Outlawing substances like laughing gas and MDMA makes no more sense than outlawing fire.
Ann Lemke's case studies make the usual assumptions: getting free from addiction is a morality tale. No reference to how the drug war promotes addiction and how banned drugs could solve such problems. She does not say why daily SSRI use is acceptable while daily opium use is not. Etc.
America legalizes alcohol and then outlaws all the drugs that could help prevent and cure alcoholism.
The Drug War is one big entrapment scheme for poor minorities. Prohibition creates an economy that hugely incentivizes drug dealing, and when the poor fall for the bait, the prohibitionists rush in to arrest them and remove them from the voting rolls.
Most psychoactive substance use can be judged as recreational OR medicinal OR both. The judgements are not just determined by the circumstances of use, either, but also by the biases of those doing the judging.
When the FDA tells us in effect that MDMA is too dangerous to be used to prevent school shootings and to help bring about world peace, they are making political judgments, not scientific ones.
The term "drugs" is no more objective than the term "scabs." Both are meant to defame the things that they denote.
Pundits tell us that there are medical reasons not to "snort" cocaine. So what? There are medical reasons not to drive a car: you may have an accident. The question is: does cocaine use or car driving make sense in a given case! Details matter!
There is an absurd safety standard for "drugs." The cost/benefit analysis of the FDA & co. never takes into account the costs of NOT prescribing nor the benefits of a productive life well lived. The "users" are not considered stakeholders.
I hated the show "The Apprentice," because it taught a cynical and hate-filled lesson about the proper way to "get ahead" in the world. I saw Trump as a menace back then, long before he started declaring that American elections were corrupt before the very first vote was cast!
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