My brother fell off a riding lawn mower, hit his head on a rock, and died. Ever since then, I've been working tirelessly to outlaw riding mowers and rocks.
The statement is superstitious because it blames inanimate objects - in this case mowers and rocks - for something that was caused by a lack of wisdom and education. Had the brother had the knowledge and experience to use the riding mower correctly, he would not have fallen off the mower, whether a rock had been nearby at the time or not.
Now consider the following statement:
My brother died by taking an overdose of drugs. Ever since then, I've been working tirelessly to outlaw drugs.
It's the exact same reasoning as above.
The speaker is blaming inanimate objects. But the death in question was caused by the misuse of those substances, not by the substances themselves. To blame the substances is merely a superstitious response, worthy of the pre-logical cave persons of yore.
That's why the Drug War is the ultimate case of throwing the baby out with the bath water. In order to make the world "safe," we villainize any illegal substance that we associate with a death. But because we've identified the wrong villain - the drug itself rather than the lack of education that led to its misuse - we end up making the world a far more dangerous place.
Take the case of Leah Betts in England. She died after taking an Ecstasy tablet at a rave concert. Of course, the immediate superstitious Drug Warrior response was to crack down on Ecstasy use. Everyone ignored the rational fact that the death was caused by a lack of education - a lack of education about the proper use of Ecstasy (the need for proper hydration during strenuous activities such as rave dancing).
And what was the result of the crackdown? The hitherto peaceful rave scene became a shooting gallery as dancers switched from Ecstasy to crack cocaine and fentanyl.
That's what happens when we employ the superstitious reasoning referred to above. While it may feel good to scapegoat ecstasy, our doing so deprives millions of depressed and anxious people around the world of a godsend treatment. But that's the price we pay as a society for our superstitious outlook, which insists that criminalized substances can be labelled evil without regard for the way that they are actually used or misused.
That's why I depict the Drug Warrior as a benighted caveman on this website, because the Drug War way of thinking is superstitious. It vilifies substances in cases where the real villain is a lack of education.
The Drug War ideology is superstition. It is therefore the philosophical problem par excellence of our time. It's an ideology that could not pass the "snicker test" if the westerners who championed it understood the basics of logical reasoning, specifically the important difference between efficient and final causes as described by Aristotle over 2,000 years ago.
Drugs that sharpen the mind should be thoroughly investigated for their potential to help dementia victims. Instead, we prefer to demonize these drugs as useless. That's anti-scientific and anti-patient.
I can't believe people. Somebody's telling me that "drugs" is not used problematically. It is CONSTANTLY used with a sneer in the voice when politicians want to diss somebody, as in, "Oh, they're in favor of DRUGS!!!" It's a political term as used today!
NEW TERM FOR LOGIC CLASSES: "The Oprah Winfrey Fallacy," which is the idea that a statistically insignificant number of cases constitutes a crisis, provided ONLY that the villain of the piece is something that racist politicians have demonized as a "drug."
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."
Don't the Oregon prohibitionists realize that all the thousands of deaths from opiates is so much blood on their hands? Prohibitionists, j'accuse!
It is consciousness which, via perception, shapes the universe into palpable forms. Otherwise it's just a chaos of particles. The very fact that you can refer to "the sun" shows that your senses have parsed the raw data into a specific meaning. "We" make this universe.
Alcohol is a drug in liquid form. If drug warriors want to punish people who use drugs, they should start punishing themselves.
Q: Where can you find almost-verbatim copies of the descriptions of religious experiences described by William James? A: In descriptions of user reports of "trips" on drugs ranging from coca to opium, from MDMA to laughing gas.
Imagine someone starting their book about antibiotics by saying that he's not trying to suggest that we actually use them. We should not have to apologize for being honest about drugs. If prohibitionists think that honesty is wrong, that's their problem.
The best step we could take in harm reduction is re-legalizing everything and starting to teach safe use. Spend the DEA's billions on "go" teams that would descend on locations where drugs are being used stupidly -- not to arrest, but to educate.
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, Drug War Ideology: the modern superstition published on August 26, 2020 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)
onsider the following superstitious statement:
You have been reading an article entitled, Drug War Ideology: