"The outlawing of drugs has shunted me off onto dependence-causing Big Pharma meds for life. And now Big Pharma is trying to belittle drug use by judging it by materialist standards and outside of all context. They are determined to deprive me of use of every holistic-acting drug on the planet. This is the pharmacological colonialism that has turned me into a Big Pharma patient for life. If we took this materialistic view of drugs to the rainforest, we could find "reasons" to outlaw every psychoactive plant in the world. It is easy to do so in a world in which Drug Warriors ignore all the GLARINGLY OBVIOUS reasons why drugs are considered godsends for actual users -- as opposed to passion-free materialist scientists. When is the media going to stop normalizing drug prohibition by judging drugs based on RISKS only!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have spent a lifetime on dependence-causing BIG PHARMA drugs thanks to the mindset that one-sided articles such as yours help to justify!!!!!!!!"
"If we argue from principle, then it is moot whether drug prohibition works, because it is problematic what should count as its 'working.' The very existence of such a mass movement of scapegoating-- uniting a diverse people in a common hatred-- may be regarded as evidence that, simply put, it is working."
"Actually, as a slogan, 'Just say no to drugs' is simply witless, in both senses of that word: It is at once humorless and stupid, leaving unsaid to what drugs, in what doses and under what circumstances one ought to say no."
"The laws that deny healthy people 'recreational' drugs also deny sick people 'therapeutic' drugs."
"Although there is no evidence that the American consumer ever complained about the free market in drugs, there is plenty of evidence that his self-appointed protectors complained bitterly and loudly."
"Lacking the usual grounds on which people congregate as a nation, we [Americans] habitually fall back on the most primitive yet most enduring basis for group cohesion, namely, scapegoating."
Someday the world will realize that Freud's real achievement was his discovery of the depression-busting power of cocaine.
Had we really wanted to "help" users, we would have used the endless godsends of Mother Nature and related synthetics to provide spirit-lifting alternatives to problem use. But no one wanted to treat users as normal humans. They wanted to pathologize and moralize their use.
I have dissed MindMed's new LSD "breakthrough drug" for philosophical reasons. But we can at least hope that the approval of such a "de-fanged" LSD will prove to be a step in the slow, zigzag path toward re-legalization.
Here are some political terms that are extremely problematic in the age of the drug war:
"clean," "junk," "dope," "recreational"... and most of all the word "drugs" itself, which is as biased and loaded as the word "scab."
A lot of drug use represents an understandable attempt to fend off performance anxiety. Performers can lose their livelihood if they become too self-conscious. We only call such use "recreational" because we are oblivious to the common-sense psychology.
If fearmongering drug warriors were right about the weakness of humankind, there would be no social drinkers, only drunkards.
I hope that scientists will eventually find the prohibition gene so that we can eradicate this superstitious way of thinking from humankind.
I don't have a problem with CBD. But I find that many people like it for the wrong reasons: they assume there is something slightly "dirty" about getting high and that all "cures" should be effected via direct materialist causes, not holistically a la time-honored tribal use.
I might as well say that no one can ever be taught to ride a horse safely. I would argue as follows: "Look at Christopher Reeves. He was a responsible and knowledgeable equestrian. But he couldn't handle horses. The fact is, NO ONE can handle horses!"
David Chalmers says almost everything in the world can be reductively explained. Maybe so. But science's mistake is to think that everything can therefore be reductively UNDERSTOOD. That kind of thinking blinds researchers to the positive effects of laughing gas and MDMA, etc.
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