An actual speech from an actually imagined meeting of the National Science Foundation
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm afraid there was a bit of a typo in the bulletin for today's science lecture. My speech today is not going to be on, and I quote, "Genetic Variability in Hydrastis Canadensis." (I'm not sure what your secretary was smoking when she came up with that title, since it bears so little resemblance to the actual topic of my proposed animadversions for this morning's session. Humph.)
The actual title of my address today is: "Scientists are Cowards: Yes, I'm talking to you."
[boo]
And I begin. Ahem.
There is a specter haunting Europe - and the entire free-world for that matter -- the specter of the anti-scientific Drug War.
[gasp]
You doubt it? Just hear me out.
Suppose that the Catholic Church had come forth in the last half-century and told you that there were thousands of plants that you scientists were no longer allowed to study, on pain of being ostracized, removed from your job, or perhaps even arrested?
You guys would be up in arms. Especially the rabid atheists among us. Not to mention any names, of course (such as Daniel Dennett or Sam Harris or Michael Ruse or Richard Dawkins). You'd be like: How dare the Church tell science what it can and cannot study?
[applause]
Enough with the hypocritical applause, folks, because guess what: you scientists DID let an outside force trump the cause of science over the last 50 years - it's just that the force in question was the government, not religion.
[gasp]
The Drug Warriors declared that you must stop studying a wide variety of psychoactive plants (on pain of the aforesaid penalties), and you guys essentially said, in the immortal words of Sergeant Schultz from "Hogan's Heroes": "Jawohl, Herr Kommandant. I know no-think about such plants, I say no-think about such plants!"
QED: You scientists are cowards. End of discussion.
You failed to push back and declare science off-limits to political manipulation. Not only did you thereby do a disservice to science, setting a fascist precedent for ages to come, but you thereby also consigned millions of depressed mortals to decades of unnecessary psychological suffering, suffering that could have been so profoundly alleviated by the advised introduction of psychedelic therapy, using all those psychoactive plants that the government had ordered you to ignore.
[murmur]
Hey, what can I say, folks: tell the truth and shame the devil, right?
Oh, nice. Now you're sending up your security guards to force me off stage? For shame. "Get your hands off me, you damn dirty security guard!"
Leave go! I'm almost finished!
The good news is, you scientists can make up for this pusillanimous oversight by belatedly standing up to government today, through the many scientific organizations here in the States and abroad, and declaring the obvious: that science must be free and that government must revoke all the disincentives that they have put in place in order to keep Americans from acquiring a dispassionate understanding of psychoactive plants.
Do it for science - and for the psychologically suffering around the globe.
It's time for a new Magna Carta, one that puts government in its place with respect to science!
All right, all right, I'm leaving, Tarzan!
What kills me is, the atheists among you write whole books about the dangers of the Church interfering with scientific investigation, a merely hypothetical -- if not absolutely paranoid -- concern, but they never say anything -- not one word -- about the subjugation that is taking place right in front of them even as we speak: the subjugation of scientific investigation to the political demands of the Drug War.
Author's Follow-up:
May 25, 2025
It is five years later and the idea for a Magna Carta for academic freedom is as unimaginable as ever in our brainwashed world. But at least I have gone on record so that future generations can laud me as prescient -- in the unlikely event that these words will long survive my dissolution. For as I write, these words are being passed along to you via a hosting service that will shut down shortly after I do.
But I should not pick on scientists alone. The outlawing of drugs is the outlawing of religious liberty, insofar as it is the outlawing of just the sorts of substances that have inspired entire religions. So it is not just the job of scientists to push back against the hateful ideology of substance demonization. It is our duty as freedom-loving citizens of the world as well.
Oh, what a sick thing is drug prohibition! It brought about enormous violence -- and instead of acknowledging that fact, Americans created movies like "Scarface" and "The Godfather," movies that luxuriate in the violent world that we ourselves have created by our unprecedented outlawing of all psychoactive medicines that inspire and elate. It is as if we look at the violence that we have created by drug prohibition as a business opportunity and a way of life rather than as a problem.
We have created a whole new genre of cop shows -- for absent drug law, most cops would be busy helping little old ladies across the street. Drug law brought gunfire to the streets, and undercover operations, and stakeouts, and SWAT raids, and flashy press conferences revealing confiscated "junk."
Conservatives love this violent new world that they have created, for it keeps the public's mind off of social change, whether on behalf of providing healthcare access, reducing income inequality, or anything else. It is a game of divide and conquer. As long as we can keep the country violent enough and blame that violence on drugs and minorities, then potential foes of the status quo will never come together.
The 1932 movie "Scarface" starts with on-screen text calling for a crackdown on armed gangs in America. There is no mention of the fact that a decade's worth of Prohibition had created those gangs in the first place.
The FDA will be accepting comments through September 20th on the subject of ways to fight PTSD.
PTSD@reaganudall.org
Ask them why they support brain-damaging shock therapy but won't approve drugs like MDMA that could make ECT unnecessary.
The drug war bans human progress by deciding that hundreds of drugs are trash without even trying to find positive uses for them. Yet scientists continue to research and write as if prohibition does not exist, that's how cowed they are by drug laws.
Clearly a millennia's worth of positive use of coca by the Peruvian Indians means nothing to the FDA. Proof must show up under a microscope.
The drug war is a meta-injustice. It does not just limit what you're allowed to think, it limits how and how much you are allowed to think.
The 2024 Colorado bill was withdrawn -- but only when pols realized that they had been caught in the act of outlawing free speech. They did not let opponents speak, however, because they knew the speeches would make the pols look like the anti-democratic jerks that they were.
I've been told by many that I should have seen "my doctor" before withdrawing from Effexor. But, A) My doctor got me hooked on the junk in the first place, and, B) That doctor completely ignores the OBVIOUS benefits of indigenous meds and focuses only on theoretical downsides.
Opium is a godsend, as folks like Galen, Avicenna and Paracelsus knew. The drug war has facilitated a nightmare by outlawing peaceable use at home and making safe use almost impossible.
So much harm could be reduced by shunting people off onto safer alternative drugs -- but they're all outlawed! Reducing harm should ultimately mean ending this prohibition that denies us endless godsends, like the phenethylamines of Alexander Shulgin.
Governor Kotek is "dealing" with the homelessness problem in Oregon by arresting her way out of it, in fealty to fearmongering drug warriors.
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, There is a Specter Haunting Science: the specter of the Drug War, published on January 7, 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)
You have been reading an article entitled, There is a Specter Haunting Science: the specter of the Drug War, published on January 7, 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)
