The Common Sense website reviews movies for crude language and violence, but it fails to warn parents when a movie promotes murder and torture in the name of the Drug War. Reviews on Variety are just the same. They may warn viewers about the scene in which the DEA agent tortures a suspect, but only because the torture victim was wearing only Speedos, not because his torture represents a flagrant violation of American law and a repudiation of everything that the US supposedly stands for.
I thought mycology clubs across the US would be protesting drug laws that make mushroom collecting illegal for psychoactive species. But in reality, almost no club even mentions such species. No wonder prohibition is going strong.
There is an absurd safety standard for "drugs." The cost/benefit analysis of the FDA & co. never takes into account the costs of NOT prescribing nor the benefits of a productive life well lived. The "users" are not considered stakeholders.
All uplifting drugs are potential antidepressants. Science denies that fact by claiming that drug efficacy must be proven quantitatively. And so they ignore anecdote, history and psychological common sense.
"Dope Sick"? "Prohibition Sick" is more like it. The very term "dope" connotes imperialism, racism and xenophobia, given that all tribal cultures have used "drugs" for various purposes. "Dope? Junk?" It's hard to imagine a more intolerant, dismissive and judgmental terminology.
Oregon has decided to go back to the braindead plan of treating substance use as a police matter. Might as well arrest people at home since America has already spread their drug-hating Christian Science religion all over the world.
If media were free in America, you'd see documentaries about people using drugs wisely for a wide variety of praiseworthy purposes.
In a compassionate world, we would give laughing gas kits to the suicidal just as we now give epi pens to those with severe allergies.
The American Philosophy Association should make itself useful and release a statement saying that the drug war is based on fallacious reasoning, namely, the idea that substances can be bad in themselves, without regard for why, when, where and/or how they are used.
Here's the first step in the FDA process for evaluating a psychoactive drug:
Ignore all glaringly obvious benefits.
If they're going to throw doctors in jail for prescribing too much pain medication, they should also throw them in jail for prescribing too LITTLE.
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