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Troy Ange and Zane Kaleem Get It (almost)

in their article 'We Must Legalize Opioids Now'

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

July 5, 2021



Just read an article by Troy Ange and Zane Kaleem on Medpage Today entitled "We Must Legalize Opioids Now."

I kind of agree. But Troy and Zane fail to understand that the opioid crisis is just one of many inevitable results of substance prohibition itself. And since legalizing opioids is such a big ask already, they might as well go for the brass ring and pursue the legalization 1 of all naturally occurring substances, including opium itself.

My views on this topic are perhaps made somewhat clearer in the following comment I posted beneath the article above cited, though my comment was really in response to another comment by a certain Dr. Michael Atkins, who IMHO betrayed his allegiance -- consciously or otherwise -- to a variety of Drug Warrior lies.



Does Michael not realize that no one in their right mind would use a super-addictive opioid if all psychoactive plant substances (like opium , pot and mushrooms) were legal -- like they have been thru 99.9% of recorded history, until America, the one nation founded on Natural Law, decided for racist reasons to start outlawing plants in 1914? It is the outlawing of all natural mood-affecting psychoactive substances that has incentivized bad guys to profit by selling highly addictive synthesized drugs. The result, Michael? We have an all-out war in Mexico, prisons full of minorities, a self-proclaimed "Drug War Hitler" in the Philippines, and movies 2 3 in which Americans are encouraged to cheer on DEA agents who are gleefully violating the US Constitution -- a document which they obviously hold in disdain. Besides, doctors have no leg to stand on in denouncing addiction, since they tell addicted psychiatric patients like myself to "keep taking our meds." After 40 years of addiction to doctors' brain-numbing drugs, however (oh, pardon me, their "meds"), I am as depressed as ever and longing to be able to use opium weekly instead (to better enjoy a concert, a la De Quincey). If I'm going to be addicted for life, I would prefer a substance that can assist my creativity and insight. Besides, opium is NOT addictive if used properly, whereas Big Pharma 4 5 antidepressants 6 are addictive BY DESIGN. They're meant to be taken every day of one's life! Marco Polo enjoyed opium 7 . As did Benjamin Franklin and Marcus Aurelius. If someone they knew had died of an overdose, they would have blamed a lack of education, both about substances and about life in general, rather than superstitiously blaming the death on an inanimate substance called a "drug."









Notes:

1: “National Coalition for Drug Legalization.” n.d. National Coalition for Drug Legalization. https://www.nationalcoalitionfordruglegalization.org/. (up)
2: Glenn Close but no cigar DWP (up)
3: Running with the torture loving DEA DWP (up)
4: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
5: LaMattina, John. n.d. “Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of the FDA’s Drug Division Budget?” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2022/09/22/why-is-biopharma-paying-75-of-the-fdas-drug-division-budget/. (up)
6: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
7: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)




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Antidepressants might be fine in a world where drugs were legal. Then it would actually be possible to get off them by using drugs that have inspired entire religions. In the age of prohibition, however, an antidepressant prescription is usually a life sentence.

The outlawing of opium eventually resulted in an "opioid crisis"? The message is clear: people want self-transcendence. If we don't let them find it safely, they will find it dangerously.

The fact that drugs have positive uses for human beings is a psychological corollary of Husserl's phenomenology and Whitehead's philosophy of organism.

It wasn't until western prudery and racism came along that we started to judge people by the substances that they chose to ingest, rather than by their actual behavior in the world.

Scientists are censored as to what they can study thanks to drug law. Instead of protesting that outrage, they lend a false scientific veneer to those laws via their materialist obsession with reductionism, which blinds them to the obvious godsend effects of outlawed substances.

Even prohibition haters have their own list of drugs that they feel should be outlawed. They're missing the point. We should not drugs "up or down" any more than we should judge penicillin or aspirin in that way.

William James knew that there were substances that could elate. However, it never occurred to him that we should use such substances to prevent suicide. It seems James was blinded to this possibility by his puritanical assumptions.

Drug war pundits need to stop using the word "snorts" when it comes to cocaine. We "take" our "meds," and yet we "snort" cocaine, just like a pig. That is NOT neutral language, folks!

The search for SSRIs has always been based on a flawed materialist premise that human consciousness is nothing but a mix of brain chemicals and so depression can be treated medically like any other physical condition.

Drug prohibition is superstitious idiocy. It is based on the following crazy idea: that a substance that can be misused by a white young person at one dose for one reason must not be used by anybody at any dose for any reason.


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