I always knew that drug prohibition was wrong. I knew that it was a philosophically flawed social policy thanks to the glimpses of inconvenient truths that I got from my occasional brushes with intelligent non-conformists in high school and college. Yet for years -- nay, for decades even -- I never talked openly about my belief in the need for drug relegalization because I wasn't sure that I could successfully deal with the pushback that I might receive, at least not in real-time. I knew that someone was eventually going to say something like this: "Well, you wouldn't say that if YOUR son had been killed by cocaine," or "YOUR daughter" or "YOUR best friend," etc. I knew that these would be bogus arguments, susceptible of devastating comebacks, but I feared that the appropriate rebuttal would not be forthcoming from my self-conscious lips when called for, and I did not want to appear to be bested by what I knew to be confused reasoning. Today, however, my arsenal of pushback is well-supplied. I am ready for all indignant comers, chiefly because I have since become aware of all the problems that drug prohibition causes and all of the benefits of which it deprives us. Now, whenever a Drug Warrior comes into town on their high horse, I'm ready for them. Why, just last week a feller come into Dodge right 'chere on Main Street, at high noon no less, trotted right up to me as I waited for him on my trusty steed over yonder, right thar in front of our frequently robbed bank. I can remember it just like it was seven and a half days ago...
How would we even KNOW that outlawed drugs have no positive uses? We first have to incorporate them in a sane, empathic and creative way to find that out, and the drug war makes such a sensible approach absolutely impossible.
In "How to Change Your Mind," Michael Pollan says psychedelic legalization would endanger young people. What? Prohibition forces users to decide for themselves which mushrooms are toxic, or to risk buying contaminated product. And that's safe, Michael?
The Drug War treats doctors like potential criminals and it treats the rest of us like children. Prohibition does not end drug risks: it just outsources them to minorities and other vulnerable populations.
My impression has been that the use of cocaine over a long time can bring about lasting improvement..." --Sigmund Freud, On Cocaine, 1884
The most addictive drugs have a bunch of great uses, like treating pain and inspiring great literature. Prohibition causes addiction by making their use as problematic as possible and denying knowledge and choices. It's always wrong to blame drugs.
The so-called opiate crisis is really a drug prohibition crisis.
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.
Drug warriors have harnessed the perfect storm. Prohibition caters to the interests of law enforcement, psychotherapy, Big Pharma, demagogues, puritans, and materialist scientists, who believe that consciousness is no big "whoop" and that spiritual states are just flukes.
People talk about how dangerous Jamaica is -- but no one reminds us that it is all due to America's Drug War. Yes, cannabis and psilocybin are legal there, but plenty of drugs are not, and even if they were, their illegality elsewhere would lead to fierce dealer rivalry.
The confusion arises because materialists insist that every psychological problem is actually a physical problem, hence the disease-mongering of the DSM. This is antithetical to the shamanic approach, which sees people holistically, as people, not patients.
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