The FDA is not qualified to judge psychoactive drugs
Here's why.
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 14, 2024
he FDA sets a ridiculous standard of safety for drugs like MDMA. This is because they focus only on the downsides of use. They do not care in the least about the millions who suffer in silence thanks to the outlawing of such drugs. This is why the approval of psychoactive drugs is always based on philosophical assumptions. For the question is not just, "How dangerous is a drug?" but rather "How important are freedom of thought and the power to control one's own mind?" And the FDA has no expertise in deciding such philosophical matters!
By ignoring the needs of such would-be beneficiaries of the drug, the FDA is essentially telling us that freedom of the mind is not important and that the prime imperative in life is to avoid risk at all costs, even if it means the silent suffering of vast swaths of humanity. Of course, this default philosophical premise is a mistake, even on its own terms, for it fails to calculate, or to even consider, the risk of leaving the world full of dissatisfied people, who may take out that dissatisfaction on themselves or others.
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.
America is insane: it makes liquor officially legal and then outlaws all the drugs that could help prevent and cure alcoholism.
"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."
Imagine if there were drugs for which dependency was a feature, not a bug. People would stop peddling that junk, right? Wrong. Just ask your psychiatrist.
Champions of indigenous medicines claim that their medicines are not "drugs." But they miss the bigger point: that there are NO drugs in the sense that drug warriors use that term. There are no drugs that have no positive uses whatsoever.
Being less than a month away from an election that, in my view, could end American democracy, I don't like to credit Musk for much. But I absolutely love it every time he does or says something that pushes back against the drug-war narrative.
That's the problem with prohibition. It is not ultimately a health question but a question about priorities and sensibilities -- and those topics are open to lively debate and should not be the province of science, especially when natural law itself says mother nature is ours.
I wonder if Nixon knew what a favor he was doing medical capitalism when he outlawed psychedelics. Those drugs can actually cure things, and there's no money in that.
How would we even KNOW that outlawed drugs have no positive uses? We first have to incorporate them in a sane, empathic and creative way to find that out, and the drug war makes such a sensible approach absolutely impossible.
Problem 2,643 of the war on drugs:
It puts the government in charge of deciding what counts as a true religion.
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, The FDA is not qualified to judge psychoactive drugs: Here's why., published on June 14, 2024 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 FDA sets a ridiculous standard of safety for drugs like MDMA. This is because they focus only on the downsides of use. They do not care in the least about the millions who suffer in silence thanks to the outlawing of such drugs. This is why the approval of psychoactive drugs is always based on philosophical assumptions. For the question is not just, "How dangerous is a drug?" but rather "How important are freedom of thought and the power to control one's own mind?" And the FDA has no expertise in deciding such philosophical matters! 
You have been reading an article entitled, The FDA is not qualified to judge psychoactive drugs: Here's why., published on June 14, 2024 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)
