When a child snickers before Michelangelo's statue of David and says that the statue is "nekkid," we know that the child is immature. But American politicians behave the exact same way when it comes to so-called "drugs." They snicker cynically before higher states of consciousness (states of consciousness that have fostered entire religions) and dismiss it as getting "high" or getting "wasted." What's worse, in the latter case, Americans think they have discovered some new truth about substances, that there's this thing out there called "drugs" that are evil... when what they've really discovered is that America is immature, to the point of not being able to live sanely with the very flora that grows unbidden around us. Americans cannot imagine any way to use spiritual substances except in a cynical and hedonist fashion, as part of some scheming capitalistic transaction, and rather than blaming themselves or unfettered capitalism for this immaturity, they proclaim a new law of the land: that drugs are evil and that they must be eradicated around the globe. It's as if that immature child never grew up and declared that nudity in art is evil and must be eradicated everywhere around the globe.
There is no drug problem 1 . There is a problem with America's attitude toward drugs. That problem is immaturity, cynicism and hedonism, and the insistence that every transaction be considered through the calculating lens of capitalism 2 . Why do we blame these American problems on the scapegoat "drugs"? 3 Because otherwise America would have to transform for the better in order to live wisely with the flora that surrounds us. We'd have to prioritize education and permit true religious freedom. Instead, we blame all our problems on inanimate substances, drugs -- and worse yet, we insist that the entire world follow our superstitious example under pain of economic and sociopolitical blackmail. Sadly, all nations are happy to follow suit. It was America, after all, that claimed we had a basic right to nature under Natural Law. If a nation so founded should dare to come in between its citizens and the flora that grows at their very feet, what need have less enlightened countries to stand up for common sense, let alone dictatorships, which will gladly take America's lead and crack down on the modern boogieman of "drugs" in order to enhance their despotic control over their citizens.
And what better way to enhance tyranny than to control how (and how much) citizens are allowed to think and feel by denying them the God-given bounty of Mother Nature's psychoactive plant medicine? It is, in fact, the ultimate tyranny. Why merely control what your citizens can think when you can control how and how much they can both think and feel? It's the ultimate power grab of government, rendered acceptable by the one country that should have known better given its birth under natural law: the USA.
The existence of a handful of bad outcomes of drug use does not justify substance prohibition... any more than the existence of drunkards justifies a call for liquor prohibition.
According to Donald Trump's view of life, Jesus Christ was a chump. We should hate our enemies, not love them.
They drive to their drug tests in pickup trucks with license plates that read "Don't tread on me." Yeah, right. "Don't tread on me: Just tell me how and how much I'm allowed to think and feel in this life. And please let me know what plants I can access."
Drug warriors are too selfish and short-sighted to fight real problems, so they blame everything on drugs.
You can get a master's degree in healthcare today and not learn a thing about the power of hundreds of outlawed drugs to inspire and elate.
The evidence has been in for well over a century now: people want to use psychoactive substances to transcend the rational mind. It's about time we stopped punishing them for that.
There is more hope in dope than there is in the psychiatric pill mill.
The DEA conceives of "drugs" as only justifiable in some time-honored ritual format, but since when are bureaucrats experts on religion? I believe, with the Vedic people and William James, in the importance of altered states. To outlaw such states is to outlaw my religion.
I just can't believe... [image]
Pundits tell us that there are medical reasons not to "snort" cocaine. So what? There are medical reasons not to drive a car: you may have an accident. The question is: does cocaine use or car driving make sense in a given case! Details matter!
Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.
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