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.
The FDA says that MindMed's LSD drug works. But this is the agency that has not been able to decide for decades now if coca "works," or if laughing gas "works." It's not just science going on at the FDA, it's materialist presuppositions about what constitutes evidence.
The FDA should have no role in approving psychoactive medicine. They evaluate them based on materialist standards rather than holistic ones. In practice, this means the FDA ignores all glaringly obvious benefits.
The search for SSRIs has always been based on a flawed materialist premise that human consciousness is nothing but a mix of brain chemicals and so depression can be treated medically like any other physical condition.
We don't need people to get "clean." We need people to start living a fulfilling life. The two things are different.
Wade Davis wrote in Rolling Stone that cocaine was outlawed because 400 people consumed toxic doses worldwide. SO WHAT?! 178,000 people die from alcohol every year in America alone.
We've created a faux psychology to support such science: that psychology says that anything that really WORKS is just a "crutch" -- as if there is, or there even should be, a "CURE" for sadness.
Addiction thrives BECAUSE of prohibition, which limits drug choice and discourages education about psychoactive substances and how to use them wisely.
Alcohol is a drug in liquid form. If drug warriors want to punish people who use drugs, they should start punishing themselves.
The drug war is a meta-injustice. It does not just limit what you're allowed to think, it limits how and how much you are allowed to think.
Peyote advocates should be drug legalization advocates. Otherwise, they're involved in special pleading which is bound to result in absurd laws, such as "Plant A can be used in a religion but not plant B," or "Person A can belong to such a religion but person B cannot."
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