he title of this essay is so controversial in the age of the Drug War that I despair of defending it in the traditional way, by reasoned argument. The metaphorical hooting and jeering of the average reader would drown me out long before I came to my otherwise ineluctable conclusion, namely that outlawing mother nature's medicines creates infinitely more problems than treating them for what they are: to wit, a botanical fact of life with which we are naturally surrounded as denizens of planet Earth.
So instead of even trying to advance my own arguments for the re-legalization of what after all is mere plant medicine, let us consider what the Drug War has "accomplished" by outlawing opium in 1914 -- and subsequently outlawing coca, marijuana, and finally virtually every potentially helpful psychoactive substance in the world (to the astonished approbation of the burgeoning health-care industry in the early 1900s, which suddenly had a monopoly, not simply on treating physical ills, but on treating psychological ills as well).
Drug War "Accomplishments"
It has created a psychiatric pill mill upon which 1 in 4 American women are chemically dependent for life, the largest chemical dependency in human history.
It has denied godsend pain medicine to dying children under the theory that drugs like morphine are somehow evil without regard to why they are used.
It has forced us to allow our elderly parents to die miserably, by "withholding life support" rather than allowing them to drift off painlessly to sleep with the help of an opium derivative such as morphine.
It has REQUIRED the use of brain-damaging electroshock therapy in severe cases of depression that might otherwise have been treated with no-brainer godsends like MDMA, psilocybin and laughing gas.
It has turned inner cities into shooting galleries, thanks to Drug War prohibition which created armed gangs out of whole cloth.
It has imprisoned millions of minorities, thereby removing them (either officially or effectively) from the voting rolls, thereby facilitating the election of drug-warrior demagogues.
It has created civil wars overseas, which the US can leverage as an excuse to intervene in foreign countries.
It has forced US soldiers to go for four decades now without the use of MDMA to fight PTSD, thanks to the self-serving DEA which ignored the advice of its own council in 1985 in order to maintain its workload when it comes to cracking down on "Ecstasy."
It has outlawed plant medicines that have inspired entire religions in the past, thereby outlawing the very fountainhead of the religious impulse in humankind
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It has censored scientists by barring them from effectively investigating criminalized plant medicines, censorship made all the more insidious by the fact that most scientists do not even recognize that it exists.
But in perhaps the greatest irony of all, the criminalization of opium in particular has led to... wait for it, folks... an opioid epidemic!
When will the Drug Warriors learn: you can outlaw substances but you cannot outlaw the human desire for self-transcendence?
The answer is obvious. We must make it as safe as possible for folks to pursue self-transcendence, through education and a safe drug supply.
The Drug Warrior, on the other hand, reminds us of the governess in 'The Turn of the Screw' by Henry James. Mrs. Grose is so myopically determined to protect Miles and Flora from the perceived dangers of an illusory phantom (the ghostly former valet known as Peter Quint) that she ends up causing Miles' death and estranging herself from Flora forever: just the sort of Pyrrhic victory that the Drug War has achieved by myopically outlawing naturally occurring medicines like opium.
The drug war encourages us to judge people based on what they use and in what context. Even if the couch potato had no conscious health goals, their use of MJ is very possibly shielding them from health problems, like headaches, sleeplessness, and overreliance on alcohol.
Materialist puritans do not want to create any drug that elates. So they go on a fool's errand to find reductionist cures for "depression itself," as if the vast array of human sadness could (or should) be treated with a one-size-fits-all readjustment of brain chemicals.
We need a few brave folk to "act up" by shouting "It's the drug war!" whenever folks are discussing Mexican violence or inner city shootings. The media treat both topics as if the violence is inexplicable! We can't learn from mistakes if we're in denial.
This massive concern for safety is downright bizarre in a country that will not even criminalize bump stocks for automatic weapons.
I've been told by many that I should have seen "my doctor" before withdrawing from Effexor. But, A) My doctor got me hooked on the junk in the first place, and, B) That doctor completely ignores the OBVIOUS benefits of indigenous meds and focuses only on theoretical downsides.
It is consciousness which, via perception, shapes the universe into palpable forms. Otherwise it's just a chaos of particles. The very fact that you can refer to "the sun" shows that your senses have parsed the raw data into a specific meaning. "We" make this universe.
We've got to take the fight TO the drug warriors by starting to hold them legally responsible for having spread "Big Lies" about "drugs." Anyone involved in producing the "brain frying" PSA of the 1980s should be put on trial for willfully spreading a toxic lie.
Until we get rid of all these obstacles to safe and informed use, it's presumptuous to explain problematic drug use with theories about addiction. Drug warriors are rigging the deck in favor of problematic use. They refuse to even TEACH non-problematic use.
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."
As such, "we" are important. The sun is just a chaos of particles that "we" have selected out of the rest of the raw data and declared "This we shall call the sun!" "We" make this universe. Consciousness is fundamental.
Listen to the Drug War Philosopher as he tells you how you can support his work to end the hateful drug war -- and, ideally, put the DEA on trial for willfully lying about godsend medicines! (How? By advertising on this page right c'here!)
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, Re-Legalize Opium Now published on August 21, 2022 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)
he title of this essay is so controversial in the age of the Drug War that I despair of defending it in the traditional way, by reasoned argument. The metaphorical hooting and jeering of the average reader would drown me out long before I came to my otherwise ineluctable conclusion, namely that outlawing mother nature's medicines creates infinitely more problems than treating them for what they are: to wit, a botanical fact of life with which we are naturally surrounded as denizens of planet Earth.
You have been reading an article entitled, Re-Legalize Opium Now published on August 21, 2022 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)