"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.
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.
Assisted suicide cannot be discussed meaningfully without discussing the drug prohibition that renders it necessary in the first place.
This is why I call the drug war 'fanatical Christian Science.' People would rather have grandpa die than to let him use laughing gas or coca or opium or MDMA, etc. etc.
NOW is the time for entheogens -- not (as Strassman and Pollan seem to think) at some future date when materialists have finally wrapped their minds around the potential usefulness of drugs that experientially teach compassion.
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!
Americans were always free to take care of their own health -- until drug warriors handed doctors a monopoly on providing mind and mood medicine.
The drug war is a slow-motion coup against democracy.
"Dope Sick"? "Prohibition Sick" is more like it. The very term "dope" connotes imperialism, racism and xenophobia, given that all tribal cultures have used "drugs" for various purposes. "Dope? Junk?" It's hard to imagine a more intolerant, dismissive and judgmental terminology.
Suicidal people should be given drugs that cheer them up immediately and whose use they can look forward to. The truth is, we would rather such people die than to give them such drugs, that's just how bamboozled we are by the war against drugs.
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