If an American has a negative response to an anti-depressant, we sigh and say, "Oh, dear, they had a bad reaction." We ascribe no blame to the Big Pharma anti-depressant. The bad reaction is the fault of the user: their system simply fails to respond appropriately to the drug in question.
If an American has a negative response to a psychoactive plant medicine, we snarl and say, "Oh, dear, that is an evil drug!"
It's this kind of muddled thinking about substances that makes the Drug War the great philosophical problem of our time, because the Drug War is propped up and supported on a framework of bogus hypocritical assumptions like this.
Take the old canard of the "crutch," the idea that we should not use Mother Nature's psychoactive plant medicines because they are crutches.
Was coca a crutch when it helped HG Wells and Jules Verne write great stories? Was opium 1 a crutch when it increased Benjamin Franklin's creativity and friendliness? Were psychedelics a crutch when they provided Plato with metaphysical insights at the Eleusinian mysteries2? Was the natural substance called Soma a crutch when it single-handedly (or single-plantedly) inspired the Vedic religion?
If any substances are "crutches," they are the tranquilizing meds of Big Pharma , which, since the introduction of lithium, have been designed, not to help folks achieve self-actualization in life, but to render them more docile and accepting of the status quo. (When Antonio Moniz won the Nobel Prize for lobotomy, it was the nurses who were cheering, not the patients.) In this way, Big Pharma 34 meds are crutches designed to make the patient forget about the need to walk on their own two feet.
Author's Follow-up:
May 17, 2025
The Drug War is the great philosophical problem of our time. And yet most philosophers are in denial. I am the only philosopher on the planet who formally protested to the FDA about its plans to treat laughing gas 5 as a "drug."6 The use of nitrous oxide inspired the ontology of William James. He conjured philosophers to use the substance to investigate the nature of reality. And yet our government has outlawed such research by making the gas in question harder to use than ever. Laughing gas was already shamefully unavailable to the depressed as a practical matter. In a sane and compassionate world, we would provide laughing-gas kits to the severely depressed just as we provide epi pens to those with severe allergies -- but Americans actually prefer that the depressed kill themselves rather than use substances that have been outlawed by racist politicians.
And what is the "justification" for outlawing such substances? The fact that white American young people have found ways to use the substances dangerously. These are the same white American young people whom the prohibitionists refuse to teach about safe drug use! And now they are going to tell all demographics in the world that they cannot use these substances because said substances might harm the local white kids whom America refuses to educate.
Americans are so outrageously presumptuous -- and so blind to all the stakeholders in their drug debates. They have no interest in the needs of those suffering silently behind closed doors. They have no interest in academic freedom. They have no interest in the drive-by shootings that drug prohibition has brought to inner city neighborhoods. They have no interest in the fact that drug prohibition has destroyed the rule of law in Latin America. They just want to crack down on the drug-related incidents that are highlighted in our financially suborned media -- the problems that they themselves have caused by refusing to educate our children about the fact that they live in a world full of psychoactive substances, not thanks to drug dealers, but rather thanks to God himself, or to Mother Nature, or to evolution, etc. That's a fact of life. It behooves us as free and supposedly scientific individuals to learn about these substances and to use them as wisely as possible for the benefit of humanity rather than to demonize and fear them. Meanwhile, we must understand that shouting phrases like "Fentanyl 7 kills" is exactly like shouting "Fire bad!" -- all such statements promote the idea that we should fear potentially dangerous substances rather than learning how to use them as wisely as possible for the benefit of humanity.
If Fentanyl kills, then alcohol massacres. The problem is drug prohibition, not drugs.
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.)
Peyote advocates should be drug legalization advocates. Otherwise, they're involved in special pleading which is bound to result in absurd laws, such as "Plant A can be used in a religion but not plant B," or "Person A can belong to such a religion but person B cannot."
Many people take antidepressants believing their depression has a biochemical cause. Research does not support this belief. --Dr. Noam Shpancer, Psychology Today
The media called out Trump for fearmongering about immigrants, but the media engages in fearmongering when it comes to drugs. The latest TV plot line: "white teenage girl forced to use fentanyl!" America loves to feel morally superior about "drugs."
Laughing gas inspired the philosophy of William James. Outlawing N20 is outlawing academic freedom. Laughing gas should be available for the suicidal. Drug prohibition is not a victimless crime.
I'm grateful to the folks who are coming out of the woodwork at the last minute to deface their own properties with "Trump 2024" signs. Now I'll know who to thank should Trump get elected and sell us out to Putin.
Prohibitionists will me that we're all children when it comes to drugs, and can never -- but never -- use them wisely. That's like saying that we could never ride horses wisely. Or mountain climb. Or skateboard.
I will gladly respect the police once we remove them from Gestapo duty by ending the war on drugs. Police should also learn to live on a budget, without deriving income from confiscating houses and dormitories, etc.
All drugs have potential positive uses for somebody, at some dose, in some circumstance, alone or in combination. To decide in advance that a drug is completely useless is an offense to reason and to human liberty.
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