I was trying to forget about America's Drug War last night by playing a simple board game with my sister's family. Finally, I could take my mind off of the modern world's unprecedented folly of turning psychoactive substances into scapegoats and boogiemen.
Unfortunately, however, this respite was not to be, for the board game that we chose was Life, and my sister happened to own the politically correct version of that game that had been printed during the Reagan-and-Bush eras.
Our four-person game began uneventfully. We all went to college and got well-paying jobs, with the possible exception of myself, who ended up as a debt-riddled schoolmarm taking home a mere $50,000 per annum. But at least I was forgetting all about America's anti-scientific Drug War and the fact that it violated the natural law upon which Jefferson had founded this country (which, I bet the president in question was spinning in his grave when the DEA stomped onto Monticello 1 in jackboots in 1987 and stole his poppy plants).
I was looking forward to an hour of sweet forgetfulness viz. America's Drug War superstitions, when my brother-in-law (a ridiculously well-paid travel agent) landed on one of those orange Life spaces that read: "Just say no to drugs."
Oh, boy, here we go...
"Just say no to drugs?" I thought to myself. "It may as well say: 'Just say no to the natural plant medicines of which politicians disapprove."
I came very close to making these observations public, but I finally decided to hold my tongue, lest I spawn a conversation that should tick me off still further.
But you can no doubt imagine what I was thinking:
"What next? A space that gives you a Life card for turning in your parents, should they happen to use substances of which politicians disapprove? Or a Life card that cuts your salary in half because you failed a drug test?"
And so I played the rest of the game while mentally multitasking: attending to board game business on the one hand (I came in a surprising second despite my lowly profession, amassing an improbable $1,650,000) while silently reflecting as follows:
Imagine playing this "Game of Life" in the middle of the Amazon jungle, surrounded by godsend plant meds that focus and expand the mind, and then landing on a space that says: "Just say no to all those plant medicines that surround you."
You'd be like: "What are the game-makers talking about? Just say no to drugs? Are they kidding me? Why don't THEY just say no to Drug War colonialism? Why don't they just say no to plowing up the rain forest and enslaving whole peoples in order to acquire their precious rubber? Why don't they just say no to scientism and materialism 2? Why don't they just say no to the financial blackmail whereby they force other countries to outlaw the godsend plant medicines of which Western politicians disapprove?"
So much for taking my mind off of America's devastatingly misguided Drug War last night. Still, the experience reminded me of how well Drug War propaganda of the 1980s (such as the highly mendacious "frying pan" ad) had succeeded in convincing Americans that there was this all-powerful evil called "drugs" that must be quashed at any cost, even if it means renouncing the freedoms that Jefferson had said were ours under the supposedly tyrant-proof protection of natural law
I hope someday the '80s board game with its "just say no" Life card will just be a quaint reminder of the unenlightened days when politicians demonized substances for racist reasons rather than encouraging safe use through education. Unfortunately, we do not seem to be headed in that direction, given our overcrowded prisons, the Drug War in Mexico, and the fact that our substance prohibition has empowered a self-proclaimed Drug War Hitler in the Philippines. Then there are the all-too-popular Drug War propaganda films (including "Crisis" and "Running with the Devil") in which the DEA gleefully violates the US Constitution, torturing and murdering so-called "drug suspects," often while the torturer and murderer are chain-smoking cigarettes, which contain a drug that is far more deadly than what their victim was selling.
Who knows? In 50 years or less, the game of Life might feature a Life card that says the following: "You have been caught selling plant medicines of which racist politicians disapprove. Remove your token from the board and return all your money to the bank!"
Author's Follow-up: May 16, 2023
Speaking of games, I've created a version of the card game Pit called "Corner on Coca!" Unfortunately, I had a massive hard drive failure after so doing and now I have to reconstitute the source material from scratch. I guess what I'm saying here is, stay tuned to this space for the perfect Christmas gift for that incorrigible Drug Warrior in your life (God bless the rascal). "See, Daddy. Here's a game that will teach you why prohibition is wrong root and branch!" And Daddy's like: "This family has always promoted policies that kill the poor and minorities, why should we stop now?"
The DEA should be tried for crimes against humanity. They have been lying about drugs for 50 years and running interference between human beings and Mother Nature in violation of natural law, depriving us of countless potential and known godsends in order to create more DEA jobs.
Drug-designing chemists have no expertise in deciding what constitutes a cure for depression. As Schopenhauer wrote:
"The mere study of chemistry qualifies a man to become an apothecary, but not a philosopher."
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 drug war is a scare campaign to teach us to distrust mother nature and to rely on pharmaceuticals instead.
It wasn't until western prudery and racism came along that we started to judge people by the substances that they chose to ingest, rather than by their actual behavior in the world.
"Drugs" is imperialist terminology. In the smug self-righteousness of those who use it, I hear Columbus's disdain for the shroom use of the Taino people and the Spanish disdain for the coca use of the Peruvian Indians.
"The homicidal drug is booze. There's more violence on a Saturday night in a neighborhood tavern than there has been in the whole 20-year history of LSD." -- Timothy Leary
After over a hundred years of prohibition, America has developed a kind of faux science in which despised substances are completely ignored. This is why Sci Am is making a new argument for shock therapy in 2023, because they ignore all the stuff that OBVIOUSLY cheers one up.
"Judging" psychoactive drugs is hard. Dosage counts. Expectations count. Setting counts. In Harvey Rosenfeld's book about the Spanish-American War, a volunteer wrote of his visit to an "opium den": "I took about four puffs and that was enough. All of us were sick for a week."
We give kids drugs to improve their concentration -- but if adults use drugs to concentrate, we call them names and throw them in jail.
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