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.
Like when Laura Sanders tells us in Science News that depression is an intractable problem, she should rather tell us: "Depression is an intractable problem... that is, in a world wherein we refuse to consider the benefits of 'drugs,' let alone to fight for their beneficial use."
If opium and cocaine were re-legalized, hospital buildings would no longer be the secular cathedrals of our time. Some of that wealth would actually go to healthy people.
Philip Jenkins reports that Rophynol had positive uses for treating mental disorders until the media called it the "date rape drug." We thus punished those who were benefitting from the drug, tho' the biggest drug culprit in date rape is alcohol. Oprah spread the fear virally.
Someday, the First Lady or Man will tell kids to "just say no to prohibition." Kids who refuse will be required to watch hours' worth of films depicting gun violence, banned religions, civil wars, and adults committing suicide for want of medicine that grows at their very feet.
Psychiatrists never acknowledge the biggest downside to modern antidepressants: the fact that they turn you into a patient for life. That's demoralizing, especially since the best drugs for depression are outlawed by the government.
Q: Where can you find almost-verbatim copies of the descriptions of religious experiences described by William James? A: In descriptions of user reports of "trips" on drugs ranging from coca to opium, from MDMA to laughing gas.
I've always wondered why we don't just let heroin users be -- or better yet, re-legalize drugs and give them choices. Why are they punished for using heroin daily while we praise 1 in 4 women for taking an even more dependence-causing drug every day of their life?
Magazines like Psychology Today continue to publish feel-good articles about depression which completely ignore the fact that we have outlawed all drugs that could end depression in a heartbeat.
We need a scheduling system for psychoactive drugs as much as we need a scheduling system for sports activities: i.e. NOT AT ALL. Some sports are VERY dangerous, but we do not outlaw them because we know that there are benefits both to sports and to freedom in general.
There are plenty of "prima facie" reasons for believing that we could eliminate most problems with drug and alcohol withdrawal by chemically aided sleep cures combined with using "drugs" to fight "drugs." But drug warriors don't want a fix, they WANT drug use to be a problem.
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.
(up)