Just a reminder that opium has been used for millennia and that it's a violation of natural law to outlaw a plant. In fact, if you want a good idea for a story, you might want to cover the fact that Jefferson's estate at Monticello was raided by the DEA in 1987 so that agents could confiscate his poppy plants. That's an old story, of course, but the REAL story is that the Foundation refuses (to this day) to tell its visitors about the raid. Meanwhile, the Foundation is also playing ball with the DEA by removing hemp from Monticello. This is in violation of everything that the opium- and garden-loving Thomas Jefferson stood for: namely, natural law and the idea that some things were so basic -- like our right to Mother Nature -- that the government could not take them from us.
The only den of iniquity in 1914 was Congress, where they betrayed the founding principles of democracy by asserting government's right to give or withhold Mother Nature's bounty as it saw fit. Congress tried to cover its fears of the Asian menace with talk about public health -- but they created the health problems with prohibition. Now, instead of folks being able to freely choose a regulated product, we have kids dying every day from substances that are not regulated and about which kids know nothing thanks to America's strategy of fear over education.
Instead of writing stories that prop up this violation of natural law, why not write a story about BEER HALLS, and the drunk guys who leave them in cars to cause fatal accidents -- while they're on their way home to beat their wives?
Meanwhile, if you want to learn "the truth about opium," read the book of that name by William Brereton. You'll see how the opium panic was created by a religious organization that was the British Equivalent of the Anti-Saloon League -- based on lies and misperceptions of elite Brits who had never been to China -- and based on the interests of protestant missionaries, who preferred that the Chinese use the shabby western drug called alcohol.
Sincerely Yours,
Brian
PS I've done a little snooping myself. I wrote to David Blumenstock, Manager of Visitor Services at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. I complained that Monticello was "covering up" the DEA raid of 1987. He told me that he was sorry that I did not think the Foundation was covering the matter satisfactorily. I responded that, as far as I knew, they were not covering it at ALL and I asked him to correct me if I was wrong about that. That was two weeks ago now and I have yet to hear back.
This silence on the part of the Foundation was pointed out in the 2011 book "Opium for the Masses" by Jim Hogshire, a book that Michael Pollan has recently referenced in his work.
Author's Follow-up: July 13, 2023
The opium den did not launch the Drug War: Xenophobia launched the Drug War -- fear of minorities who did not "get off" on alcohol. These strange ways had to be suppressed in Christian America.
Author's Follow-up: December 20, 2023
Suppressed in Christian America, did I say? They had to be suppressed ALL AROUND THE WORLD as it turned out.
Opium
Young people were not dying in the streets when opiates were legal in the United States. It took drug laws to accomplish that. By outlawing opium and refusing to teach safe use, the drug warrior has subjected users to contaminated product of uncertain dosage, thereby causing thousands of unnecessary overdoses.
Currently, I myself am chemically dependent on a Big Pharma drug for depression, that I have to take every day of my life. There is no rational reason why I should not be able to smoke opium daily instead. It is only drug-war fearmongering that has demonized that choice -- for obvious racist, economic and political reasons.
You have been lied to your entire life about opium. In fact, the drug war has done its best to excise the very word "opium" from the English vocabulary. That's why the Thomas Jefferson Foundation refuses to talk about the 1987 raid on Monticello in which Reagan's DEA confiscated Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants in violation of everything he stood for, politically speaking. It's just plain impolite to bring up that subject these days.
It's hard to learn the truth about opium because the few books on the subject demonize it rather than discuss it dispassionately. Take the book by John Halpern: "Opium: How an ancient flower shaped and poisoned our world." It's a typical Drug Warrior title. A flower did not poison our world, John: our world was poisoned by bad laws: laws that were inspired first and foremost by racism, followed closely by commercial interests, politics, misinformation and lies.
To learn something approaching to "the truth about Opium," read the book of that name by William Brereton, written to defend the time-honored panacea from the uninformed and libelous attacks of Christian missionaries.
Science knows nothing of the human spirit and of the hopes and dreams of humankind. Science cannot tell us whether a given drug risk is worthwhile given the human need for creativity and passion in their life. Science has no expertise in making such philosophical judgements.
So he writes about the mindset of the deeply depressed, reifying the condition as if it were some great "type" inevitably to be encountered in humanity. No. It's the "type" to be found in a post-Christian society that has turned up its scientific nose at psychoactive medicine.
America is insane: it makes liquor officially legal and then outlaws all the drugs that could help prevent and cure alcoholism.
I agree that Big Pharma drugs have wrought disaster when used in psychotherapy -- but it is common sense that non-Big Pharma drugs that elate could be used to prevent suicide and obviate the need for ECT.
In "The Book of the Damned," Charles Fort writes about the data that science has damned, by which he means "excluded." The fact that drugs can inspire and elate is one such fact, although when Fort wrote his anti-materialist broadside, drug prohibition was in its infancy.
Politicians protect a drug that kills 178,000 a year via a constitutional amendment, and then they outlaw all less lethal alternatives. To enforce the ban, they abrogate the 4th amendment and encourage drug testing to ensure that drug war heretics starve.
Here are some political terms that are extremely problematic in the age of the drug war:
"clean," "junk," "dope," "recreational"... and most of all the word "drugs" itself, which is as biased and loaded as the word "scab."
The "acceptable risk" for psychoactive drugs can only be decided by the user, based on what they prioritize in life. Science just assumes that all users should want to live forever, self-fulfilled or not.
Folks like Sabet accuse folks like myself of ignoring the "facts." No, it is Sabet who is ignoring the facts -- facts about dangerous horses and free climbing. He's also ignoring all the downsides of prohibition, whose laws lead to the election of tyrants.
It's depressing. I thought mycology clubs across the US would be protesting drug laws that make mushroom collecting illegal for psychoactive species. But in reality, almost no club even mentions such species. No wonder prohibition is going strong.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Open Letter to Margo Margaritoff published on July 13, 2023 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
The opium den did not launch the Drug War: Xenophobia launched the Drug War -- fear of minorities who did not "get off" on alcohol. These strange ways had to be suppressed in Christian America. 
You have been reading an article entitled, Open Letter to Margo Margaritoff published on July 13, 2023 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
