The leader of our current regime in Washington, D.C., is famous for warning terrorists that he will find them and he will kill them. He has invoked some version of that threat multiple times in his so-called foreign policy: in his speeches about Boko Haram, in his comments about ISIS, and most recently in his address to the United Nations in which he threatened (once again) to annihilate Iran. He will find them and he will kill them. So there! Even Lara Trump worked that trope into a convention speech in Detroit in 2024, when she told the MAGA crowd that "We will find you, we will track you down and we will prosecute you to the full extent of the law." She was referring to anyone who so much as THOUGHT about cheating in an election. That latter version, however, does not roll off the tongue as easily as the original phrase which was taken (appropriately enough) from the movie "Taken," starring Liam Neeson. In that 2008 thriller, the star calmly informs his daughter's overseas kidnappers via landline that he is going to find them and he is going to kill them, even if he has to beat astronomical odds in order to do so.
Drug warriors have harnessed the perfect storm. Prohibition caters to the interests of law enforcement, psychotherapy, Big Pharma, demagogues, puritans, and materialist scientists, who believe that consciousness is no big "whoop" and that spiritual states are just flukes.
What attracts me about "drug dealers" is that they are NOT interested in prying into my private life. What a relief! With psychiatry, you are probed for pathological behavior on every office visit. You are a child. To the "drug dealer," I am an adult at least.
In Mexico, the same substance can be considered a "drug" or a "med," depending on where you are in the country. It's just another absurd result of the absurd policy of drug prohibition.
Scientists are so used to ignoring "drugs" that they don't even realize they're doing it. Yet almost all books about consciousness and depression (etc.) are nonsense these days because they ignore what drugs could tell us about those topics.
Drug War propaganda is all about convincing us that we will never be able to use drugs wisely. But the drug warriors are not taking any chances: they're doing all they can to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The DEA is still saying that psilocybin has no medical uses and is addictive. They should be put on trial for crimes against humanity for using such lies to keep people from using the gifts of Mother Nature.
Americans are starting to think that psychedelics may be an exception to the rule that drugs are evil -- but drugs have never been evil. The evil resides in how we think, talk and legislate about drugs.
Even the worst forms of "abuse" can be combatted with a wise use of a wide range of psychoactive drugs, to combat both physical and psychological cravings. But drug warriors NEED addiction to be a HUGE problem. That's their golden goose.
William James claimed that his constitution prevented him from having mystical experiences. The fact is that no one is prevented from having mystical experiences provided that they are willing to use psychoactive substances wisely to attain that end.
Well, today's Oregon vote scuttles any ideas I might have entertained about retiring in Oregon.
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