Some Thoughts about the Formal Recommendation for drug policy changes by Harm Reduction Specialists
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
March 14, 2024
Pull over to the side of the web page!
You're probably wondering why I stopped you? Well, according to Google Analytics, we are getting a lot of bouncers at this web address and so we've launched a campaign to crack down on such traffic. Yes, of course, you have a right to bounce away from any page that you like, or that you don't like for that matter, but you might at least stop and listen to what you're going to miss by doing so.
This page makes some great points, after all. Of course, if you think you already know all this stuff, fine, but the least you can do is check out our discussion questions at the bottom of this page to make sure that you truly have the requisite understanding.
Now then, how about I check your car for drugs? You glove compartment, maybe? How about your trunk -- or boot, as the Brits would have it. I want to make sure that you are not using any godsend medicines from the Inca, for instance. I mean, Coca-Cola may have the legal right to use the coca leaf, but mere mortals like you can be slammed in the pokey for having truck with that naughty plant.
What's that, I can't search your car for drugs? Oh, so then you have something to HIDE, do you?
I'm just playing with ya, dude! Oh, I love my job in the age of drug prohibition! I just love making people squirm!
I agree with the plan1 entirely. I love the idea of the economic impact that legalization would have on neighborhoods previously penalized by drug laws. But I do have a few caveats. These are not so much criticisms as they are "riffs" on the various topics broached in the document.
1) This document is presented as a strategy in "harm reduction," which is understandable given the current accepted narrative, according to which there is no rational reason for "drug use." Therefore we have to have harm reduction strategies in place to help save users from at least the worst possible consequences of their bad decisions2. This, of course, represents a Christian Science attitude toward drug use, however; therefore I hope that we can eventually transcend this way of framing the situation and begin talking about "benefit creation" of drug use, for drug use can actually have benefits, despite the fact that we have been indoctrinated since grade school to believe the opposite. As William Brereton notes in "The Truth About Opium,"3 nightly smokers of the drug have long lives, steady jobs, and they do not beat their wives. These are benefits.
2) This brings up a corollary issue: the document also calls for educating children in non-use. Now, that's fine if we are talking about non-use by children, but I do not think that our goal should be to make sure that children grow up as abstainers. It's one thing to worry about the safety of kids; it's another to impose our philosophical and religious principles upon those kids as adults. The fact is that smoking opium can be done safely, despite the endless lies of the Drug Warrior, and that such use does have benefits, of a poetic and temperamental kind -- real benefits -- especially when compared to the opiate derivatives which were created in response to the outlawing of opium. Moreover, we are a society in which 25% of American women take one or more Big Pharma 45 meds every day of their life6. It is strange that we should think that this is fine -- indeed it is their medical duty -- while yet telling them to keep away from opium, a drug that medical men from Avicenna to Galen to Paracelsus considered to be a panacea.
3) I am also leery of the "prescription requirements for higher potency opioids," which essentially means the continued criminalization of the same. I think the take-home message of America's drug problems is that criminalization is the problem, so I see no need for this exception. This does not mean that we need to make higher potency opioids available on every street corner, but we need to finally learn the lesson that prohibition causes far more problems than it solves -- and so such an exception to the idea of legalization is going to have its own downsides, downsides that we never seem to take into account when we make such caveats.
4) This leads naturally to my next concern, that we have to consciously start thinking of all the many Drug War DOWNSIDES whenever we contemplate the subject of legalization 7 versus criminalization. We cannot simply calculate the number of white American kids whom we think will or will not be "saved" by our drug laws: we must also think of the many stakeholders that we always seem to ignore. Our current opioid policy has had a ruinous effect on healthcare in India, where most hospitals no longer carry morphine 8 . Why? Because fearmongers in the States have so demonized such drugs that hospitals have been burdened with red tape and expenses whenever they wish to use them. And so we ignore the needs of pain patients around the world when we outlaw drugs in the states9. Other stakeholders include the artists who would like to benefit from opiate insights. Another stakeholder is the philosopher, whom William James himself told us should investigate altered states. In other words, when we criminalize drugs, we think that we're just "saving junior," whereas we are actually inflicting pain and censorship on the rest of the world. But, alas, in Congress, no one can hear them scream.
5) By the way, punishing people for using drugs should be recognized as the non-sequitur that it is. We may as well harass people and remove them from the workforce for failing to follow a government approved diet.
6) We also need to limit employee drug testing 10 to the goal of finding impairment, rather than it being a fishing expedition in search of demonized substances. It will do little good to legalize opiates if we continue to deny people jobs for actually using opiates.
7) One of the best ways to stop UNNECESSARY or FRIVOLOUS use of opiates would be by providing alternatives, and so we should legalize drugs like MDMA 11 and laughing gas 12 as part of our opiate program. For if opiates are the only way available for people to achieve self-transcendence in life, we should not be surprised if a lot of those people choose opiates.
Discuss the issues raised in this essay about the hateful policy of drug prohibition.
1) Explain why prohibition is the problem and not drugs.
2) Explain why saying "Fentanyl kills" is the philosophical equivalent of saying "Fire Bad".
3) Everybody wants to judge drugs out of context and come up with their own list of substances that we should outlaw. Harm Reduction folk have less items than most on their list, but they have still fallen for the idea that we must use prohibition for some substances. Americans have to learn that prohibition is the problem, not drugs. Societies from the caveman days to the 20th century have survived without telling people which substances they can ingest. It is amazing that the one country founded on individual freedom should be the first country to insist that we change that status quo all over the world -- and so in our attempt to save a relative handful of young white Americans, we throw the freedom and healthcare of every other citizen of the planet under the bus. Explain.
4) Cocaine could end the chronic depression of millions in a trice -- as Sigmund Freud well knew -- but self-interested doctors demonized the drug based on rare misuse, never even asking the depressed what they thought about the drug. The medical industry is a beneficiary of drug prohibition and apparently likes it, given its refusal to protest the policy on behalf of the millions that it turns into wards of the healthcare state. Explain. Discuss. Protest. Make this point of view known so that I am not the only person on the damned planet who even recognizes these issues.
Properly speaking, MDMA has killed no one at all. Prohibitionists were delighted when Leah Betts died because they were sure it was BECAUSE of MDMA/Ecstasy. Whereas it was because of the fact that prohibitionists refuse to teach safe use.
Many people take antidepressants believing their depression has a biochemical cause. Research does not support this belief. --Dr. Noam Shpancer, Psychology Today
In Mexico, the same substance can be considered a "drug" or a "med," depending on where you are in the country. It's just another absurd result of the absurd policy of drug prohibition.
As great as it is, "Synthetic Panics" by Philip Jenkins was only tolerated by academia because it did not mention drugs in the title and it contains no explicit opinions about drugs. As a result, many drug law reformers still don't know the book exists.
When folks die in horse-related accidents, we need to be asking: who sold the victim the horse? We've got to crack down on folks who peddle this junk -- and ban books like Black Beauty that glamorize horse use.
The Petpedia website says that "German Shepherds need to have challenging jobs such as searching for drugs." How about searching for prohibitionists instead?
Health is not a quality, it's a balance. To decide drug legality based on 'health' grounds thus opens a Pandora's box of different points of view.
Psychiatrists prescribe drugs that muck about with a patient's biochemical baseline, making them chemically dependent and turning them into patients for life.
Don't the Oregon prohibitionists realize that all the thousands of deaths from opiates is so much blood on their hands?
Drug Prohibition is a crime against humanity. It outlaws our right to take care of our own health.
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