doctors can now kill patients but they can't make them feel better
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
December 2, 2019
If you want proof that the Drug War is insane, think about the increasing popularity of euthanasia in the west, which is already the law of the land in Holland. Think about what euthanasia means in a country that has banned plant medicines.
It means that I can ask my doctor to give me plant medicines that will make me happy and he will indignantly say "no." But if I ask that same doctor for a drug that will kill me, he will say, "Your wish is my command."
Americans have been taught to superstitiously believe that drugs are bad. Drugs are not bad or good. They are inanimate objects. Their widespread misuse tells us something about society, not about drugs.
What more proof do we need that the Drug War is a nature-hating sadomasochistic incarnation of Christian Science? It is the triumph of extreme puritanism that says that death itself is preferable to feeling good with the help of Mother Nature's psychoactive plants.
Would a sane society allow doctors to kill their patients BEFORE first giving those doctors free rein to prescribe the naturally occurring medicines of their choice, many of which have been proven to help the elderly (and the rest of us, for that matter) make their peace both with life and death?
Only a society that had a pathological distrust of Mother Nature's pharmacy could take such a heartless stance and then seek to enforce it by draconian laws.
{^Doctor to depressed elderly patient: "The bad news is, we can't give you psilocybin for your depression. The good news is, we can kill you if the depression gets too bad."}{
Author's Follow-up: August 31, 2022
This site is all about proving via reductio ad absurdum that the Drug War represents a wrong way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve and then some. This can be clearly seen here in the fact that we are willing to prescribe death in the age of the Drug War, generally by "removing life support," but we are not allowed to prescribe godsend medicines like morphine 1 that would make our patient actually want to live. That shows the pathological fanaticism of our Christian Science stand on psychoactive medicines, that we would prefer that our fellow country persons die -- a potentially very painful death, in fact -- rather than let them experience happiness with the help of a demonized substance.
Author's Follow-up: September 30, 2022
The drugs that we demonize today have inspired entire religions. And yet we'd rather kill patients than have them use such medicines. Western society is insane on the topic of the politically created boogieman called "drugs."
Euthanasia and Shock Therapy in the age of the Drug War
There's more than set and setting: there's fundamental beliefs about the meaning of life and about why mother nature herself is full of psychoactive substances. Tribal peoples associate some drugs with actual sentient entities -- that is far beyond "set and setting."
Musk and co. want to make us more robot-like with AI, when they should be trying to make us more human-like with sacred medicine. Only humans can gain creativity from plant medicine. All AI can do is harvest the knowledge that eventually results from that creativity.
Drug prohibition is a crime against humanity.
If media were free in America, you'd see documentaries about people using drugs wisely for a wide variety of praiseworthy purposes.
The term "drugs" is no more objective than the term "scabs." Both are meant to defame the things that they denote.
I personally hate beets and I could make a health argument against their legality. Beets can kill for those allergic to them. Sure, it's a rare condition, but since when has that stopped a prohibitionist from screaming bloody murder?
Being a lifetime patient is not the issue: that could make perfect sense in certain cases. But if I am to be "using" for life, I demand the drug of MY CHOICE, not that of Big Pharma and mainstream psychiatry, who are dogmatically deaf to the benefits of hated substances.
Americans are far more fearful of psychoactive drugs than is warranted by either anecdote or history. We require 100% safety before we will re-legalize any "drug" -- which is a safety standard that we do not enforce for any other risky activity on earth.
All the problems that folks associate with drugs are caused by prohibition. Thousands were not dying on the streets when opioids were legal in America. It took prohibition to bring that about.
I should have added to that last post: "I in no way want to glorify or condone drug demonization."
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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