The Drug War is wrong root and branch. It was begun to disfranchise minorities while allowing the US to invade other countries at will, under the pretext of fighting the politically created boogieman called "drugs." We're legalizing pot today only because it's becoming overwhelmingly popular with Anglo-Americans. We keep cocaine criminalized because it is associated with Hispanics and Blacks (even tho' Freud himself considered cocaine 12 to be a godsend for his depression and it has been used for millennia by MesoAmericans, all without a lot of belly-aching about the supposed immorality of it all). What's the result? We're causing a Civil War in Mexico, empowering a self-described "Drug War Hitler" in the Philippines, and sending militarized police forces into hitherto sacrosanct American homes, all in an effort to keep the world from accessing the plant medicine that grows at their very feet (which is a violation of Natural Law, by the way, should America's legal system ever choose to wake up from their self-satisfied slumber and face this outrage head-on).
If we have to have a Drug War, let's jail everyone who has so much as a trace of alcohol or tobacco in their system. Let's remove them from the work force and force them to urinate for us upon demand. Let's remove them from the voting rolls and throw them into overcrowded prisons. That's a Drug War that would give the Drug Warriors a taste of their own medicine. (Of course, let's break down the doors of all these tobacco and alcohol "fiends," kick their family members in the groin while shouting, "Get down! Get Down!"
Besides, why should I listen to the views of a microbe?
The UK just legalized assisted dying. This means that you can use drugs to kill a person, but you still can't use drugs to make that person want to live.
It's funny to hear fans of sacred plants indignantly insisting that their meds are not "drugs." They're right in a way, but actually NO substances are "drugs." Calling substances "drugs" is like referring to striking workers as "scabs." It's biased terminology.
The Drug War is a religion. The "addict" is a sinner who has to come home to the true faith of Christian Science. In reality, neither physical nor psychological addiction need be a problem if all drugs were legal and we used them creatively to counter problematic use.
Problem 2,643 of the war on drugs:
It puts the government in charge of deciding what counts as a true religion.
We should not be talking about the potential harm of drugs -- we should be talking about the well-established harm of drug PROHIBITION.
Many psychonauts (like Terence McKenna) praise psychedelics while demonizing other psychoactive substances. No substance is bad in itself. All substances have some use at some dose for some reason for some people in some circumstance.
Don't the Oregon prohibitionists realize that all the thousands of deaths from opiates is so much blood on their hands?
That's why I created the satirical Partnership for a Death Free America. It demonstrates clearly that drug warriors aren't worried about our health, otherwise they'd outlaw shopping carts, etc. The question then becomes: what are they REALLY afraid of? Answer: Free thinkers.
If we encourage folks to use antidepressants daily, there is nothing wrong with them using heroin daily. A founder of Johns Hopkins used morphine daily and he not only survived, but he thrived.
(up)