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.
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.
Well, today's Oregon vote scuttles any ideas I might have entertained about retiring in Oregon.
In the 19th century, author Richard Middleton wrote how poets would get together to use opium "in a series of magnificent quarterly carouses."
Health is not a quality, it's a balance. To decide drug legality based on 'health' grounds thus opens a Pandora's box of different points of view.
The UK just legalized assisted dying. This means that you can use drugs to kill a person, but you still can't use drugs to make that person want to live.
Pundits have been sniffing about the "smell" of Detroit lately. Sounds racist -- especially since such comments tend to come from drug warriors, the guys who ruined Detroit in the first place (you know, with drug laws that incentivized profit-seeking violence as a means of escaping poverty).
Mariani Wine is the real McCoy, with Bolivian coca leaves (tho' not with cocaine, as Wikipedia says). I'll be writing more about my experience with it soon. I was impressed. It's the same drink "on which" HG Wells and Jules Verne wrote their stories.
Katie MacBride's one-sided attack on MAPS reminds me of why I got into an argument with Vincent Rado. Yes, psychedelic hype can go too far, but let's solve the huge problem first by ending the drug war!!!
"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.
Attention People's magazine editorial staff:
Matthew Perry was a big boy who made his own decisions. He didn't die because of ketamine or because of evil rotten drug dealers, he died because of America's enforced ignorance about psychoactive drugs.
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