ust watched an episode of Air Disasters in which two pilots flew their small passenger jet into the ground in final approach to the Durango, Colorado airport. The cause of the crash? Well, if the show's narrator is to be believed, it was cocaine.
It turns out the pilot had been up late the night before the accident, at which time he was partying with a girlfriend and "doing" cocaine -- a scene that the documentary luridly re-creates with blurred video and leering conspiratorial visages.
But was the accident really caused by cocaine?
Of course not. Had the pilot been drinking the night before, it would not have been caused by alcohol either.
The crash was caused by the pilot's lack of sleep, which was in turn caused by the pilot's irresponsible decision to stay up all night partying.
But given the sloppy thinking of the Drug War mentality, the show's writers feel justified in concluding that cocaine caused the plane crash.
This is a problem, because it tends to justify the War on Drugs. After all, if cocaine causes planes to drop out of the sky, shouldn't we ban it?
The DEA hierarchy must be smiling every time they watch such a documentary, because they know that their jobs are safe for another generation, as Americans continue to be influenced by the logically challenged conclusions of Drug Warrior America.
Of course, we might as well conclude that the plane crash was caused by milk, since it's likely that the pilot imbibed that notorious indigestion-causing substance on the very day of the accident!
But then the National Dairy Association would never let that happen. They're far too savvy when it comes to PR. Remember when it was discovered that 30% of milk drinkers experienced gastrointestinal problems when consuming that beverage? The product wasn't exactly pulled from the shelves, was it? Instead, the Dairy Association successfully blamed the problem on the milk drinkers themselves, insisting that they were lactose intolerant and that the product itself was just fine, thank you very much. Of course, if I put out a product that sickened 30% of my customers, I'd be hauled off to jail -- but not so the Dairy Association.
Thus whom we blame for our country's ills depends on politics rather than on a rational evaluation of the facts at hand, and nowhere is this more true than in the case of Richard Nixon's bigoted, know-nothing Drug War.
Cocaine Users, before and after Drug War propaganda...
{^If you search the term "cocaine" on the site of a stock photo company such as Shutterstock, you'll be bombarded with photographs of white powder sprinkled around blood-covered money with a revolver lying nearby for good measure. This is all Drug War propaganda designed to villainize a substance that posed a threat to Big Liquor. The coca plant has been used historically by South American peoples for ages. Writers and musicians used coca wine religiously, including HG Wells, Jules Verne, Henrik Ibsen{
Cocaine
Cocaine can be used wisely, believe it or not. Just ask Carl Hart. Or Graham Norton, the UK's quixotic answer to Johnny Carson. Just ask the Peruvian Indians, who have chewed the coca leaf for stamina and inspiration since Pre-Inca days. You have been taught to hate cocaine by a lifetime of censorship -- and by an FDA which dogmatically ignores all positive aspects of drug use, just as they ignore all downsides to prohibition.
Laws are never going to stop westerners from using cocaine, nor should they. Such laws are not making the world safe. To the contrary, laws against cocaine have made our world unthinkably violent! It has created cartels out of whole cloth, cartels that engage in torture and which suborn government officials, to the point that "the rule of law" is little more than a joke south of the border.
This is the enormous price tag of America's hateful policy of substance prohibition: the overthrow of democratic norms around the world.
The eerie bit is that most leading drug warriors understand this fact and approve of it. Too much democracy is anathema to the powers-that-be.
So... "Is cocaine use good or bad?" The question does not even make sense. Cocaine use is a blessing for some, just a little fun for most, and a curse for a few. Just like any other risky activity.
The media have done all they can to support the drug war by holding the use of outlawed substances to safety standards that are never applied to any other risky activity on earth, meanwhile ignoring the fact that prohibition encourages ignorance and leads to contaminated drug supply. Thousands of American young people die each month because of unregulated supply and ignorance, not from drugs themselves.
The media also supports the drug war by failing to hold it accountable for all the problems that it causes. Just read any article on inner-city shootings -- today's journalists will trace the problem to a lack of jobs or to global warming, to anything but the drug war which incentivized violence in the first place. As for violence overseas, we're told that it's caused by evil rotten drug cartels -- without any acknowledgement that it was American drug policy that created those cartels out of whole cloth, just as liquor prohibition created the Mafia here in the States.
Meanwhile, the media have a field day superstitiously blaming drugs. It used to be PCP, ICE, oxy, crack, and now it's fentanyl... It's all part of the DEA's tried-and-true formula to stay relevant, as academic Philip Jenkins clearly demonstrates in "Synthetic Panics": Take a local drug problem and publicize it so that it goes national. Then work with a film crew at "48 Hours" to show that the drug in question threatens the white American middle class. Then go to Congress, hat in hand, and accept billions to 'solve' the latest drug problem.
And Americans fall for it every time. In fact, their gullibility seems to be increasing over time. They love to hate drugs, so much so that drugs have become the new horror trope. Recent movies have taken to personifying "evil" drugs in the forms of Crack Raccoons and Meth Gators. It's sad that America has become so superstitious and childish about drugs -- and the media can take much of the blame.
The fact that some drugs can be addictive is no reason to outlaw drugs. It is a reason to teach safe use and to publicize all the ways that smart people have found to avoid unwanted pharmacological dependency -- and a reason to use drugs to fight drugs.
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.
The "acceptable risk" for psychoactive drugs can only be decided by the user, based on what they prioritize in life. Science just assumes that all users should want to live forever, self-fulfilled or not.
Drug use is judged by different standards than any other risky activity in the western world. One death can lead to outrage, even though that death might be statistically insignificant.
We have to deny the FDA the right to judge psychoactive medicines in the first place. Their materialist outlook obliges them to ignore all obvious benefits. When they nix drugs like MDMA, they nix compassion and love.
High suicide rates? What a poser! Gee, I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that the US has outlawed all substances that elate and inspire???
So he writes about the mindset of the deeply depressed, reifying the condition as if it were some great "type" inevitably to be encountered in humanity. No. It's the "type" to be found in a post-Christian society that has turned up its scientific nose at psychoactive medicine.
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."
There will always be people who don't use drugs wisely, just as there are car drivers who don't drive wisely, and rock climbers who fall to their death. America needs to grow up and accept this, while ending prohibition and teaching safe use.
It's disgusting that folks like Paul Stamets need a DEA license to work with mushrooms.
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, Colorado plane crash caused by milk! published on January 12, 2019 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)
ust watched an episode of Air Disasters in which two pilots flew their small passenger jet into the ground in final approach to the Durango, Colorado airport. The cause of the crash? Well, if the show's narrator is to be believed, it was cocaine.
You have been reading an article entitled, Colorado plane crash caused by milk! published on January 12, 2019 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)
