in response to an article by Maria Holynova on Psychedelic Spotlight
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 8, 2024
The following comment is in response to a 2023 article entitled "Oregon's First Licensed Psilocybin Center Charges $2800 for One Session: Are the Costs Justifiable?"1 I submitted it to the page in question, where it is now "awaiting moderation."
Oregon's drug policy is incoherent. They make psilocybin available to the rich and healthy, while locking up the poor and chemically dependent who could profit from it most. This half-baked attempt at a free market in psilocybin won't work until drug prohibition stops wildly distorting costs, thereby making psilocybin unavailable for those who need it most. (Psilocybin, after all, is available for free in mushroom form -- for free.2) For the latter demographic, it makes no difference if the price is reasonable in the long run: if they cannot afford it now when they need it, they are screwed.
Another problem is that Drug War fearmongering has taught us to treat psilocybin (and all other illegal drugs) like they were plutonium, causing liability costs to skyrocket, along with red tape. When I signed up for psilocybin therapy in Oregon, I complained about the endless paperwork. The facilitator apologized, noting that he himself had to fill out less paperwork when he purchased his first house. This implicit terror of drugs is so out of touch with common sense that it qualifies as a modern superstition.
That said, your point is well taken: the high prices are not a result of greed on the part of providers, but — like so many other problems in America today — are a result of an insane and counterproductive drug policy.
Author's Follow-up: May 8, 2024
There is a huge problem with the slow and piecemeal reform of drug laws -- as opposed to the instant repeal of drug prohibition. The problem is that the reform always ends up getting blamed for the problems that are created by the baseline environment of prohibition in which those reforms are enacted. The legalization 3 of opiate possession did not cause the misnamed "opioid crisis" in Oregon, but it provided a good scapegoat for which prohibitionists could blame the homelessness problem and the lack of proper healthcare on "drugs." But then this is the MO of the Drug Warrior -- and even their raison d'etre. They blame all social problems on "drugs," thereby helping selfish politicians like themselves in two ways: 1) saving them from spending time and money on real social problems and 2) providing someone to blame when anything goes wrong. Either they can blame those problems directly on "drugs," or (whenever that seems implausible even to gullible Americans) they can raise a hue and cry about "drugs" in order to distract the public mind from the real problems that the politicians have failed to solve.
The drug war is a way for conservatives to keep America's eyes OFF the prize. The right-wing motto is, "Billions for law enforcement, but not one cent for social programs."
When folks banned opium, they did not just ban a drug: they banned the philosophical and artistic insights that the drug has been known to inspire in writers like Poe, Lovecraft and De Quincey.
Someone needs to create a group called Drug Warriors Anonymous, a place where Americans can go to discuss their right to mind and mood medicine and to discuss the many ways in which our society trashes godsend medicines.
The FDA uses reductive materialism to justify and normalize the views of Cortes and Pizarro with respect to entheogenic medicine.
I'm interested in CBD myself, because I want to gain benefits at times without experiencing intoxication. So I think it's great. But I like it as part of an overall strategy toward mental health. I do not think of CBD, as some do, as a way to avoid using naughty drugs.
There are no merely recreational drugs. All drugs that elate have obvious potential uses for the depressed.
America takes away the citizen's right to manage their own depression by making opium and cocaine illegal. Then psychiatrists treat the resulting epidemic of depression and anxiety by damaging the patient's brain with shock therapy.
Chesterton might as well have been speaking about the word 'addiction' when he wrote the following: "It is useless to have exact figures if they are exact figures about an inexact phrase."
The U.S. Congress considered the following to be a scientific fact back in 1924:
"A person taking narcotics regularly impedes evolutionary progress and tends to degenerate backwards toward the brute." -- Richmond Hobson
We need a Controlled Prohibitionists Act, to get psychiatric help for the losers who think that prohibition makes sense despite its appalling record of causing civil wars overseas and devastating inner cities.
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