Scientists are responsible for endless incarcerations in America. Why? Because they fail to denounce the DEA lie that psychoactive substances have no positive medical uses. This is so obviously wrong that only an academic in an Ivory Tower could believe it.
I then got some apparent pushback, stating that scientists have been trying for years to get the DEA to acknowledge drug benefits and that conservatives are the real problem.
This is true in a way, but not without major important qualifications, and so I responded to this thoughtful individual with a small barrage of qualifying tweets, which I hope elucidated rather than miffed.
I reproduce my responses here in the hopes of illuminating the subtleties involved in this important topic viz. scientists and their guilt (or lack thereof) in promoting the War on Drugs -- and its hateful incarcerations of people who are, after all, merely trying to improve their own damn minds!
1) Yeah, there are definitely good guys out there. Unfortunately, they are either limited by their materialist orthodoxy into adducing only specific and limited microscopic evidence or they abandon materialism for the nonce and talk the common psychological sense that we all understand implicitly and for which we need neither degrees nor lab coats.
2) In other words, scientists qua scientists (i.e., as materialists) are very limited in what they can demonstrate positively about drugs. This is because it is a category error to consider them specialists about human emotions and psychology in the first place.
3) Folks like Ben Franklin enjoyed opium and used it wisely and to good effect, as did Marcus Aurelius. But to PROVE that this helped them is asking a lot. Indeed, it's asking too much. Materialist science is not qualified to do that: the user's own successful life itself IS the evidence of efficacy! (When we look elsewhere for proof of efficacy, we are like OJ Simpson launching a search for a killer -- anyone at all, other than himself.)
4) And so when scientists and/or the d e a claim a lack of established benefits, they are making a philosophical statement peculiar to westerners, that efficacy must be judged under a microscope.
5) Conservatives set the pernicious trend in the Drug War and are happy to have materialist scientists in charge of determining drug efficacy. they know that such progress will be glacial. the fda STILL can't wrap its materialist head around the obvious, that mdma 'works,' in every meaningful sense of that word.
And so while it's fine to say that scientists have tried to be helpful, that statement can only be properly understood in the light of a number of important qualifications that could never be compressed into a single tweet (except perhaps by the linguistically thrifty William Shakespeare himself) hence the foregoing mini essay.
Cocaine
Cocaine can be used wisely, believe it or not. Just ask Carl Hart. Or Graham Norton, the UK's quixotic answer to Johnny Carson. Just ask the Peruvian Indians, who have chewed the coca leaf for stamina and inspiration since Pre-Inca days. You have been taught to hate cocaine by a lifetime of censorship -- and by an FDA which dogmatically ignores all positive aspects of drug use, just as they ignore all downsides to prohibition.
Laws are never going to stop westerners from using cocaine, nor should they. Such laws are not making the world safe. To the contrary, laws against cocaine have made our world unthinkably violent! It has created cartels out of whole cloth, cartels that engage in torture and which suborn government officials, to the point that "the rule of law" is little more than a joke south of the border.
This is the enormous price tag of America's hateful policy of substance prohibition: the overthrow of democratic norms around the world.
The eerie bit is that most leading drug warriors understand this fact and approve of it. Too much democracy is anathema to the powers-that-be.
So... "Is cocaine use good or bad?" The question does not even make sense. Cocaine use is a blessing for some, just a little fun for most, and a curse for a few. Just like any other risky activity.
An Englishman's home is his castle.
An American's home is a bouncy castle for the DEA.
The DEA should be put on trial for crimes against humanity for withholding godsend medicine from the depressed. Here is just one typical drug-user report that appeared in "Pihkal": "A glimpse of what true heaven is supposed to feel like..."
We know that anticipation and mental focus and relaxation have positive benefits -- but if these traits ae facilitated by "drugs," then we pretend that these same benefits somehow are no longer "real." This is a metaphysical bias, not a logical deduction.
The DEA is a Schedule I agency. It has no known positive uses and is known to cause death and destruction.
Science keeps telling us that godsends have not been "proven" to work. What? To say that psilocybin has not been proven to work is like saying that a hammer has not yet been proven to smash glass. Why not? Because the process has not yet been studied under a microscope.
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."
Problem 2,643 of the war on drugs:
It puts the government in charge of deciding what counts as a true religion.
There is an absurd safety standard for "drugs." The cost/benefit analysis of the FDA & co. never takes into account the costs of NOT prescribing nor the benefits of a productive life well lived. The "users" are not considered stakeholders.
It's "convenient" for scientists that their "REAL" cures happen to be the ones that racist politicians will allow. Scientists thus normalize prohibition by pretending that outlawed substances have no therapeutic value. It's materialism collaborating with the drug war.
Being a lifetime patient is not the issue: that could make perfect sense in certain cases. But if I am to be "using" for life, I demand the drug of MY CHOICE, not that of Big Pharma and mainstream psychiatry, who are dogmatically deaf to the benefits of hated substances.
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, Scientific Collaboration in the War on Drugs published on October 1, 2024 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)
oday I posted the following tweet on X:
You have been reading an article entitled, Scientific Collaboration in the War on Drugs published on October 1, 2024 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)
