*Then again, it's not so hard to say. If you're a millionaire Senator with a portfolio that's loaded with pharmaceutical stocks, the last thing you want is for non-addictive plants to become available that would render Big Pharma 6 7 's addictive nostrums obsolete.
"Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence 8 that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist." --Heather Ann Thompson, from Inner-City Violence in the Age of Mass Incarceration9
"The contempt with which the jazzman is regarded can be seen in a story which famed trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie tells about being searched for drugs by police in Philadelphia. He refused to be searched and asked the police if they searched violinist Isaac Stern when he played in Philadelphia. Obviously, the police applied different standards to Stern than to Gillespie, although both men are great musicians.10"
We drastically limit drug choices, we refuse to teach safe use, and then we discover there's a gene to explain why some people have trouble with drugs. Science loves to find simple solutions to complex problems.
Today's drug laws tell us that we must respect the historical use of sacred medicines, while denying us our personal right to use them unless our ancestors did so. That's a meta-injustice! It negatively affects the way that we are allowed to experience our world!
It's almost impossible not to have a problem with drugs in a world in which the government is spending over $50 billion a year to render drug use problematic.
At best, antidepressants make depression bearable. We need not settle for such drugs, especially when they are notorious for causing dependence. There are many drugs that elate and inspire. It is both cruel and criminal to outlaw them.
The drug war is a scare campaign to teach us to distrust mother nature and to rely on pharmaceuticals instead.
Most enemies of inner-city gun violence refuse to protest against the drug prohibition which caused the violence in the first place.
That's why we damage the brains of the depressed with shock therapy rather than let them use coca or opium. That's why many regions allow folks to kill themselves but not to take drugs that would make them want to live. The Drug War is a perversion of social priorities.
I just can't believe... [image]
If anyone manages to die during an ayahuasca ceremony, it is considered a knockdown argument against "drugs." If anyone dies during a hunting club get-together, it is considered the victim's own damn fault.
The DEA outlawed MDMA in 1985, thereby depriving soldiers of a godsend treatment for PTSD. Apparently, the DEA staff slept well at night in the early 2000s as American soldiers were having their lives destroyed by IEDs.
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