This is not exactly a correction, but I could not find an email address that precisely covered my reason for writing you today.
I'm writing in reference to The Student Newspaper article that you cite, apparently because it contains a favorable mention of Erowid. The article is entitled 'In Case You Choose Not to Say No to Drugs, Kids.'
Although we might praise the author of that post for 'having her heart in the right place,' her article demonstrates clearly that she is under the influence of Drug War propaganda, which she has apparently accepted uncritically.
Why, for instance, should we be telling kids to say no to 'drugs' in the first place, when drugs are essentially Mother Nature's plant medicines? Why do we not also want them to say no to 'Big Pharma 1 2 meds' to which 1 in 4 American women are addicted?
These are just two philosophical issues that loom unnoticed in Karolina Zieba's article. I critique the article in more detail in two essays on my site at abolishthedea.com (see links below). I invite you to read them. I've devoted two essays to this one article because I think that the staying power of drug-war prohibition has been due in large part to the philosophical shallowness of many of its would-be opponents, folks who write half-heartedly on the topic, taking the anemic and misinformed line that 'Illegal drug use is unnecessary, but it's going to happen anyway, so we might as well allow it.'
I fear that, like Karolina, many Erowid readers (perhaps editors, too, for all I know) may 'have their heart in the right place' when it comes to these topics and yet fail to comprehend the full evil of the Drug War, because they have been bamboozled by Drug War lies, propaganda, and the drug-war revision of history thanks to which Americans never hear of the positive use of currently illegal substances. Perhaps they've also been bamboozled by well-meaning authors like Karolina herself who fail to grasp the many injustices that are perpetrated daily in the name of the Drug War: from stifled research on drugs to fight Alzheimer's 3 to the use of electroshock therapy that could have been avoided had medical godsend plants been available to treat depression.
I also write because, by prominently listing Karolina's article, Erowid seems to be (at least to some degree) endorsing its content, and I therefore feel compelled to write you to explain why I believe that such an endorsement is misplaced.
Oregon has decided to go back to the braindead plan of treating substance use as a police matter. Might as well arrest people at home since America has already spread their drug-hating Christian Science religion all over the world.
Why does no one talk about empathogens for preventing atrocities? Because they'd rather hate drugs than use them for the benefit of humanity. They don't want to solve problems, they prefer hatred.
National Geo published an article entitled "Coca: a Blessing and a Curse." Coca was never a curse. Most people used it wisely, just as most people drink wisely. Doctors demonized it because it really worked and it could put them out of business. https://abolishthedea.com/sigmund_freuds_real_breakthrough_was_not_psychoanalysis.php
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.
No drug causes addiction after one use. From this fact alone, it follows that even drugs like meth and crack and Fentanyl can be used wisely -- on an intermittent basis.
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.
Freud thought cocaine was a great antidepressant. His contemporaries demonized the drug by focusing only on the rare misusers. That's like judging alcohol by focusing on alcoholics.
Immanuel Kant wrote that scientists are scornful about metaphysics yet they rely on it themselves without realizing it. This is a case in point, for the idea that euphoria and visions are unhelpful in life is a metaphysical viewpoint, not a scientific one.
It is far better to "treat the symptoms" than to irreversibly modify brain chemistry in one particular way based on the theories of a financially-motivated biochemical determinist working for a pharmaceutical company.
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.
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