In my driver's ed class back in high school in the 1970s, we students were forced to binge-watch short films from the Ohio Department of Transportation featuring gory, uncensored scenes of real-life traffic accidents. The apparent goal was to frighten us into driving safely -- although the first message that I took away from the celluloid blood-fest was that I should never drive a car in the Buckeye State. Virginia roads seemed so amazingly peaceful by comparison!
Looking back now, fifty years later, I see an enormous irony in those classes. When high schools started having classes to quote-unquote "educate" kids about drug use, they also showed films about the gory consequences of not being safe -- and yet they wanted the kids to come away with a very different conclusion after watching those films. They wanted them to conclude that safe drug use is impossible, that it is a contradiction in terms.
Imagine if driver's education classes were conducted like drug education classes. The teacher would show all those gory films and then address the students as follows:
"You know what, kids? All these bloody dead Ohioans that you have just seen sprawled out on the asphalt had one thing in common: they all thought that THEY could drive safely. Well, guess what, cupcake: NO ONE CAN DRIVE SAFELY!!!
All right, class dismissed. Tomorrow, we will be taking an in-depth look at the aftermaths of some high-speed head-on collisions on Interstate 71 between Columbus and Cleveland, involving buses, tractor-trailers, farm vehicles... and yes, folks, even motorcycles. [class sighs] I know, right? So schedule your lunch breaks accordingly!"
Ten Tweets
against the hateful war on US
The Partnership for a Death Free America is launching a campaign to celebrate the 50th year of Richard Nixon's War on Drugs. We need to give credit where credit's due for the mass arrest of minorities, the inner city gun violence and the civil wars that it's generated overseas.
Mayo Clinic is peddling junk. They are still promoting Venlafaxine, a drug that is harder to kick than heroin. The drug is only a problem, though, because of prohibition. It would be easy to get off of with the help of other drugs!!! WAKE UP, MAYO!
Freud found that cocaine CURED most people's depression and he "got off it" without trouble. I'm on a Big Pharma antidepressant that has a 95% recidivism rate for long-term users. Drug prohibition is insane and a crime against humanity.
Drug warriors are too selfish and short-sighted to fight real problems, so they blame everything on drugs.
Even fans of sacred medicine have been brainwashed to believe that we do not know if such drugs "really" work: they want microscopic proof. But that's a western bias, used strategically by drug warriors to make the psychotropic drug approval process as glacial as possible.
The drug war is a slow-motion coup against democracy.
Opium could be a godsend for talk therapy. It can help the user step outside themselves and view their problems from novel viewpoints.
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.
Researchers insult our intelligence when they tell us that drugs like MDMA and opium and laughing gas have not been proven to work. Everyone knows they work. That's precisely why drug warriors hate them.
I'm told that most psychiatrists would like to receive shock therapy if they become severely depressed. That's proof of drug war insanity: they would prefer damaging their brains to using drugs that can elate and inspire.
The Partnership for a Death Free America is launching a campaign to celebrate the 50th year of Richard Nixon's War on Drugs. We need to give credit where credit's due for the mass arrest of minorities, the inner city gun violence and the civil wars that it's generated overseas.