There was at least one "Drug War philosopher" before me, and that was GK Chesterton, whose arguments against liquor prohibition apply with equal (if not more) force to drug prohibition today. The prolific Catholic clearly saw that liquor prohibition was based on premises that would spell the end of personal liberty. How? By putting free citizens under the thumbs of politically minded worrywarts. What follows are a few of his particularly insightful comments on this topic. For more, see his 1922 book "Eugenics and Other Evils," chapter VI, "The Eclipse of Liberty."
"But the whole ground of argument is now changed. For people do not consider what the drunkard does to others by throwing the pot, but what he does to himself by drinking the beer. The argument is based on health; and it is said that the Government must safeguard the health of the community. And the moment that is said, there ceases to be the shadow of a difference between beer and tea. People can certainly spoil their health with tea or with tobacco or with twenty other things. And there is no escape for the hygienic logician except to restrain and regulate them all. If he is to control the health of the community, he must necessarily control all the habits of all the citizens...."1 -
GK Chesterton
Author's Follow-up: June 14, 2024
And his prophecy has proven all too true. Today in Alabama, you can be thrown in prison for eating certain mushrooms -- by the same politicians who think that grade-school shootings are no grounds for passing gun control laws. As Chesterton warned, any law can be "justified" once we deny the inalienability of our rights to personal liberty.
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.
We don't need people to get "clean." We need people to start living a fulfilling life. The two things are different.
News flash: certain mushrooms can help you improve your life! It's the biggest story in the history of mycology! And yet you wouldn't know it from visiting the websites of most mushroom clubs.
Addiction was not a big thing until the drug war. It's now the boogie-man with which drug warriors scare us into giving up our freedoms. But getting obsessed on one single drug is natural in the age of choice-limiting prohibition.
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.
The December Scientific American features a story called "The New Nuclear Age," about a trillion-dollar plan to add 100s of ICBM's to 5 states, which an SA editorial calls "kick me" signs. This Neanderthal plan comes from pols who think that compassion-boosting drugs are evil!
In 1886, coca enthusiast JJ Tschudi referred to prohibitionists as 'kickers.' He wrote: "If we were to listen to these kickers, most of us would die of hunger, for the reason that nearly everything we eat or drink has fallen under their ban."
The drug war normalizes the disdainful and self-righteous attitude that Columbus and Pizarro had about drug use in the New World.
Getting off antidepressants can make things worse for only one reason: because we have outlawed all the drugs that could help with the transition. Right now, getting off any drug basically means becoming a drug-free Christian Scientist. No wonder withdrawal is hard.
Attention People's magazine editorial staff:
Matthew Perry was a big boy who made his own decisions. He didn't die because of ketamine or because of evil rotten drug dealers, he died because of America's enforced ignorance about psychoactive drugs.
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.
