Pity the time traveler who arrives from the 1600s, bristling with a new idea for a science-fiction story:
Time-Traveler: "Hey, I've got this cool idea for a story in which some future despotic government goes out and burns plants to keep the populace from using those substances to improve their minds! I'm gonna call it 'Fahrenheit 452!'"
Me: "Sorry, dude, but that's not science-fiction."
Time-Traveler: "What? Maybe you don't hear so good. I said it's a story about government going out and getting rid of therapeutic plants!"
Me: "Right, and that's exactly what our government does today!"
Time-Traveler: "You're kidding me? I thought I traveled forward in this time machine, not backwards."
Me: "Hey, where are you going?"
Time-Traveler: "Back to my ship -- I'm gonna visit the Earth 200 years from now and see if they've finally got it right."
Americans are childish about drugs. We blame our problems on inanimate objects and burn other countries' plants so that we can feel safe at home. We need to grow up and learn to use nature's bounty wisely for human benefit.
Discussion Questions for Students
1) What is the satirical message of this short drama?
2) What does it tell us about the mentality behind drug prohibition and the War on Drugs?
3) Imagine you traveled forward in time to a world in which horses were outlawed because politicians focused only on the downsides of horseback riding -- like the fact that equestrian sports are the number-one cause of traumatic brain injury in the sporting world. How would you go about trying to convince the horse prohibitionists that they were being silly? Could you succeed, given that everybody in that future society had been taught from childhood to say no to horses? Let's assume that their media had kept them from seeing, reading, or hearing any depictions of beneficial "horse use" as well.
For Further Study
The Drug War Philosopher occasionally illustrates the incoherence of Drug War ideology with the help of science-fiction. See, for instance, his philosophical send-up of the 2022 movie Moonfall, in which he takes a young alien to task for his naive faith in the ability of his humanoid species to 'get along' without the help of some serious empathogens (given the hate-filled propensities of that species' nearest biological cousins, that is, videlicet Earthlings).
What do you think makes science-fiction such a purebred stalking horse for drug-law reformers when it comes to snapping the suspenders off of the cocky challengers on the Prohibitionist side of the jousting field? Hint: when science-fiction authors are not evoking a Mad Max dystopia, they are generally promoting the idea (as 'twere by implication) that technology brings happiness, than which nothing could be more silly, of course, with the possible exception of the idea of the modern drug researchers that laughing gas could not help the depressed. In other words, the DWP would fain task the science-fiction author with psychological naivete. "I mean, come on!" he would essentially say, "Let's be REAL, people!"
Ten Tweets
against the hateful war on US
Drug prohibition began as a racist attempt to prevent so-called "miscegenation." The racist's fear was not that a white woman would use opium or marijuana or cocaine, but that she might actually fall in love with a Chinese, Hispanic or Black person respectively.
If Americans want less government, they should get rid of the Drug War Industrial Complex, rather than abandoning democracies around the world and leaving a vacuum for Russia and China to fill.
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.
Almost all of today's magazine articles about human psychology should come with the following disclaimer:
"This article was written from the standpoint of Drug War ideology, which holds that outlawed substances can have no beneficial uses whatsoever."
It is a violation of religious liberty to outlaw substances that inspire and elate. The Hindu religion was inspired by just such a drug.
Assisted suicide cannot be discussed meaningfully without discussing the drug prohibition that renders it necessary in the first place.
Malcolm X sensed an important truth about drugs: the fact that it was always a self-interested category error for Americans to place medical doctors in charge of mind and mood medicine.
Outlawing substances like laughing gas and MDMA makes no more sense than outlawing fire.
Here's one problem that supporters of the psychiatric pill mill never address: the fact that Big Pharma antidepressants demoralize users by turning them into patients for life.
The depressed Canadian Claire Brosseau wants the state to kill her. This is the same state that refuses to let her use drugs that could make her want to live. https://abolishthedea.com/drug_use_is_not_worse_than_death
1) What is the satirical message of this short drama?
(up)