hristian Science is a religion founded in late 19-century America by Mary Baker (aka Mary Baker Eddy), after she discovered what she took to be the overlooked healing power of spirituality as demonstrated by Jesus in the New Testament. She came to believe that physical suffering was an illusion, that it had no objective reality, and that it could be overcome by faith alone. Given this theological understanding, many modern-day Christian Scientists, like Baker herself before them, feel no need for modern medical intervention and seek to do without its various ministrations (including prescriptions and surgery), sometimes with tragic results. In the 1980s, there were sensational media coverage of Christian Scientists being charged with child abuse for allowing their children to die of treatable diseases due to the parents' religious conviction that healing could come about through spiritual intervention alone.
Having thus briefly explained the Christian Science outlook on suffering, I trust that it is apparent why the Drug War represents the enforcement of Christian Science precepts. The Drug War says, in effect, that human beings should not -- and indeed must not - use mother nature's medicines in an attempt to improve their psychological well-being. And this is simply the doctrine of Mary Baker herself with respect to illness. It is a religious belief, especially as many Drug Warriors suggest that the proper alternative to so-called drug use is to believe in the Christian God. Yet there is no scientific reason why we should not use the plants and fungi of our choice to improve and expand our cognition - there is only the conviction of the Drug Warrior that it is somehow wrong to do so. Of course Drug Warriors who hold this faith have to work constantly to censor history in order to delete counterfactual examples from the past. Thus we read of Benjamin Franklin's creativity, without being told how he used opium to stimulate that creativity. Thus we read of Sigmund Freud's highly prolific work output, without being told how cocaine helped drive him to produce that output. Thus we learn of Francis Crick's great insight in discovering the DNA helix, without being told how he used psychedelics to help achieve that insight.
Having thus established that the Drug War represents the enforcement of Christian Science precepts, I will end my efforts at clarification by defining the word "sharia," both in its original sense and in its generally pejorative modern connotation in the west. We read in Webster's, that "sharia" is:
"the body of formally established sacred law... governing in theory not only religious matters but regulating as well political, economic, civil, criminal, ethical, social, and domestic affairs in Muslim countries."
More to our purpose here is the modern connotation of the word "sharia" in the west, where it conjures images of a police state run by a theocratic government that will brook no dissent and whose laws are emphatically harsh. By thus describing the Drug War as "sharia" in this pejorative sense, I hope to highlight the highly ironic fact that Americans (and westerners in general) are living under the very form of government that they purport to detest, a kind of western "sharia," that subjects them to a set of ultra harsh drug laws (which may soon include the death penalty in America) should they choose to violate the Christian Science doctrine of renouncing Mother Nature's psychoactive plant medicines when it comes to treating "what ails them," psychologically speaking.
QED, the Drug War is really the enforcement of Christian Science Sharia.
If enough freedom-loving westerners can "get their head around this fact," then we can stop impotently shouting "End the Drug War!" to deaf politicians around the globe and start shouting "End Christian Science Sharia!" instead, thereby revealing to the Drug Warriors that we're "onto" their game and that we know all about their stealth efforts to make us conform with the anti-scientific moral philosophy of the religious reformer popularly known as Mary Baker Eddy.
Religion
The Drug War violates religious freedom by putting bureaucrats in charge of deciding if a religion is 'sincere' or not. That is so absurd that one does not know whether to laugh or cry. No one in government is capable of determining whether the inner states that I achieve with psychoactive medicine are religious or not. This is why Milton Friedman was so wrong when he said in 1972 that there are good people on both sides of the drug war debate. WRONG! There are those who are more than ready to take away my religious liberty and those who are not. If the former wish to be called 'good,' they will first need a refresher course in American democracy and religious freedom. They need to renounce their Christian Science theocracy and let folks like myself worship using the kinds of substances that have inspired entire religions in the past. Until they do that, do not expect me to praise the very people who have launched an inquisition against my form of experiencing the divine.
The drug war is a meta-injustice. It does not just limit what you're allowed to think, it limits how and how much you are allowed to think.
As such, "we" are important. The sun is just a chaos of particles that "we" have selected out of the rest of the raw data and declared "This we shall call the sun!" "We" make this universe. Consciousness is fundamental.
"Users" can be kept out of the workforce by the extrajudicial process of drug testing; they can have their baby taken from them, their house, their property -- all because they do not share the intoxiphobic attitude of America.
The FDA uses reductive materialism to justify and normalize the views of Cortes and Pizarro with respect to entheogenic medicine.
It's a category error to say that scientists can tell us if psychoactive drugs "really work." It's like asking Dr. Spock of Star Trek if hugging "really works." ("Hugging is highly illogical, Captain.")
But that's the whole problem with Robert Whitaker's otherwise wonderful critique of Big Pharma. Like almost all non-fiction authors today, he reckons without the drug war, which gave Big Pharma a monopoly in the first place.
To put it another way: in a sane world, we would learn to strategically fight drugs with drugs.
Immanuel Kant wrote that scientists are scornful about metaphysics yet they rely on it themselves without realizing it. This is a case in point, for the idea that euphoria and visions are unhelpful in life is a metaphysical viewpoint, not a scientific one.
To oppose the Drug War philosophically, one has to highlight its connections to both materialism and the psychiatric pill mill. And that's a problem, because almost everyone is either a Drug Warrior, a materialist, and/or has a vested interest in the psychiatric pill mill.
The Drug War treats doctors like potential criminals and it treats the rest of us like children. Prohibition does not end drug risks: it just outsources them to minorities and other vulnerable populations.
People magazine should be fighting for justice on behalf of the thousands of American young people who are dying on the streets because of the drug war.
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 the Drug War is Christian Science Sharia published on June 30, 2020 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)