Kid 1: "Let's pretend that we are highly esteemed academics. [attempting ponderous-sounding voice] 'Good day, honorable colleagues, good day!'"
Kid 2: "Yeah, but let's pretend that Mother Nature's psychoactive substances do not exist -- except as traps to ensnare sinners."
Kid 3: "And let's pretend that human beings have no right to the bounty of Mother Nature and that there is nothing wrong with the government telling us which drug-related subjects we can study and which not."
Kid 4: "And let's pretend that drug prohibition has no downsides in the real world."
Kid 5: "Okay, I guess so. But let's retain all of the trappings of certitude and self-satisfaction that are typically associated with pedants, failing to even consciously notice the strictures in question, let alone the fact that those strictures totally bias the playing field as to what we can study and hence what conclusions we are even allowed to DRAW!"
Kid 1: "[in ponderous voice] Okay, then, my esteemed colleagues. Ready, set... PRETEND!!!"
Smart people in America are like Don Quixote. They are sane on every subject on earth, but mention the subject of "drugs," and they start talking politically correct blather.
I could tell my psychiatrist EXACTLY what would "cure" my depression, even without getting addicted, but everything involved is illegal. It has to be. Otherwise I would have no need of the psychiatrist.
M. Pollan says "not so fast" when it comes to drug re-legalization. I say FAST? I've gone a whole lifetime w/o access to Mother Nature's plants. How can a botanist approve of that? Answer: By ignoring all legalization stakeholders except for the kids whom we refuse to educate.
Self-medication is not a dirty word. It has always been a fundamental right to take care of one's own health -- until the medical establishment demonized the practice for obvious financial reasons.
Malcolm X sensed an important truth about drugs: the fact that it was always a self-interested category error for Americans to place medical doctors in charge of mind and mood medicine.
Pundits have been sniffing about the "smell" of Detroit lately. Sounds racist -- especially since such comments tend to come from drug warriors, the guys who ruined Detroit in the first place (you know, with drug laws that incentivized profit-seeking violence as a means of escaping poverty).
Whether we judge people only by the words that they say or only by the substances of which they partake, we are ignoring the most important things: what they really mean and how they really behave.
Drug warriors blame all of the problems that they cause on "drugs" and then insist that the entire WORLD accept their jaundiced view of the natural bounty that God himself told us was good.
There is an absurd safety standard for "drugs." The cost/benefit analysis of the FDA & co. never takes into account the costs of NOT prescribing nor the benefits of a productive life well lived. The "users" are not considered stakeholders.
I, for one, am actually TRYING to recommend drugs like MDMA and psilocybin as substitutes for shock therapy. In fact, I would recommend almost ANY pick-me-up drug as an alternative to knowingly damaging the human brain. That's more than the hateful DEA can say.
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