"The substantial reason for rejecting a philosophical theory is the 'absurdum' to which it reduces us." --Alfred North Whitehead, Concept of Nature3
My argument here can best be summed up by the following dictum: that saying things like "Fentanyl 4 kills" -- the superstitious claim with which Philadelphia billboards5 are plastered even as we speak -- is philosophically equivalent to saying things like "Fire bad!" as did our paleolithic forebears. Both statements would have us fear dangerous substances rather than learn how to use them as wisely as possible for the benefit of humanity."The right to chew or smoke a plant that grows wild in nature, such as hemp (marijuana), is anterior to and more basic than the right to vote." --Thomas Szasz, Our Right to Drugs --p xvi14
"Imagine how many people would have benefited during the past half-century had the government respected their autonomy and their right to self-medicate." --Jeffrey A. Singer, Your Body, Your Health Care --p. 9715
"Lacking the usual grounds on which people congregate as a nation, we [Americans] habitually fall back on the most primitive yet most enduring basis for group cohesion, namely, scapegoating." --Thomas Szasz, Our Right to Drugs --p 3218
This is why so many smart Americans are ignorant about the Drug War. They sense at some level that a critical investigation of that inherently racist project would reveal lie after lie, as in the peeling of an onion, and they do not want to go down that rabbit hole. They know that to do so would make them an outsider in brainwashed America -- a minority of one -- and probably piss them off into the bargain. Who needs that agony? Better to simply play along with the injustices of the Drug War -- like, for instance, mandatory urine testing for employment19, which has nothing to do with impairment but is rather all about "outing" those workers who dare to use substances of which our beer-swilling and gun-toting politicians disapprove. Strategic ignorance about such things makes life easier for Americans. Were they to allow themselves to think critically, they would soon come to the infuriating conclusion that drug prohibition has thoroughly censored academia, to the point that most authors today pretend that outlawed drugs do not even exist, and therefore ignore all the inconvenient truths about which drug use could inform them -- like the fact that cocaine 20 is a cure for depression (as Freud well knew21) and that it causes infinitely less dependencies than those fostered by Big Pharma drugs -- or that only 5% of American soldiers who used heroin in Vietnam had trouble getting off the drug when they returned to the States22. 5%. Consider that statistic in light of the fact that Big Pharma drugs like Effexor cannot be kicked AT ALL by the long-term user, not AT ALL!23 Okay, maybe 5% can manage to stay off the drug for three years, but only at the price of their ability to think straight (thanks to the way the drug irreversibly scrambles brain chemistry).
Scientists are responsible for endless incarcerations in America. Why? Because they fail to denounce the DEA lie that psychoactive substances have no positive medical uses. This is so obviously wrong that only an academic in an Ivory Tower could believe it.
Being less than a month away from an election that, in my view, could end American democracy, I don't like to credit Musk for much. But I absolutely love it every time he does or says something that pushes back against the drug-war narrative.
In a free future, newspapers will have philosophers on their staffs to ensure that said papers are not inciting consequence-riddled hysteria through a biased coverage of drug-related mishaps.
Hollywood presents cocaine as a drug of killers. In reality, strategic cocaine use by an educated person can lead to great mental power, especially as just one part of a pharmacologically balanced diet.
Alexander Shulgin is a typical westerner when he speaks about cocaine. He moralizes about the drug, telling us that it does not give him "real" power. But so what? Does coffee give him "real" power? Coke helps some, others not. Stop holding it to this weird metaphysical standard.
Americans have learned nothing but half-truths and lies about cocaine and opium thanks to the total censorship of drug benefits.
If Fentanyl kills, then alcohol slaughters. Drug prohibition is the real killer.
Now the US is bashing the Honduran president for working with "drug cartels." Why don't we just be honest and say why we're REALLY upset with the guy? Drugs is just the excuse, as always, now what's the real reason? Stop using the drug war to disguise American foreign policy.
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.
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.
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