The following screed was rapped out in double-time by a dude who by rights should be working on his freelance assignment right now (the nature of which work, however, shall remain a secret here in deference to the time sensitivities of the no-doubt harried reader). Brian couldn't stop himself, so pissed was he with the ongoing attempt by the US government to blame every imaginable earthly ill on the politically created boogieman called "drugs." These comments, by the way, were sent directly to the esteemed representatives via their websites, despite the nagging suspicion by the author that the duo in question have been hopelessly brainwashed by the Christian Science ideology of the war on Americans, AKA the War on Drugs.
By the way, the efficient causes of this harangue (if one might wax philosophical for just a moment) were the superstitious tweets of one Alex Berenson which Brian, alas, read this morning, in which the prohibitionist author tweaked reformers for the problems that he blamed on marijuana legalization 1 . As usual, all the problems that he cited (to the extent that they were not just the figments of a nature-fearing imagination) were actually the result of the ongoing prohibition of all of marijuana's competitors. With this niggling impetus then -- and with the anxious knowledge of tomorrow's US Senate vote on the troglodytic HALT Act -- Brian could do nought else but expostulate, even if it meant that the poor guy would be up past midnight tonight catching up on that undefined freelancing work of his that I alluded to above.
Dear Senators
Prohibition has been the biggest mistake in American history. It is wrong root and branch. Our attitude towards "drugs" is prehistoric and anti-scientific. We come at the issue from the wrong direction. We should be awestruck at Nature's healing power (which God said was good) and be seeking all sorts of ways to use it safely and wisely. Instead, we believe that all psychoactive substances are bad -- without even asking for proof.
It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, which leads to folks seeking transcendence from a corrupted drug supply furnished by dealers interested in the bottom line.
Please end this folly. We need an amendment that prohibits prohibition -- which causes death and sorrow and denies godsend medicines to the distressed. Even now, in America's hysterical attempt to blame opioids for every evil under the sun, we are denying godsend pain medicine to kids in hospice --based on our superstitious belief in the evil of opiates. Opium was considered a godsend by Avicenna, Galen and Paracelsus. It is not evil. Bad social policies are evil.
FREE SCIENCE. Stop the NIDA campaign to make us think that drugs can only be used for evil. It is propaganda, not science, because they completely ignore the reason people use "drugs": in order to transcend self and improve their lives. That is the truth. NIDA 2 is all about ignoring that fact.
The Drug War has led to the election of Drug Warriors like Trump by jailing hundreds of thousands of blacks. If unchecked, the Drug War will completely destroy America. It is not wrong in parts -- it is wrong ROOT AND BRANCH. It is a WRONG WAY OF LOOKING AT THE WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!
No wonder it leads to chaos, inner-city deaths, and the end of the rule of law in Latin America!!!!
Please vote NO ON HALT
May 24, 2023
"The biggest mistake in American history." Well, slavery was worse. (Remember, the old boy wrote this in a hurry.) That said, however, the Drug War can be seen as the extension of slavery by other means, as the book Whiteout makes abundantly clear.
Author's Follow-up: January 9, 2025
Protesting the Drug War is frustrating for anyone who has seen through the racist and anti-democratic project. It is as if one lives in a world wherein logic applies except in the case of cats, a world in which everyone is convinced that cats are demons. Where does one begin in changing minds? You can't just say that, "No, cats are NOT demons." That's not going to convince any true believer in the reigning superstition. So you're forced to backtrack to Philosophy 101 and broach topics like, what makes a cat a cat and what makes a demon a demon and start creating logically undeniable syllogisms to distinguish the two.
Also, here's another "biggest mistake" in American history: our decision to go ahead with the development of thermonuclear weapons in the 1950s, rather than seeking to outlaw them entirely and launching a multi-billion-dollar campaign to increase compassion worldwide with the strategic use of entheogens. But that solution, unfortunately, is just common sense, and common sense is at a premium in the superstitious age of the Drug War. Just ask the materialists who cannot figure out if laughing gas could help the depressed3.
For anyone who doubts the enormity of this mistake regarding nukes, I suggest a little bedtime reading in the form of "nuclear war 456 : A Scenario" by Annie Jacobsen7.
What we've really got to outlaw, of course, are horses! When Christopher Reeves was disabled by one of those dangerous equines, we should have been asking: who was peddling that junk? From whom had Christopher bought that horse?! He should have been given 20 years at minimum for dealing in death!
See? I can become just as indignant as any Drug Warrior. Humph! Of course, I am a moderate. I do not believe with our Horse Czar that horse dealers should be beheaded -- that is going a bit too far, perhaps -- but they should certainly do some serious time! Humph!
Oh, it feels so good to be morally indignant. But we should not let Drug Warriors have all the fun. Let's get indignant about all people who deal in death: those who sell alcohol, for instance, and skateboards! Humph! Oh, the ecstasies of a just indignation!
You too can ride the prohibitionist's indignation bandwagon. Find out how here: .
Support the goal of the Partnership for a Death Free America. We are aiming for a Death-Free country by the year 2030! We need YOUR indignation to reach our goal! Tell Congress that you're not going to tolerate this anymore! End the madness! Outlaw all the many unregulated threats that could kill any one of our innocent little white children even as we speak! I say again, humph!
Author's Follow-up:
I need scarcely add that the HALT act was passed. The troglodytes in Congress still believe that health issues in America should be handled by the police. What a fascist idea! Until I studied the Drug War, I had my own reservations about national healthcare. Then I found that the harshest opponents of that measure were all in favor of spending trillions on health -- it's just that they wanted the money to go to the military and police forces. We could spend a fraction of that money on establishing a system of pharmacologically savvy empaths around the country who could advise on the safest and wisest uses for psychoactive medicine -- in a world in which all substances were legal once again and in which we frowned only on uneducated drug use -- not on drug use in general. After all, drug use created the Hindu religion. It was created thanks to the inspiration and elation provided by the psychoactive drug (or drugs) known as Soma. It follows from this statement that it is the violation of religious liberty to outlaw substances that inspire and elate.
American businesses judge people, not by the color of their skin but by the contents of their digestive systems.
Ketamine is like any other drug. It has good uses for certain people in certain situations. Nowadays, people insist that a drug be okay in every situation for everybody (especially American teens) before they will say that it's okay. That's crazy and anti-scientific.
That's another problem with "following the science." Science downplays personal testimony as subjective. But psychoactive experiences are all ABOUT subjectivity. With such drugs, users are not widgets susceptible to the one-size-fits-all pills of reductionism.
Drug prohibition has resulted in hundreds of thousands of completely unnecessary deaths thanks to totally preventable drug overdoses!
Rick Strassman reportedly stopped his DMT trials because some folks had bad experiences at high doses. That is like giving up on aspirin because high doses of NSAIDs can kill.
His answer to political opposition is: "Lock them up!" That's Nazi speak, not American democracy.
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.
Drug prohibition began as a racist attempt to prevent so-called "miscegenation." The racist's fear was not that a white woman would use opium or marijuana or cocaine, but that she might actually fall in love with a Chinese, Hispanic or Black person respectively.
Oregon's drug policy is incoherent and cruel. The rich and healthy spend $4,000 a week on psilocybin. The poor and chemically dependent are thrown in jail, unless they're on SSRIs, in which case they're congratulated for "taking their meds."
Imagine if we held sports to the same safety standard as drugs. There would be no sports at all. And yet even free climbing is legal. Why? Because with sports, we recognize the benefits and not just the downsides.
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