The FDA is not qualified to judge psychoactive drugs
Here's why.
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 14, 2024
The FDA sets a ridiculous standard of safety for drugs like MDMA 1 . This is because they focus only on the downsides of use. They do not care in the least about the millions who suffer in silence thanks to the outlawing of such drugs. This is why the approval of psychoactive drugs is always based on philosophical assumptions. For the question is not just, "How dangerous is a drug?" but rather "How important are freedom of thought and the power to control one's own mind?" And the FDA has no expertise in deciding such philosophical matters!
By ignoring the needs of such would-be beneficiaries of the drug, the FDA is essentially telling us that freedom of the mind is not important and that the prime imperative in life is to avoid risk at all costs, even if it means the silent suffering of vast swaths of humanity. Of course, this default philosophical premise is a mistake, even on its own terms, for it fails to calculate, or to even consider, the risk of leaving the world full of dissatisfied people, who may take out that dissatisfaction on themselves or others.
Author's Follow-up:
April 05, 2025
This is the same FDA that approves of Big Pharma 23 drugs whose side effects as advertised on prime-time television include death itself 4 . This is the same FDA that thinks that brain-damaging shock therapy is a valuable treatment. They will not let you improve your mood with phenomenally safe drugs, many of which grow at our very feet, but not to worry: if you get TOO depressed, the FDA is ready to help you damage your brain. It may not make you thrive in life, but it will take your mind off of your problems -- and everything else for that matter.
The important thing is, you will no longer be a problem for the nursing staff that you will henceforth require. You will be all compliance and not put up a fight.
This is proof that the materialist approach to mind and mood medicine is perverted and sick. It causes the behaviorist to ignore all obvious benefits to drugs and to prefer suicide 5 to drug use. When is America going to wake up?
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.
Problem 2,643 of the war on drugs:
It puts the government in charge of deciding what counts as a true religion.
Drugs are not the enemy, ignorance is -- the ignorance that the Drug War encourages by teaching us to fear drugs rather than to understand them.
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 "acceptable risk" for psychoactive drugs can only be decided by the user, based on what they prioritize in life. Science just assumes that all users should want to live forever, self-fulfilled or not.
FDA drug approval is a farce when it comes to psychoactive medicine. The FDA ignores all the obvious benefits and pretends that to prove efficacy, they need "scientific" evidence. That's scientism, not science.
Until prohibition ends, rehab is all about enforcing a Christian Science attitude toward psychoactive medicines (with the occasional hypocritical exception of Big Pharma meds).
Using the billions now spent on caging users, we could end the whole phenomena of both physical and psychological addiction by using "drugs to fight drugs." But drug warriors do not want to end addiction, they want to keep using it as an excuse to ban drugs.
"Chemical means of peering into the contents of the inner mind have been universally prized as divine exordia in man’s quest for the beyond... before the coarseness of utilitarian minds reduced them to the status of 'dope'." -- Eric Hendrickson
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.
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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