was trying to forget about America's Drug War last night by playing a simple board game with my sister's family. Finally, I could take my mind off of the modern world's unprecedented folly of turning psychoactive substances into scapegoats and boogiemen.
Unfortunately, however, this respite was not to be, for the board game that we chose was Life, and my sister happened to own the politically correct version of that game that had been printed during the Reagan-and-Bush eras.
Our four-person game began uneventfully. We all went to college and got well-paying jobs, with the possible exception of myself, who ended up as a debt-riddled schoolmarm taking home a mere $50,000 per annum. But at least I was forgetting all about America's anti-scientific Drug War and the fact that it violated the natural law upon which Jefferson had founded this country (which, I bet the president in question was spinning in his grave when the DEA stomped onto Monticello in jackboots in 1987 and stole his poppy plants).
I was looking forward to an hour of sweet forgetfulness viz. America's Drug War superstitions, when my brother-in-law (a ridiculously well-paid travel agent) landed on one of those orange Life spaces that read: "Just say no to drugs."
Oh, boy, here we go...
"Just say no to drugs?" I thought to myself. "It may as well say: 'Just say no to the natural plant medicines of which politicians disapprove."
I came very close to making these observations public, but I finally decided to hold my tongue, lest I spawn a conversation that should tick me off still further.
But you can no doubt imagine what I was thinking:
"What next? A space that gives you a Life card for turning in your parents, should they happen to use substances of which politicians disapprove? Or a Life card that cuts your salary in half because you failed a drug test?"
And so I played the rest of the game while mentally multitasking: attending to board game business on the one hand (I came in a surprising second despite my lowly profession, amassing an improbable $1,650,000) while silently reflecting as follows:
Imagine playing this "Game of Life" in the middle of the Amazon jungle, surrounded by godsend plant meds that focus and expand the mind, and then landing on a space that says: "Just say no to all those plant medicines that surround you."
You'd be like: "What are the game-makers talking about? Just say no to drugs? Are they kidding me? Why don't THEY just say no to Drug War colonialism? Why don't they just say no to plowing up the rain forest and enslaving whole peoples in order to acquire their precious rubber? Why don't they just say no to scientism and materialism? Why don't they just say no to the financial blackmail whereby they force other countries to outlaw the godsend plant medicines of which Western politicians disapprove?"
So much for taking my mind off of America's devastatingly misguided Drug War last night. Still, the experience reminded me of how well Drug War propaganda of the 1980s (such as the highly mendacious "frying pan" ad) had succeeded in convincing Americans that there was this all-powerful evil called "drugs" that must be quashed at any cost, even if it means renouncing the freedoms that Jefferson had said were ours under the supposedly tyrant-proof protection of natural law
I hope someday the '80s board game with its "just say no" Life card will just be a quaint reminder of the unenlightened days when politicians demonized substances for racist reasons rather than encouraging safe use through education. Unfortunately, we do not seem to be headed in that direction, given our overcrowded prisons, the Drug War in Mexico, and the fact that our substance prohibition has empowered a self-proclaimed Drug War Hitler in the Philippines. Then there are the all-too-popular Drug War propaganda films (including "Crisis" and "Running with the Devil") in which the DEA gleefully violates the US Constitution, torturing and murdering so-called "drug suspects," often while the torturer and murderer are chain-smoking cigarettes, which contain a drug that is far more deadly than what their victim was selling.
Who knows? In 50 years or less, the game of Life might feature a Life card that says the following: "You have been caught selling plant medicines of which racist politicians disapprove. Remove your token from the board and return all your money to the bank!"
Author's Follow-up: May 16, 2023
Speaking of games, I've created a version of the card game Pit called "Corner on Coca!" Unfortunately, I had a massive hard drive failure after so doing and now I have to reconstitute the source material from scratch. I guess what I'm saying here is, stay tuned to this space for the perfect Christmas gift for that incorrigible Drug Warrior in your life (God bless the rascal). "See, Daddy. Here's a game that will teach you why prohibition is wrong root and branch!" And Daddy's like: "This family has always promoted policies that kill the poor and minorities, why should we stop now?"
Comedy
The drug war is laughable -- or it would be if the drug warriors hadn't deprived us of laughing gas, the substance that William James himself used to study alternate realities. (Gee, thanks, folks, for censoring academia. Don't worry, though, I'm not going to call you prohibitionists 'fascist bastards' on THAT account. Mom just didn't raise me like that.)_
"Drugs" is imperialist terminology. In the smug self-righteousness of those who use it, I hear Columbus's disdain for the shroom use of the Taino people and the Spanish disdain for the coca use of the Peruvian Indians.
Rather than protesting prohibition as a crackdown on academic freedom, today's scientists are collaborating with the drug war by promoting shock therapy and SSRIs, thereby profiting from the monopoly that the drug war gives them in selling mind and mood medicine.
When people tell us there's nothing to be gained from using mind-improving drugs, they are embarrassing themselves. Users benefit from such drugs precisely to the extent that they are educated and open-minded. Loudmouth abstainers are telling us that they lack these traits.
The drug war outlaws everything that could help both prevent addiction and treat it. And then they justify the war on drugs by scaring people with the specter of addiction. They NEED addiction to keep the drug war going.
The DEA rating system is not wrong just because it ranks drugs incorrectly. It's wrong because it ranks drugs at all. All drugs have positive uses. It's absurd to prohibit using them because one demographic might misuse them.
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..."
Americans heap hypocritical praise on Walt Whitman. What they don't realize is that many of us could be "Walt Whitman for a Day" with the wise use of psychoactive drugs. To the properly predisposed, morphine gives a DEEP appreciation of Mother Nature.
Thanks to the Drug War, folks are forced to become amateur chemists to profit from DMT, a drug that occurs naturally in most living things. This is the same Drug War that is killing American young people wholesale by refusing to teach safe use and regulate drug supply.
And so, by ignoring all "up" sides to drugs, the DEA points to potential addiction as a knock-down argument for their prohibition. This is the logic of children (and uneducated children at that). It is a cost-benefit analysis that ignores all benefits.
Champions of indigenous medicines claim that their medicines are not "drugs." But they miss the bigger point: that there are NO drugs in the sense that drug warriors use that term. There are no drugs that have no positive uses whatsoever.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, The Drug War Board Game published on August 23, 2020 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
was trying to forget about America's Drug War last night by playing a simple board game with my sister's family. Finally, I could take my mind off of the modern world's unprecedented folly of turning psychoactive substances into scapegoats and boogiemen. 
You have been reading an article entitled, The Drug War Board Game published on August 23, 2020 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
