materialist denial of the obvious.
The Drug War shows us that American democracy is fundamentally flawed. Propaganda and fearmongering has persuaded Americans to give up freedoms that are clearly enunciated in the U.S. Constitution. We need a new democracy in which a Constitution actually matters.
If our loved ones should experience severe depression and visit an emergency room for treatment, they will be started on a regime of dependence-causing Big Pharma drugs. They will not be given any drugs that elate and inspire.
When folks banned opium, they did not just ban a drug: they banned the philosophical and artistic insights that the drug has been known to inspire in writers like Poe, Lovecraft and De Quincey.
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