Today is National Suicide Prevention Day, but no one's talking about the 6,000-pound gorilla in the room. For the fact is that the Drug War has outlawed all the godsend psychoactive medicines that could actually help to prevent suicide.
The coca leaf has been used for millennia by the Indians of Peru to combat fatigue and keep their society together in peace and harmony. Re-legalize the leaf and the suicide crisis would disappear overnight. But Drug Warriors have tarred the leaf's reputation by conflating its effects with those of the cocaine 12 alkaloid that the leaf contains. This is like demonizing peaches because they contain prussic acid. By re-legalizing the coca leaf, we would not only cut down on suicides, but we would end the civil wars in South America that our Drug War has caused and is causing this very minute in Mexico.
Laughing gas could end the suicide crisis overnight, by giving the depressed temporary relief from sorrow -- and, as importantly, something to look forward to in their darker moments: namely, the fact that they can use laughing gas 3 occasionally to take a break from gloomy introspection. Yes, there are legitimate safety concerns with all substances, but that is precisely why we need to start educating people about safe use, rather than conducting the fearmongering smear campaigns that the Drug Warrior always launches against psychoactive medicine.
MDMA 4 (aka ecstasy) brought peace, love and understanding to the dance floor. It could work wonders in preventing suicide, and is already being fast-tracked for psychotherapy. It should have been legalized 40 years ago, but the self-serving DEA ruled against its own legal council in 1985 in order to keep the drug illegal, clearly so that the DEA could keep its relevance and its workload. (Ecstasy was blamed for a handful of deaths, but these deaths were all caused by the Drug War itself, which discourages education about substances and demonizes them instead.)
And what about the shrooms that grow at my very feet? Psilocybin is a therapeutic godsend for depression, and yet the government says I cannot use this gift from Mother Nature, thus violating the natural law upon which America was founded.
And what about ayahuasca? It has spawned new religions. Surely it could help prevent suicide as part of a therapeutic regimen of some kind.
And yet the world is so bamboozled by Drug Warrior lies that we can actually have a Suicide Prevention Day in which nobody even mentions the Drug War! Why not? Because we have been fed the unscientific lie that certain substances (namely "drugs" as hypocritically defined by racist and warmongering politicians) are bad in and of themselves, without regard for how, when or why they are used. But, of course, there are no substances of that kind. Even the deadly Botox has positive uses.
The Drug War not only encourages suicide by denying godsend medicine, but it even forces children to suffer severe pain. Why? Because many countries outlaw the use of morphine 5 in hospice because they'd rather fight a War on Drugs than to keep children from suffering intense pain.
When will this madness end? Only when America wakes up to the true evil of the anti-patient and unscientific "War on Drugs."
In short, we have no right to complain about suicide if we're not willing to complain about the Drug War.
You have no right to complain about suicide 6 if you're not willing to complain about the War on Drugs.
1 in 4 American women are chemically dependent on Big Pharma 78 drugs for life, drugs which cause emotional flat-lining in long-term users. They are eternal patients. And the Drug Warrior has no problem with this. For the Drug Warrior does not want us to stop using drugs, he or she wants us to start using the RIGHT drugs -- the ones that benefit Wall Street and the healthcare industry while giving jobs to law enforcement by outlawing the stuff that actually works when used wisely. Of course, the Drug Warriors make sure that there is no "wise use," since they're all about slandering drugs, not educating about them.
Drug Warriors will publicize all sorts of drug use -- but they will never publicize sane and positive drug use. Drug Warrior dogma holds that such use is impossible -- and, indeed, the drug war does all it can to turn that prejudice into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If any master's candidates are looking for a thesis topic, consider the following: "The Drug War versus Religion: how the policy of substance prohibition outlaws the attainment of spiritual states described by William James in 'The Varieties of Religious Experience.'"
The healthcare industry turns all the emotional downsides of drug prohibition into "illnesses."
There will always be people who don't use drugs wisely, just as there are car drivers who don't drive wisely, and rock climbers who fall to their death. America needs to grow up and accept this, while ending prohibition and teaching safe use.
Classic prohibitionist gaslighting, telling me that "drugs" is a neutral term. What planet are they living on?
It's already risky to engage in free and honest speech about drugs online: Colorado politicians tried to make it absolutely illegal in February 2024. The DRUG WAR IS ALL ABOUT DESTROYING DEMOCRACY THRU IGNORANT AND INTOLERANT FEARMONGERING.
The press once again hauls out the easy answer. Reiner's son was using drugs! Aha! Of course, that explains EVERYTHING! [sigh]
I should have added to that last post: "I in no way want to glorify or condone drug demonization."
Opium and cocaine have a vast host of potential rational uses -- yet we all have to pretend otherwise in the age of the Drug War.
People magazine should be fighting for justice on behalf of the thousands of American young people who are dying on the streets because of the drug war.
Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.
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