Yes, and it also demonizes mother nature's plants and violates the natural law upon which America was founded
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
May 30, 2020
I recently received an e-mail from Gov Mike Huckabee, chairman of My Faith Votes, in which he lambasted "the nanny state" and asked me to help end it.
What hypocrisy! A man who is dedicated to a Drug War that gives government the right to tell me which plants I can even touch, let alone use or research... and he's going to complain about the nanny state? Know-nothing politicians like Mike have created the most egregious nanny state in human history, one which, since 1914, has put Mother Nature's plants under the control of big government.
So I responded to Mike's request with the argument that follows, which surely would have been longer except for the fact that his website limited me to one full paragraph worth of dumbfounded indignation.
You outlaw Mother Nature's plants and call it a Drug War -- plants that God said were "good" and gave to us in Genesis -- and yet you dislike a nanny state? Wake up, Mike! Since 1914, your government has violated the natural law that America was founded on by telling us what plants we can use and even research. Millions have died because of this war. Millions have gone without godsend plant medicines that can't even be researched. Meanwhile, the DEA has lied for four decades about Mother Nature's plants, thereby depriving the sad, lonely and shell-shocked hundreds of Godsend psychoactive substances that could have improved their lives. Stop complaining about a nanny state when you are responsible for the biggest nanny state in human history: a state that -- for the first time in history -- decides for its citizens which plants it can use and which it must avoid. Meanwhile, study up on your natural law. John Locke himself said that human beings have a right "to the use of the land and all that lies therein." Yet you demonize plant substances as "drugs" and ungratefully turn God into a drug kingpin with your hateful anti-patient and Christian Science demagoguery about Mother Nature's plants. Freud used cocaine 12 to improve his mind, not to fry it. Benjamin Franklin used opium 3 to increase his creativity. Francis Crick used psychedelics to help him discover the DNA helix. Drugs are neither good nor bad except for how they are used: They are medicines, not devil plants. It's your blatant hypocrisy on this subject that turns me off 100% from "MY FAITH VOTES." Because right now: YOUR FAITH creates a violent black market and blocks vital research on godsend medications.
The best harm reduction strategy would be to re-legalize opium and cocaine. We would thereby end depression in America and free Americans from their abject reliance on the healthcare industry, meanwhile ending gang violence and restoring the rule of law in Latin America.
This pretend concern for the safety of young drug users is bizarre in a country that does not even criminalize bump stocks for automatic weapons.
There are times when it is clearly WRONG to deny kids drugs (whatever the law may say). If your child is obsessed with school massacres, he or she is an excellent candidate for using empathogenic meds ASAP -- or do we prefer even school shootings to drug use???
Drugs that sharpen the mind should be thoroughly investigated for their potential to help dementia victims. Instead, we prefer to demonize these drugs as useless. That's anti-scientific and anti-patient.
There would be little or no profiling of blacks if the Drug War did not exist.
M. Pollan says "not so fast" when it comes to drug re-legalization. I say FAST? I've gone a whole lifetime w/o access to Mother Nature's plants. How can a botanist approve of that? Answer: By ignoring all legalization stakeholders except for the kids whom we refuse to educate.
The American Philosophy Association should make itself useful and release a statement saying that the drug war is based on fallacious reasoning, namely, the idea that substances can be bad in themselves, without regard for why, when, where and/or how they are used.
The idea that "drugs" have no medical benefits is not science, it is philosophy, and bad philosophy at that. It is based on the idea that benefits must be molecularly demonstratable and not created from mere knock-on psychological effects of drug use, time-honored tho' they be.
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
My impression has been that the use of cocaine over a long time can bring about lasting improvement..." --Sigmund Freud, On Cocaine, 1884
(up)