One of the best ways to demonstrate the hateful prejudices of drug prohibition is to compare America's drug laws with the Penal Laws created in Ireland by English protestants between the 16th and 18th centuries.1 In the time of the Protestant Ascendancy, the British Government in Ireland sought to marginalize Catholics with what Dublin Professor Charles Ivar McGrath has described as a "rag-bag" of tyrannical laws, designed (at least in theory) to harry Catholics to the point that they finally renounced their Catholic faith in favor of Protestantism.2 In the time of the American Drug War, the U.S. government seeks to marginalize drug users with its own rag-bag of tyrannical laws, designed (at least in theory) to harry drug users to the point that they finally renounce their belief in Mother Nature's medicines and live instead according to the drug-hating dictates of the Christian Science religion. In both cases, the government's legislators sought (and seek) to outdo themselves in devising new and creative ways to treat their enemies like dirt while evincing a cavalier disregard for the "rights of man," or what we moderns might refer to as the rights of the human being qua human being.
The so-called "herbs" that witches used were drugs, in the same way that "meds" are drugs. If academics made that connection, the study of witchcraft would shed a lot of light on the fearmongering of modern prohibitionists.
Prohibition turned habituation into addiction by creating a wide variety of problems for users, including potential arrest, tainted or absent drug supply, and extreme stigmatization.
The drug war is a way for conservatives to keep America's eyes OFF the prize. The right-wing motto is, "Billions for law enforcement, but not one cent for social programs."
As great as it is, "Synthetic Panics" by Philip Jenkins was only tolerated by academia because it did not mention drugs in the title and it contains no explicit opinions about drugs. As a result, many drug law reformers still don't know the book exists.
The DEA should be tried for crimes against humanity. They have been lying about drugs for 50 years and running interference between human beings and Mother Nature in violation of natural law, depriving us of countless potential and known godsends in order to create more DEA jobs.
We should no more arrest drug users than we arrest people for climbing sheer rock faces or for driving a car.
Videos about science and psilocybin are funny. They show nerds trying to catch up with common sense.
In the 19th century, poets got together to use opium "in a series of magnificent quarterly carouses" (as per author Richard Middleton). When we outlaw drugs, we outlaw free expression.
Americans have learned nothing but half-truths and lies about cocaine and opium thanks to the total censorship of drug benefits.
M. Pollan says "not so fast" when it comes to drug re-legalization. I say FAST? I've gone a whole lifetime w/o access to Mother Nature's plants. How can a botanist approve of that? Answer: By ignoring all legalization stakeholders except for the kids whom we refuse to educate.
(up)