The Drug War is bullet-riddled Greek Tragedy American-Style. It's a way of looking at the world that allows us to enforce puritan piety that passe religion can no longer command. It's a way to keep the Wild West going so that gun addicts can satisfy their need to play the good guy. Custom-made violence. It is the new Tenth Commandment. Thou shalt not use dope. It is Mary Baker Eddy on steroids. It is responsible for the OXY epidemic because it not only outlaws far safer substances but it criminalizes their mere research. It makes a boogieman and a scapegoat out of psychoactive substances (dumping them all into the discreditable category of "drugs") in a way that no other civilization has ever done.
But substances are not the problem. Ignorance is a problem. A violence-creating black market is a problem. The outlawing of safe psychoactive plant medicine is a problem. The ideological war on human consciousness, THAT is a problem. Politicians telling us how and how much we can think, that is a problem. Politicians violating natural law by presuming to tell us what plants and fungi we can access, that is a problem. DEA thugs who poison Americans with paraquat and stomp onto Monticello 1 to steal Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants, that is a problem. A tyrannical government that denies gainful employment to Americans who dare to access time-honored plant medicine, THAT is a problem.
Then, because America has such a jaundiced attitude toward psychoactive substances, we arrogantly go around the world burning plants, as if we've discovered some great truth about evil substances, never realizing that our willfully purblind attitude toward "drugs" is the problem, not amoral substances themselves. Our hatred of education. Our hatred of plant medicine. Our need for a scapegoat for social ills. Our idiotic view of psychology that takes exactly zero account of the human being's unquenchable desire for self-transcendence and "seeing beyond the veil." These are all problems, not "drugs".
If we must have a Drug War, let's crack down on alcohol use and remove anyone from the work force should their urine reveal any traces of booze whatsoever2. Let's then remove them from the voting rolls. Then let's make America great again by executing alcohol distributors, thereby hoisting the beer-swilling Drug Warriors by their own petard.
Of course I'm speaking rhetorically here. I do not personally want to punish ANYONE based on the substances that they choose to consume -- I only wish I could say the same of the vast majority of Americans, bamboozled as they are by daily doses of ideological Drug War propaganda on TV and in movies 34 (as in cop shows, for instance, in which cocaine 56 is only ever used by the scummiest of board-certified scumbags, lest the viewer get any crazy ideas about personally profiting from the psychoactive powers of Mother Nature's plant medicines).
"Those gentlemen who adopt the anti-opium doctrine... are only comparable to the monomaniac, who, sane upon every subject but one, is thoroughly daft upon that." --William Brereton
The most addictive drugs have a bunch of great uses, like treating pain and inspiring great literature. Prohibition causes addiction by making their use as problematic as possible and denying knowledge and choices. It's always wrong to blame drugs.
The first step in harm reduction is to re-legalize mother nature's medicines. Then hundreds of millions of people will no longer suffer in silence for want of godsend medicines... for depression, for pain, for anxiety, for religious doubts... you name it.
Most substance withdrawal would be EASY if drugs were re-legalized and we could use any substance we wanted to mitigate negative psychological effects.
If fearmongering drug warriors were right about the weakness of humankind, there would be no social drinkers, only drunkards.
That's so "drug war" of Rick: If a psychoactive substance has a bad use at some dose, for somebody, then it must not be used at any dose by anybody. It's hard to imagine a less scientific proposition, or one more likely to lead to unnecessary suffering.
Rick Strassman reportedly stopped his DMT trials because some folks had bad experiences at high doses. That is like giving up on aspirin because high doses of NSAIDs can kill.
Americans love to hate heroin. But there is no rational reason why folks should not use heroin daily in a world in which we consider it their medical duty to use antidepressants daily.
When folks die in horse-related accidents, we need to be asking: who sold the victim the horse? We've got to crack down on folks who peddle this junk -- and ban books like Black Beauty that glamorize horse use.
All the problems that folks associate with drugs are caused by prohibition. Thousands were not dying on the streets when opioids were legal in America. It took prohibition to bring that about.
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