"But it's one thing to cast a critical eye over the cultural and scientific context in which opiates were criminalised, and another thing entirely to argue that history proves that these substances should simply be legalised. This is a conclusion which puts a greater weight on the story than it can necessarily bear."
"Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence 19 that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist.20"
"Do we prefer literary freedom, or would we prefer a level of safety for drug use that we do not demand of any other risky activity on planet Earth?"
"In the meantime the morphine 41 had its customary effect- that of enduing all the external world with an intensity of interest. In the quivering of a leaf- in the hue of a blade of grass- in the shape of a trefoil- in the humming of a bee- in the gleaming of a dew-drop- in the breathing of the wind- in the faint odors that came from the forest- there came a whole universe of suggestion- a gay and motley train of rhapsodical and immethodical thought.42"
"Thanks for this essay, I agree with you and have been involved in campaigning against prohibition for thirty years now."
Thanks, Mike.
I was responding to the following two sentences in the concluding paragraph of the chapter entitled "The Black Drop: Opium" on page 87 of the edition published in 2000 and reprinted in 2005:
"But it's one thing to cast a critical eye over the cultural and scientific context in which opiates were criminalised, and another thing entirely to argue that history proves that these substances should simply be legalised. This is a conclusion which puts a greater weight on the story than it can necessarily bear." 43
I do not want to quibble. My concern is, however, that if history fails to prove that substances should be re-legalised, it is only because that history has been censored, both when it comes to the downsides of prohibition and the upsides of drug use (and so we have substance-demonizing books like "Opium: How an Ancient Flower Shaped and Poisoned Our World44," as if a flower in itself could do anything of the kind). I can agree with the above two sentences if by "that history" you mean "that strategically censored history" -- but I do not believe that history as such proves that drug re-legalization is problematic. History as such would tell us that drug prohibition was the ultimate governmental power grab of all time and that it outlaws human progress by, for instance, blocking research into the mind-body problem via outlawing drugs that produce "ego dissolving" states.
I thought maybe you were making the argument that drug legalization cannot work now that we have all sorts of new synthetic substances to worry about -- when that actually should change nothing in our re-legalization calculus, insofar as prohibition is the problem 45 , not substances themselves.
I am glad to hear, however, that we are on the same page, and I thank you again for a great read so far. I will now move on to Chapter 3, The Seraphim Theatre, absent my fear that you belonged (with Michael Pollan and Rick Strassman) to the "go slow" school of drug-law reform.
I especially appreciate your comment that drug-law reform will require "a different type of modern society entirely." I could not agree more. This is why I believe that the Drug War is the great philosophical problem of our time, because it is not just a hornet's nest of bad laws, but it is based on a wrong way of looking at the world, one that causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some.
Thanks again for your valuable time!
Brian
Thanks, Mike.
I am always leery about reading books about "drugs" because, in my view, almost ALL of them betray some degree of brainwashing on the part of the author. So I am no doubt extra sensitive to statements that I find to be even slightly equivocal in nature.
Your highly informative text is a joy to read. I have taken extensive notes and will be adding observations related to the text on my essay page should you be interested in reading them at some point. I am now on page 200 and have found nothing else that unnerves me, philosophically speaking.
Thanks again for contacting me. I have written (via snail mail and email) to hundreds of authors and philosophers on this topic over the last six years and almost all have ignored me.
Best Wishes,
Brian
PS One of my latest emails was to Ronald Hutton, author of "The Witch: A History of Fear from Ancient Times to the Present.46" The author only mentions "drugs" once in his academically oriented work, and then he does so in a pejorative context, likening them to the poisons sold by "service magicians" for the purpose of dispatching one's enemies. I politely suggested to Mr. Hutton that the peaceful-sounding "herbs" which he is continually referencing in his book were "drugs" just as surely as are the "meds" prescribed by modern doctors. I further suggested that the Drug War is the epitome of strategic fear mongering on the part of the powers-that-be, and that in many ways, today's drug dealers may be seen as our modern witches47. To his credit, Ronald Hutton thanked me for my email; however, he had no comment about my substantive criticisms. I have acquired the feeling over the years that it is considered impolite to bring up drug-related issues in academia. It is as if academics have made their peace with drug prohibition and are unwilling to discuss the matter further.
I also contacted the chair of the Harvard Psychology Department, Matthew K. Nock, questioning his university's failure to mention the "anesthetic revelation 48 49 " in their online bio for William James50. (Needless to say, I have received no response to that complaint.)
I wonder if you know of our FDA's attempts to treat laughing gas as a "drug." To my knowledge, I am the only philosopher who has lodged a formal complaint about the move on behalf of academic freedom and the legacy of William James51.
Is democracy a fundamentally flawed form of government thanks to its susceptibility to mob rule?
"For a while they managed remarkably well; only their habit of bragging was prodigious. The thing ended, however, in the consolidation of the thirteen states, with some fifteen or twenty others, in the most odious and insupportable despotism that was ever heard of upon the face of the Earth.
I asked what was the name of the usurping tyrant. As well as the Count could recollect, it was Mob.55"
"The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being." -- John Locke, Second Treatise of Government57
"Eighteenth-century medicine had largely progressed by discovering, naming and classifying new diseases, leading to a profusion of different schools with competing nomenclatures, taxonomies and diagnoses. For Beddoes, most of these were as meaningful as medieval disputations about how many angels could fit on the head of a pin. All they had succeeded in doing was to elevate the pretensions of the medical profession, and at the same time distance them from the proper focus of their enquiries: how to cure patients.64"
"The substantial reason for rejecting a philosophical theory is the 'absurdum' to which it reduces us.68"
"How many people might choose to live in the land of the Lotus-Eaters rather than inhabit their quotidian lives?73"
"And yet there were reservations. For if one always saw like this, one would never want to do anything else.74"
Kids should be taught beginning in grade school that drug prohibition is wrong.
Like when Laura Sanders tells us in Science News that depression is an intractable problem, she should rather tell us: "Depression is an intractable problem... that is, in a world wherein we refuse to consider the benefits of 'drugs,' let alone to fight for their beneficial use."
America won't be grown up until we start blaming drug misuse on people and/or policies rather than on drugs.
Had the DEA been active in the Punjab and 1500 BCE, there would be no Hindu religion today.
The drug war is the defeatist doctrine that we will never be able to use psychoactive drugs wisely. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy because the government does everything it can to make drug use dangerous.
This is why the foes of suicide are doing absolutely nothing to get laughing gas into the hands of those who could benefit from it. Laughing is subjective after all. In the western tradition, we need a "REAL" cure to depression.
Many articles in science mags need this disclaimer: "Author has declined to consider the insights gained from drug-induced states on this topic out of fealty to Christian Science orthodoxy." They don't do this because they know readers already assume that drugs will be ignored.
What prohibitionists forget is that every popular but dangerous activity, from horseback riding to drug use, will have its victims. You cannot save everybody, and when you try to do so by law, you kill far more than you save, meanwhile destroying democracy in the process.
My consciousness, my choice.
All drugs have positive uses. It's absurd to prohibit them because one demographic might misuse them.
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