The Drug War is bullet-riddled Greek Tragedy American-Style. It's a way of looking at the world that allows us to enforce puritan piety that passe religion can no longer command. It's a way to keep the Wild West going so that gun addicts can satisfy their need to play the good guy. Custom-made violence. It is the new Tenth Commandment. Thou shalt not use dope. It is Mary Baker Eddy on steroids. It is responsible for the OXY epidemic because it not only outlaws far safer substances but it criminalizes their mere research. It makes a boogieman and a scapegoat out of psychoactive substances (dumping them all into the discreditable category of "drugs") in a way that no other civilization has ever done.
But substances are not the problem. Ignorance is a problem. A violence-creating black market is a problem. The outlawing of safe psychoactive plant medicine is a problem. The ideological war on human consciousness, THAT is a problem. Politicians telling us how and how much we can think, that is a problem. Politicians violating natural law by presuming to tell us what plants and fungi we can access, that is a problem. DEA thugs who poison Americans with paraquat and stomp onto Monticello 1 to steal Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants, that is a problem. A tyrannical government that denies gainful employment to Americans who dare to access time-honored plant medicine, THAT is a problem.
Then, because America has such a jaundiced attitude toward psychoactive substances, we arrogantly go around the world burning plants, as if we've discovered some great truth about evil substances, never realizing that our willfully purblind attitude toward "drugs" is the problem, not amoral substances themselves. Our hatred of education. Our hatred of plant medicine. Our need for a scapegoat for social ills. Our idiotic view of psychology that takes exactly zero account of the human being's unquenchable desire for self-transcendence and "seeing beyond the veil." These are all problems, not "drugs".
If we must have a Drug War, let's crack down on alcohol use and remove anyone from the work force should their urine reveal any traces of booze whatsoever2. Let's then remove them from the voting rolls. Then let's make America great again by executing alcohol distributors, thereby hoisting the beer-swilling Drug Warriors by their own petard.
Of course I'm speaking rhetorically here. I do not personally want to punish ANYONE based on the substances that they choose to consume -- I only wish I could say the same of the vast majority of Americans, bamboozled as they are by daily doses of ideological Drug War propaganda on TV and in movies 34 (as in cop shows, for instance, in which cocaine 56 is only ever used by the scummiest of board-certified scumbags, lest the viewer get any crazy ideas about personally profiting from the psychoactive powers of Mother Nature's plant medicines).
My local community store here in the sticks sells Trump "dollar bills" at the checkout counter. I don't know what's worse: a president encouraging insurrection or an electorate that does not see that as a problem.
Prohibition is wrong root and branch. It seeks to justify the colonial disdain for indigenous healing practices through fearmongering.
Drug prohibition is a crime against humanity.
Reagan paid a personal price for his idiocy however. He fell victim to memory loss from Alzheimer's, after making a career out of demonizing substances that can grow new neurons in the brain!
If NIDA covered all drugs (not just politically ostracized drugs), they'd produce articles like this: "Aspirin continues to kill hundreds." "Penicillin misuse approaching crisis levels." "More bad news about Tylenol and liver damage." "Study revives cancer fears from caffeine."
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..."
The addiction gene should be called the prohibition gene: it renders one vulnerable to prohibition lies and limitations: like the lack of safe supply, the lack of choices, and the lack of information. We should pathologize the prohibitionists, not their victims.
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.
No drug causes addiction after one use. From this fact alone, it follows that even drugs like meth and crack and Fentanyl can be used wisely -- on an intermittent basis.
Today's war against drug users is like Elizabeth I's war against Catholics. Both are religious crackdowns. For today's oppressors, the true faith (i.e., the moral way to live) is according to the drug-hating religion of Christian Science.
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