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News Flash: Drug Use Can Be a Good Thing!

regarding the lopsided focus on harm reduction

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

December 22, 2022



When I first became fascinated with the potential for psychoactive therapy a few years ago, I started visiting Maps.org1, at which point I suddenly began noticing many references to "harm reduction." This struck me as a trifle odd, not because harm reduction is a bad thing, but merely because of the extreme emphasis placed upon that one aspect of substance use. I would regularly see notices of public get-togethers from Maps to discuss psychedelic therapy. But no sooner would I get my suitcase out of my closet when I would realize that the rendezvous in question was going to be discussing "harm reduction," almost to the exclusion of anything else. I was invited to Burning Man to meet with fellow Maps devotees, for instance; upon reading the fine print, however, it turned out that the group traveling to Nevada was going to be focusing on... you guessed it, "harm reduction." Since then I joined Twitter (God forgive me), where I hoped to find a plethora of state and local organizations devoted to ending the hateful and anti-scientific War on Drugs, but again, the only obvious "plethora" I found on that platform consisted of organizations devoted to "harm reduction."

Of course, upon mature reflection, this made a lot of sense to me. The Drug War clearly puts would-be users in harm's way, first because prohibition incentivizes the sale of unsafe and tainted product, and second because the Drug War teaches us to fear substances rather than to understand them. (When MD Golden Mortimer solicited academic insights about coca use while writing his informative book on the subject, he was told that it was immoral to publish such a book lest the existence of such unbiased information should encourage "drug use": immoral to publish unbiased information!) The natural result is that many Americans need help now, in real-time, and it's a praiseworthy thing that these groups are rising to the challenge. I understand all that.

Yet when drug law reformers focus so exclusively on harm reduction, it leaves an odd impression, at least for the layperson who is wondering what all the fuss is about.

Think of it this way: you receive a small drone for Christmas and look online for fun, useful and/or educational ways to use it, only to find out that almost all sites on the topic are about "harm reduction," that is to say, ways to keep the downsides of drone use to an absolute minimum.

It would leave you wondering: am I the only one in the world who sees the great potential for drones in mapping the scenery, filming movies 2 3 , following wildlife, searching for trespassers, etc.?

Just so with "drugs": when I see such an emphasis on "harm reduction," I wonder, am I the only one who sees the benefits that they can provide humankind: how MDMA 4 therapy could help end school shootings, how the informed use of psychedelics could obviate the need for a lifetime of expensive and demoralizing trips to the psychiatrist, how the chewing of the coca leaf could drastically reduce the cases of depression in the world, how the strategically non-addictive use of the drugs we have learned to demonize could drastically increase our appreciation of Mother Nature, and music, and our fellow human being?

This lopsided focus on harm reduction makes me feel like the Drug Warriors have achieved their anti-scientific goal: they have convinced even the clearest thinkers among us that demonized substances have -- and can have -- no positive uses whatsoever, for anyone, at any dose, at any time, in any place, ever.

That is the unscientific dogma of the Drug War. It's unscientific because there are no such substances in the world. Even cyanide and Botox have beneficial uses.

Yes, as Drug War opponents, we need to be focusing on harm reduction. The Drug War itself has seen to that by placing "users" in harm's way. But harm reduction should not be our only focus. We need to start talking about "benefit maximization" as well. Otherwise, our lopsided focus gives the impression that the substances that we demonize as "drugs" can truly cause nothing but harm, which is the very lie that Drug War propaganda has been trying to teach us ever since we were given teddy bears in grade school in exchange for just saying "no" to the boogieman called "drugs."









Notes:

1: Three Problems With Rick Doblin's MAPS DWP (up)
2: Glenn Close but no cigar DWP (up)
3: Running with the torture loving DEA DWP (up)
4: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




A generally educated person meets new ideas with curiosity and fascination. An illiberally educated person meets new ideas with fear. --James B. Stockade.

If America cannot exist without outlawing drugs, then there is something wrong with America, not with drugs.

"Drugs" is imperialist terminology. In the smug self-righteousness of those who use it, I hear Columbus's disdain for the shroom use of the Taino people and the Spanish disdain for the coca use of the Peruvian Indians.

When psychiatrists write about heroin, they characterize dependency as enslavement. When they write about antidepressants, they characterize dependency as a medical duty.

After watching my mother suffer because of the drug war, I hate to hear people tell me that the problem is drugs. WRONG! That's a western colonialist viewpoint. God loved his creation (see Genesis). He did not make trash. We need to use entheogenic medicines wisely.

A law proposed in Colorado in February 2024 would have criminalized positive talk about drugs online. What? The world is on the brink of nuclear war because of hate-driven politics, and I can be arrested for singing the praises of empathogens?

Another problem with MindMed's LSD: every time I look it up on Google, I get a mess of links about the stock market. The drug is apparently a godsend for investors. They want to profit from LSD by neutering it and making it politically correct: no inspiration, no euphoria.

That's so "drug war" of Rick: If a psychoactive substance has a bad use at some dose, for somebody, then it must not be used at any dose by anybody. It's hard to imagine a less scientific proposition, or one more likely to lead to unnecessary suffering.

Drug prohibition has resulted in hundreds of thousands of completely unnecessary deaths thanks to totally preventable drug overdoses!

If MAPS wants to make progress with MDMA they should start "calling out" the FDA for judging holistic medicines by materialist standards, which means ignoring all glaringly obvious benefits.


Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






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Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

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