he reader who believes that I am desperately in favor of "drug use" is wrong. I am desperately in favor only of complete honesty about drugs whereby intelligent persons may make intelligent decisions about using (or abstaining from) any given substance -- complete honesty, that is to say, about ALL drugs, including everything from Ketamine to SSRIs, from LSD to alcohol, from opium to tobacco. This honesty that I'm after would be based not on wish fulfillment or eye-catching one-off anecdotes, but rather on actual outcomes of actual use patterns, telling potential users in effect, "If you use substance A in this way, then X is statistically likely to happen, if you use it in THAT way, then Y," with such reports focusing both on the reported subjective AND objective benefits and downsides of use. My urgency derives from the fact that there is no such drug honesty in the United States. Instead, users must decide for themselves precisely how much of Drug Warrior bluster, overstatement and factual cherry-picking should justifiably discourage them in their particular use of a particular substance.
That said, it is emphatically not just the Drug War which is to blame for this lack of honesty about drugs in America. There is another force at work in American society that limits our understanding about so-called "drugs" and that is what I call the sanctification effect. It is a descendant of the American penchant for medicine shows in the 19th-century, wherein an authority figure (generally decked out as a "doctor") convinced a desperate audience that a bottle of "Dr. Good" would cure everything that ailed them and without any untoward side effects whatsoever. This sanctification effect appears whenever capitalism (or more specifically the entrepreneurial spirit) works to promote an unnuanced and glorified understanding of a psychoactive substance in order to peddle that substance to an often desperate clientele. Such a drug soon becomes beatified in the minds of its champions, who are thenceforth averse to even contemplating facts that might conduce to removing said substance from the pedestal that has been fashioned for it, often through a powerful combination of wishful crowd-think and the conscious sales strategy of ambitious entrepreneurs.
This tendency to sanctify is understandable as a reaction to the omnipresence of Drug War lies and misinformation in American society. It's especially understandable in those who believe as I do in our right to control our own minds and thought processes. Why, after all, would we want to give ammunition to our enemies so that they can emotionally trash psychoactive substances still further? Yet lies should be met with truth if we are ultimately to gain our freedom from those who would demonize psychoactive substances, even if such truth might seem to 'play into the hands' of our opponents in the short run. For it's not simply isolated truths that will eventually set us free, but rather the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In a world of such rigorous truth-telling, the unfounded and sensationalized fears of Chicken Little Drug Warriors will be seen for the uneducated panic that they represent.
For a specific example of the sanctification effect, let us consider ketamine. It is marketed as a new godsend for depression and highly praised both by entrepreneurs in the field and those who hope to benefit from the drug. So far, so good, as there is indeed some reason for excitement, especially in cases of severe depression. And yet ketamine use is not without risk1. I learned that there were risks, however, not from American doctors -- and certainly not from those doctors attempting to sell the drug as a depression treatment -- but rather from articles written by doctors in Hong Kong and Malaysia, where ketamine has been linked to urological problems in certain users. This negative factoid, however, is silenced in America by the above-mentioned sanctification effect. Why? Because generally speaking, the only folks who are talking extensively about ketamine depression therapy are the desperately depressed and those who cater to them capitalistically speaking, neither of whom are eager to hear about flaws in a substance that they are embracing (and/or marketing) as a long-awaited panacea.
So we have lies coming from both sides when it comes to drugs like ketamine: the Drug War encourages us to fear the drug uncritically while the sanctification effect leads us to embrace the drug uncritically.
That's why we need a Drug Education Agency to replace the highly mendacious DEA, which has been brazenly libeling plant medicine since its inception in 1973. We need an honest, nonpartisan and completely independent agency that neither touts drugs nor demonizes them, but rather provides totally unbiased and statistically based results of actual use of specific psychoactive substances in specific contexts, to clearly demonstrate how said substances can be used most safely for worthwhile purposes and in what ways their use may be seen to cause actual problems in the real world (problems, that is, which are not caused, as so many drug problems are today, by drug criminalization itself).
As this analysis suggests, it is not just the Drug Warrior who would oppose the creation of such a completely honest agency: it is the capitalist as well. For if we were completely honest about ketamine in this way, we would also have to be completely honest about Big Pharma meds, and complete honesty based on actual usage would show Americans (in black and white, as it were, after years of self-interested silence on this point from financially interested parties) that many SSRI antidepressants lead to a lifetime of substance dependency while yet not "fixing" depression, but rather leading in the long-term to emotional-flatlining.
And so when it comes to psychoactive substances, Americans of both parties are like Lieutenant Kaffee in "A Few Good Men." They say they want the truth, but they can't handle the truth.
PS Some might say that drugs are covered honestly in Academia, but this is not so. Any survey of the literature shows that almost all discussion of psychoactive substances is written with a myopic focus on the downsides of use. The collective effect of this body of literature is to toe the Drug War line that there is no rational use for psychoactive substances, a stance which is at odds both with the history of substance use (as, for instance, when soma inspired the Vedic religion) and the very basics of human psychology, which tell us that the search for self-transcendence is universal and not pathological as the prudish academic literature on this topic seems to imply.
