Conservatives like to pretend that the Drug War is a war on hedonism and irresponsibility, but they can only do this by cherry-picking the evidence, which is to say by citing historically unrepresentative anecdotes from the last 50 years of life in a capitalist economy. The fact is that so-called "drug use" (i.e., the use of substances of which American politicians disapprove) has inspired entire philosophies. The ontology of William James would have been very different indeed had he not partaken of nitrous oxide, an experience which proved to his satisfaction that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. There is also strong circumstantial evidence that Plato partook of the psychedelic kykeon at Eleusis and that this experience inspired his views of the afterlife. We know as well that coca was considered divine, if not a deity, by the Peruvian Indians and that the entire Vedic religion was inspired by the psychoactive effects of a plant and/or fungi.
In light of this almost completely ignored backstory, we can conclude that drug prohibition is not simply a violation of the rights of hedonists, as conservatives maintain, but rather it is a government-imposed prohibition against human advancement in general, saying in effect, "The world as we know it is good enough for us, and it is forbidden for us to learn more about ultimate reality'." As such, the Drug War is not simply a worthy attempt that has failed, but it is rather a pernicious and misguided attempt that had no right to succeed in the first place, least of all in a democratic country that purports to value education and freedom of inquiry.
Conservatives have been empowered by the silence of Drug War critics on topics like these, their polemics getting more hyperbolic with every passing year, to the point where, in 2019, Marci Hamilton of Child USA wrote an oped-piece in which she referred to drug users as child abusers. Yes, child abusers.
So, let me get this straight, Marci. William James was the moral equivalent of a child abuser, as was Plato, as were the Inca, as were the first Hindus. And I suppose we should throw in the drug-using HG Wells and Jules Verne and Benjamin Franklin while we're at it.
No, Marci. The real villain of the piece is the Drug Warrior, who teaches kids to fear psychoactive substances rather than to understand them, thereby placing those kids in harm's way.
Let's never put Marci in charge of rollerblade education. She would publicize the dangers of rollerblading on prime-time public service announcements while refusing to tell kids how to use rollerblades safely. Why not? Oh, because that would encourage rollerblade use, don't you see? And then when kids start dying in rollerblade accidents, Marci would declare trimphantly: "You see! Rollerblading is every bit as evil as I said it was!"
But if we must throw around hyperbolic charges, then permit me to call Marci a child abuser for failing to educate kids
properly about the world around them, preferring to scare them instead, all because of her fanatical adherence to the drug-hating doctrines of Mary Baker Eddy -- which is a hypocritical adherence, by the way, since Marci is not about to level the charge of child abuse against topers and chimney pots, despite the fact that drinking and smoking kill 100,000 Americans a year, a figure that dwarfs the number that are killed by the substances that Marci tells her kids to fear.
And Marci's crime is only compounded by the fact that her stance on "drugs" turns true philosophy into a government-banned activity.
Author's Follow-up: January 26, 2023
Marci's hyperbole reminds one of the anti-Semitism of wartime Germany. In the decades following World War I, the Nazis tried to outdo each other in an effort to demonize Jews for causing all the problems in the world. Just so in our time the Drug Warriors try to outdo each other in demonizing drugs for causing all the problems in the world. And so, after over a century now of racist-driven prohibition, the once commonplace practice of using Mother Nature's bounty for healing has finally become "child abuse" in the hysterical minds of the modern Drug Warrior. This is why I have been calling on the Holocaust Museum to denounce the Drug War, this plus the fact that Donald Trump now wants to execute the Blacks that Drug Warriors of the past decades were content merely to imprison.
What I want to know is, who sold Christopher Reeves that horse that he fell off of? Who was peddling that junk?!
Hollywood presents cocaine as a drug of killers. In reality, strategic cocaine use by an educated person can lead to great mental power, especially as just one part of a pharmacologically balanced diet.
The DEA is still saying that psilocybin has no medical uses and is addictive. They should be put on trial for crimes against humanity for using such lies to keep people from using the gifts of Mother Nature.
William James claimed that his constitution prevented him from having mystical experiences. The fact is that no one is prevented from having mystical experiences provided that they are willing to use psychoactive substances wisely to attain that end.
Drug testing labs are the modern Inquisitors. We are not judged by the content of our character, but by the content of our digestive systems.
There are times when it is clearly WRONG to deny kids drugs (whatever the law may say). If your child is obsessed with school massacres, he or she is an excellent candidate for using empathogenic meds ASAP -- or do we prefer even school shootings to drug use???
This is why it's wrong to dismiss drugs as "good" or "bad." There are endless potential positive uses to psychoactive drugs. That's all that we should ask of them.
Drug warriors have harnessed the perfect storm. Prohibition caters to the interests of law enforcement, psychotherapy, Big Pharma, demagogues, puritans, and materialist scientists, who believe that consciousness is no big "whoop" and that spiritual states are just flukes.
The term "hard" is just our modern term for the kinds of drugs that doctors of yore used to call panaceas
America created a whole negative morality around "drugs" starting in 1914. "Users" became fiends and were as helpless as a Christian sinner -- in need of grace from a higher power. Before prohibition, these "fiends" were habitues, no worse than Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson.
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