And yet Drug Warriors actually say inherently racist and xenophobic things like: "If we can save one young person from drug abuse, then our efforts will be worth it." Really? These prohibitionists actually think that it is okay to kill tens of thousands of minorities and foreigners in order to save a few white suburban young people from the endless drugs about which we refuse on principle to educate them. They think that it is okay to destroy the Bill of Rights to save those poor little kids whom we refuse to educate. They think that it is okay to create drug laws that give racist cops carte blanche to be as evil as they want to be toward minorities11."Imagine how many people would have benefited during the past half-century had the government respected their autonomy and their right to self-medicate." 13
White young people are not the only stakeholders in the drug approval game. When we criminalize drugs in order to keep our uneducated young people from using them, we are thereby also keeping the severely depressed from using those drugs as well. People commit suicide every day and they undergo unnecessary brain-damaging shock therapy for no other reason than that we westerners have refused to take advantage of a vast array of godsend substances -- in trees, in flowers, in fungi, in animals -- substances that, as ethnobotanists well know, have time-honored potential for improving mental outlook and giving the user a vacation from negative self-talk that prevents them from being all that they can be in life. When we outlaw drugs for junior, we also outlaw them for those who use drugs to gain religious inspiration, as the rishi employed Soma 16 in the Punjab in 1500 BCE. When we outlaw drugs for junior, we also outlaw them for the philosophers who wish to use them in studying the nature of ultimate reality -- a use promoted by William James himself in The Varieties of Religious Experience. When we outlaw drugs for junior, we also outlaw them for those trying to get off antidepressants 17, those for whom a quick and timely pick-me-up from "drugs" could spell the difference between recidivism and remaining off an unwanted Big Pharma drug."The laws that deny healthy people 'recreational' drugs also deny sick people 'therapeutic' drugs."18
This latter statement is so obvious and yet it never seems to have occurred to any western critics of drugs. If a drug could be misused by Jack or Jill Whitebread when used at one dose for one reason in one circumstance, then we are always told by western drug pundits that the drug in question must not be used by anyone at any dose in any circumstance. It is as if these Drug Warriors have never even heard of the concept of education! This is politics and superstition at work here, not science. This is the triumph of the caveman mindset that prompts westerners to spout absurd fearmongering bromides such as "Crack kills!" and "Fentanyl 19 kills!", failing to realize that such statements are the philosophical equivalent of shouting "Fire bad!" All such statements encourage us to fear dangerous substances rather than to learn how to use them as wisely as possible for the benefit of humanity.
How did we in the west arrive at such an anti-scientific, illogical and ultimately racist, xenophobic and even fascist point of view about "drugs"? There is plenty of blame to go around, as they say, but the media has certainly done more than their fair share in normalizing our society's superstitious and inhumane attitude toward psychoactive medicines. The media has done this, first, by refusing to publish any positive reports of drug use, and second, by holding drug use to a safety standard that they impose for no other risky activity on earth, not for rifle firing, not for car driving, and certainly not for liquor drinking."Those in the medical profession or the youth culture who do not seriously consider the hidden consequences of drug use may profitably ponder the unfortunate error of that astute observer of human experience, Sigmund Freud. The story of Freud's fascination with cocaine is not unknown but its retelling at this time may be useful."20
"My impression has been that the use of cocaine 30 over a long time can bring about lasting improvement..."31
"Everywhere we are promised something for nothing. Yet, the one clear lesson in the history of drug use is that in the giving and taking of drugs, one pays—in the short range or the long, visibly or invisibly—for what one gets."33
"We don't know how antidepressants work."36
Trump supports the drug war and Big Pharma: the two forces that have turned me into a patient for life with dependence-causing antidepressants. Big Pharma makes the pills, and the drug war outlaws all viable alternatives.
The MindMed company (makers of LSD Lite) tell us that euphoria and visions are "adverse effects": that's not science, that's an arid materialist philosophy that does not believe in spiritual transcendence.
I wonder if Nixon knew what a favor he was doing medical capitalism when he outlawed psychedelics. Those drugs can actually cure things, and there's no money in that.
Drug Warriors will publicize all sorts of drug use -- but they will never publicize sane and positive drug use. Drug Warrior dogma holds that such use is impossible -- and, indeed, the drug war does all it can to turn that prejudice into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I have yet to find one psychiatrist who acknowledges the demoralizing power of being turned into a patient for life. They never list that as a potential downside of antidepressant use.
Americans outlaw drugs and then insist that those drugs did not have much to offer in any case. It's like I took away your car and then told you that car ownership was overrated.
In "The Book of the Damned," Charles Fort shows how science damns (i.e. excludes) facts that it cannot assimilate into a system of knowledge. Fort could never have guessed, however, how thoroughly science would eventually "damn" all positive facts about "drugs."
If opium and cocaine were legal again in America, the healthcare industry would suddenly have to undergo extensive downsizing, as Americans were once again put in charge of their own health.
It's interesting that Jamaicans call the police 'Babylon,' given that Babylon denotes a society seeking materialist pleasures. Drug use is about transcending the material world and seeking spiritual states: states that the materialist derides as meaningless.
If media were free in America, you'd see documentaries about people using drugs wisely for a wide variety of praiseworthy purposes.
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