May 26, 2022
Let's toss in a few caveats here that Brian (bless him) failed to address: First, when it comes to naturally occurring medicines, we have no right to outlaw them in the first place since they are a gift from nature and therefore not subject to criminalization -- in light of the natural law upon which America was founded. Yes, let's be truthful about them until the cows come home, but we must not let any safety scruples that we formulate about them convince us that we have a common-law right to criminalize plants. That was the original sin of the Drug War back in 1914 when politicians had the unmitigated hubris to criminalize the poppy, thereby creating a century-plus of gunfire, violence and the outlawing of religion -- insofar as drugs like coca, opium and psychedelics have inspired entire religions before the west came along to declare the substances somehow criminal in and of themselves.
Here's another elephant that Brian failed to observe in the room: The FDA's idea of "safety" reckons without its host. It gives decidedly short shrift to the desperate needs of the depressed and suicidal. That's why they can outlaw such an obvious help to the depressed as laughing gas (nitrous oxide). They outlaw it because they're scared to death that some uneducated young people will find a disastrous way to use the drug and then end up on the evening news in some local tragedy that will get drug-warrior jaws flapping in Congress. And what's the result of their politically inspired fear: MILLIONS AND MILLIONS must go without a godsend treatment -- all because a handful of young people might find a politically button-pushing way to misuse it. Since when do the merely theoretical concerns about a small number of young people trump the needs of millions if not billions??? Answer: Since the topic of "drugs" was politicized and became all about fear instead of education. Speaking of which, it never occurs to the FDA that the answer to their disproportionately centered fears is to educate the public -- rather than force the whole world to go without godsends because a relatively tiny number of kids are going to find a way to misuse them.
Author's Follow-up: June 21, 2024
In reality, it is very difficult to give objective information about drug usage. We may find, for instance, usage rules that hold true for Stateside Americans but which do not hold true historically in Latin American use. This is because drug use, especially of psychedelics and entheogens, is not just about set and setting, it is also about what Bobi Hill Deere of Oklahoma University described as "Set, Setting, and Sacra.2" Although he does not use this latter terminology, author Michael Stuart Ani highlights the importance of this additional category in his 2020 YouTube interview with Stephen Gray entitled "Secrets of the Sacred Mushroom.3." Also, we judge drugs by how they act on their own, not in combination with any other substances or in consideration of dietas that a "user" might have performed in advance of use. It is, however, foreign to the shamanic viewpoint to consider the effect of one substance in and of itself, in the abstract, without regard for the entire mix of circumstances in which "use" might occur.
Finally, no substance is bad in itself. When we outlaw a drug, we outlaw all of the potential benefits that a clever mind might have found in that drug. That is anti-science, anti-progress, and inhumane.
Almost all talk about the supposed intractability of things like addiction are exercises in make-believe. The pundits pretend that godsend medicines do not exist, thus normalizing prohibition by implying that it does not limit progress. It's a tacit form of collaboration.
Prohibitionists have blood on their hands. People do not naturally die in the tens of thousands from opioid use, notwithstanding the lies of 19th-century missionaries in China. It takes bad drug policy to accomplish that.
When people tell us there's nothing to be gained from using mind-improving drugs, they are embarrassing themselves. Users benefit from such drugs precisely to the extent that they are educated and open-minded. Loudmouth abstainers are telling us that they lack these traits.
Drug War propaganda is all about convincing us that we will never be able to use drugs wisely. But the drug warriors are not taking any chances: they're doing all they can to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"When two men who have been in an aggressive mood toward each other take part in the ritual, one is able to say to the other, 'Come, let us drink, for there is something between us.' " re: the Mayan use of the balche drink in Encyc of Psych Plants, by Ratsch & Hofmann
Americans are far more fearful of psychoactive drugs than is warranted by either anecdote or history. We require 100% safety before we will re-legalize any "drug" -- which is a safety standard that we do not enforce for any other risky activity on earth.
"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
When the FDA tells us in effect that MDMA is too dangerous to be used to prevent school shootings and to help bring about world peace, they are making political judgments, not scientific ones.
The FDA tells us that MDMA is not safe. This is the same FDA that tells us that "shock therapy" is safe.
Drug warriors have taught us that honest about drugs encourages drug use. Nonsense! That's just their way of suppressing free speech about drugs. Americans are not babies, they can handle the truth -- or if they cannot, they need education, not prohibition.
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, Why Americans Can't Handle the Truth about Drugs published on April 21, 2022 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 reader who believes that I am desperately in favor of "drug use" is wrong. I am desperately in favor only of complete honesty about drugs whereby intelligent persons may make intelligent decisions about using (or abstaining from) any given substance -- complete honesty, that is to say, about ALL drugs, including everything from Ketamine to SSRIs, from LSD to alcohol, from opium to tobacco. This honesty that I'm after would be based not on wish fulfillment or eye-catching one-off anecdotes, but rather on actual outcomes of actual use patterns, telling potential users in effect, "If you use substance A in this way, then X is statistically likely to happen, if you use it in THAT way, then Y," with such reports focusing both on the reported subjective AND objective benefits and downsides of use. My urgency derives from the fact that there is no such drug honesty in the United States. Instead, users must decide for themselves precisely how much of Drug Warrior bluster, overstatement and factual cherry-picking should justifiably discourage them in their particular use of a particular substance. 
You have been reading an article entitled, Why Americans Can't Handle the Truth about Drugs published on April 21, 2022 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)