William James is considered by many to be America's greatest philosopher. His entire philosophy was inspired by the world he encountered under the influence of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas. In his master work, "The Varieties of Religious Experience," James wrote the following: "No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded." When you "schedule" substances like laughing gas, then you are censoring science and philosophy.
You are also denying godsend treatments for chronic depressives like myself. For laughing gas improves mood -- not just the gas itself, but LOOKING FORWARD to use. Materialists may not be able to "prove that" with their reductive reasoning, but, frankly, it's common psychological sense. Even the Reader's Digest knows that laughter is the best medicine. Instead of scheduling nitrous oxide, we should be teaching safe use and making it available to researchers and the depressed.
I perfectly understand that some folks may misuse it -- but we should teach them, not arrest them. We have got to stop acting like drugs must be banned if they are capable of misuse. All drugs can be misused. We must teach, not practice fearmongering. You may feel like you're saving a few hundred users from their own folly by scheduling, but you are simultaneously throwing millions of the depressed under the bus, along with philosophers who wish to follow up the studies of William James.
Instead of SWAT teams ready to arrest Americans, we need SWAT teams full of educators, ready to teach safe use wherever drug problems arise. That could surely happen if we spent the multi-billion-dollar DEA budget on educating rather than arresting.
The DEA scheduling system is political, not scientific. It outlaws drugs that have inspired entire religions. Coca was considered divine by the Inca, mushrooms by the Maya, and the psychedelic soma inspired the Vedic-Hindu religion. We have to stop using the scheduling system to outlaw substances that inspire religions and philosophical thought. That kind of censorship is not what America should be about.
In conclusion, when you schedule mind-expanding substances like laughing gas, you are not just denying godsend treatment to millions, but you are censoring science and philosophy and telling researchers to "stand down" in their attempt to study ultimate reality. William James would be rolling in his grave to know that his philosophical field of inquiry has been shut down by government. Let's be the free country that we purport to be. Let's not censor science and philosophy.
Please do not "schedule" laughing gas and other related mind-enhancing substances in a way to limit their legitimate and beneficial use for science, philosophy, and the depressed.
Laughing gas is already out of reach for myself for practical reasons, and so I have to suffer without relief for depression that is untouched by the Big Pharma drugs that have made me chemically dependent for life. That's why we actually need to make substances like laughing gas MORE available, not less.
Scheduling and cracking down is not the answer. That's why the drug situation in the country is now incalculably worse than it was in 1914 when Congress first affectively outlawed a plant in violation of the natural law upon which America was founded. Let's learn from our mistakes. Let's start educating instead of outlawing. Let's start educating about substances instead of "scheduling" them. The prohibition thus created has already had ruinous effects by resulting in no-go zones in inner cities. For as Ann Heather Thompson wrote in The Atlantic in 2014: "Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist."
Laughing Gas
Laughing gas is the substance that inspired William James' philosophy about human perception and the nature of ultimate reality. "No account of the universe in its totality," wrote James, "can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded." And yet disregard them we must because the drug war has outlawed all substances that help create such states. This is a veto on human progress. It is also psychological common sense that laughing gas could be used to prevent suicides and treat depression -- but materialist science ignores common sense. This is why they need to butt out when it comes to psychoactive medicine. They are no experts on emotional states, except in their own dogmatic materialist minds. It is a category error to place materialists in charge of our thoughts and feelings. We actually know what works for ourselves. And if there are any experts in the field, they are not materialists, they are pharmacologically savvy empaths, what the indigenous world calls shaman.
My depression would disappear overnight if religiously intolerant America would just allow me to live as free as Benjamin Franklin.
In a sane world, we'd package laughing gas for safe use and give it to the suicidal -- saying, "Use before attempting to kill yourself." But drug warriors would rather have suicide than drug use.
The Drug War is one big entrapment scheme for poor minorities. Prohibition creates an economy that hugely incentivizes drug dealing, and when the poor fall for the bait, the prohibitionists rush in to arrest them and remove them from the voting rolls.
The Drug War is the most important evil to protest, precisely because almost everybody is afraid to do so. That's a clear sign that it is a cancer on the body politic.
Today's drug laws tell us that we must respect the historical use of sacred medicines, while denying us our personal right to use them unless our ancestors did so. That's a meta-injustice! It negatively affects the way that we are allowed to experience our world!
In the 19th century, author Richard Middleton wrote how poets would get together to use opium "in a series of magnificent quarterly carouses."
The so-called "herbs" that witches used were drugs, in the same way that "meds" are drugs. If academics made that connection, the study of witchcraft would shed a lot of light on the fearmongering of modern prohibitionists.
If politicians wanted to outlaw coffee, a bunch of Kevin Sabets would come forward and start writing books designed to scare us off the drink by cherry-picking negative facts from scientific studies.
Some fat cat should treat the entire Supreme Court to a vacation at San Jose del Pacifico in Mexico, where they can partake of the magic mushroom in a ceremony led by a Zapotec guide.
I hated the show "The Apprentice," because it taught a cynical and hate-filled lesson about the proper way to "get ahead" in the world. I saw Trump as a menace back then, long before he started declaring that American elections were corrupt before the very first vote was cast!
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 FDA should not schedule Laughing Gas: The laughable proposal to crack down on nitrous oxide, published on August 8, 2023 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)
You have been reading an article entitled, Why the FDA should not schedule Laughing Gas: The laughable proposal to crack down on nitrous oxide, published on August 8, 2023 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)