The 1932 movie "Scarface" starts with on-screen text calling for a crackdown on armed gangs in America. There is no mention of the fact that a decade's worth of Prohibition had created those gangs in the first place.
It as if Americans saw the violence as a business opportunity for Hollywood, not a national scourge caused by a disastrous drug policy.
Of course, the title says it all: just as the Drug War demonizes plant medicines, it must also demonize those who dare to sell them. Now, I wouldn't be surprised if El Chapo himself was morally challenged (to put it mildly), but that is beside the point. The US CREATED the El Chapo's of the world by its colonialist war on plant medicines that are not popular in the west. Think of it: you criminalize plants worldwide that have been used responsibly by other cultures for millennia, and then you are shocked that there's violent pushback? The real villains are Richard Nixon and every racist US politician who insists that it makes sense to demonize plant medicine instead of studying it to learn how to ensure the safest possible use.
At any rate: here is the comment that I posted beneath Malcolm Beth's review of "El Chapo":
The Real Villain is the United States of America and its racist Drug War, which dictates to the world what plant medicines it can use -- thus establishing Christian Science as a world religion and violating natural law. The US is the colonialist bad guy who tells other countries to outlaw plant medicines that have been used responsibly by other cultures for millennia, so that the world can be safe for the two most deadly drugs of all: alcohol and tobacco. And when Drug Warriors aren't busy invading other countries on the pretext of enforcing these colonialist drug laws, they're reading books like "El Chapo" to get a thrill out of all the guns and violence that the Drug War itself brings into the world. Someday the world will wake up and realize that the Drug War itself is causing all the problems it purports to solve. Then we will exchange the Drug Enforcement Agency for the Drug Education Agency and start learning how to use plant medicines safely rather than to demonize them like so many fanatical Christian Scientists.
Author's Follow-up: July 11, 2022
I came close to dissing Anthony Blair of The Sun this morning for his sensational article on the "Golden Age of Cocaine," which struck me at first sight as drug-war agitprop. In fact, I even sent an angry Tweet (which I soon deleted) -- before I read the final paragraph or so, in which the comments by journalist and author Toby Muse somewhat appeased my angst about the article in question. Still, the overall effect of the article was to turn the Drug War into tabloid entertainment, thereby obscuring the fact that the "clans" about which we are reading were created out of whole cloth by substance prohibition. And why? So that the west could outlaw a substance that the Incas considered to be a god and that authors like HG Wells and Jules Verne considered to be indispensable to their success as authors.
To my relief (and embarrassment), Toby does admit at the end of this article that prohibition has been a colossal failure, with far more cocaine use going on today than Richard Nixon ever dreamt of 50 years ago. But Toby is still biased by Drug War ideology, for he suggests that countries need to do a better job in reducing the demand for such substances as cocaine 12 . But that is wrong, for there is a real reason why folks want to use substances like the coca plant and other psychoactive meds: they want to transcend the limitations of the "sober" self, so to speak. Humanity has always sought to do that. Indeed, the psychoactive substances that we demonize today (like coca) have inspired entire religions. So it is a fool's task (not to mention the task of a despot) to try to get humanity to give up on the desire for self-transcendence and personal improvement.
The answer to the supposed "drug problem" (which the drug-war itself has created and turned into a scapegoat for all social problems) is to educate people about psychoactive medicines, not to demonize those medicines and incarcerate those who dare to use them in their search for personal or spiritual transcendence. For let's remember that the caveman strategy of America's Office of National Drug Control Policy is to REFUSE TO EVEN CONSIDER any positive uses for criminalized substances. In other words, the ONDCP is a state instrument of Drug War propaganda, one dedicated to keeping the world ignorant about meds that have inspired entire religions.
Time for education, not criminalization; facts, not fear.
Author's Follow-up: April 1, 2023
Americans would not have much entertainment if it were not for drug prohibition. Most cops shows would not exist, because the police would run out of heads to crack. We need prohibition to incentivize exciting violence. It's kind of funny, when you think how Drug Warriors say it's wrong to glorify drugs3, but they have no problem in glorifying the violence that drug prohibition creates. In fact, most movies 45 and cops shows make it seem like you're a nobody if you do not pack heat.
Cocaine use is a blessing for some, just a little fun for most, and a curse for a few. Just like any other risky activity. We need to educate people about drugs rather than endlessly arresting them for attempting to improve their mental power!
In a sane world, we would learn to strategically fight drugs with drugs.
Materialist scientists cannot triumph over addiction because their reductive focus blinds them to the obvious: namely, that drugs which cheer us up ACTUALLY DO cheer us up. Hence they keep looking for REAL cures while folks kill themselves for want of laughing gas and MDMA.
There are endless ways that psychoactive drugs could be creatively combined to combat addiction and a million other things. But the drug warrior says that we have to study each in isolation, and then only for treating one single board-certified condition.
Videos about science and psilocybin are funny. They show nerds trying to catch up with common sense.
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.
If we cared about the elderly in 'homes', we would be bringing in shamanic empaths and curanderos from Latin America to help cheer them up and expand their mental abilities. We would also immediately decriminalize the many drugs that could help safely when used wisely.
The MindMed company (makers of LSD Lite) tell us that euphoria and visions are "adverse effects": that's not science, that's an arid materialist philosophy that does not believe in spiritual transcendence.
The FDA uses reductive materialism to justify and normalize the views of Cortes and Pizarro with respect to entheogenic medicine.
We need a few brave folk to "act up" by shouting "It's the drug war!" whenever folks are discussing Mexican violence or inner city shootings. The media treat both topics as if the violence is inexplicable! We can't learn from mistakes if we're in denial.
Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.
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