It's wrong to tell kids to say no to drugs. That's Christian Science. That's religious indoctrination. Why do you assume that mind medicine is evil? You surely don't think that physical medicine is evil. Some of the drugs that you tell kids to say "No" to have inspired entire religions. So stop the CHRISTIAN SCIENCE indoctrination.
Signs that read Drug Free Zone are proselytizing on behalf of the drug-hating religion of Christian Science. We should not want to be free of drugs in cases where they could be useful -- which are potentially legion in a sane world.
It's fine to teach kids not to accept drugs from kids and strangers, but it's wrong to teach them to despise the politically defined boogieman called "drugs."
Organizations like DARE increase substance abuse because you're always reminding kids about "DRUGS DRUGS DRUGS!" You never let them forget about it. Well, guess what:
that just gives kids ideas. If they want to rebel, they know what to do: take those dirty evil awful drugs that the parents are always trying to frighten them about.
Check out the research: the drugs that you demonize could be godsends for the depressed and lonely. But organizations like yours have forced depressed folks like myself to go an entire lifetime without the godsend medicine that grows at my very feet, all so that you can demonize Mother Nature's plant medicine -- after racist politicians have given alcohol and tobacco a great big MULLIGAN, even though those drugs kill half a million Americans every year!
If you're going to tell kids to say no to drugs, then stop being hypocritical. Tell them to say no to Big Pharma 12 antidepressants 3 -- upon which ONE IN FOUR AMERICAN WOMEN ARE HOOKED FOR LIFE. Tell them to say no to coffee. Tell them to say no to sugar. Tell them to say no to Pepto-Bismol, aspirin and heart medicine.
Or better yet, tell them the unvarnished truth about ALL drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, not just those spectacular but rare anecdotes of abuse that drug-haters cite whenever the drugs that they hate have proven to be extraordinarily safe, statistically speaking.
Speaking of which...
SCHOOL SHOOTINGS could be ended by the therapeutic use of the drug Ecstasy, a drug that teaches folks to care about their fellow human being, but you guys are so caught up in a frenzy of knee-jerk drug demonization that you can't even imagine this glaringly obvious solution to this enormous problem of our time.
In short, DARE promotes an unscientific view of plant medicine. It is a jaundiced drug-war view that has censored American scientists, caused civil wars overseas, empowered a self-styled Drug War Hitler in the Philippines, and caused almost 800 black deaths in Chicago alone last year thanks to the guns and violence that naturally follow from prohibition. For as Heath Ann Thompson wrote in the Atlantic in 2014: "Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence 4 that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist."
September 24, 2022
DARE's superstitious demonization of drugs hurts children in hospices. Yes, there are hospices that refuse to give dying children morphine 5 to ease their pain because of the drug-warrior lie that substances like morphine 6 are evil in and of themselves, without regard for how, why or when they are used. If DARE wants to help children, they would disband, or devote their efforts to promoting full-on honesty about ALL drugs (including alcohol and anti-depressants) -- the honesty to which America has been so firmly opposed for a variety of political and economic motivations too obvious to require mentioning here.
Author's Follow-up: February 7, 2023
And what about those signs that read DRUG FREE ZONE? Posting signs like that around schools makes as much sense as posting signs that read: SEX FREE ZONE. You're only giving kids ideas about something about which they need to make up their minds as adults. For it's not education's role to teach kids the doctrine of Mary Baker Eddy with respect to psychoactive medicine. Kids have to make up their own minds: is psychoactive medicine a blessing sent from God or is it a curse sent from the devil, as the Drug Warrior seems to think? That's a decision for educated adults to make: neither DARE nor anybody else should try to influence their decisions in grade school, of all places, nor constantly nag them on the subject and thereby put unhelpful thoughts in youngsters' heads.
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Author's Follow-up: January 19, 2025
The Drug Warriors know what they're doing. Get to them while they're young, teach them to fear drugs rather than to understand them. That way they'll grow up into fearful citizens, ready to accept any loss of freedom in the name of fighting a phantom, thereby keeping their minds off of real problems. Hysterical Drug Warriors like Marci Hamilton liken drug use to child abuse7 -- but the real child abuse occurs when we indoctrinate children in grade school in the drug-hating tenets of the Christian Science religion. We thereby encourage a drug prohibition which brings totally unnecessary torture and violence into the world while denying us a host of potential godsends that common sense and creativity could leverage as powerful psychological benefactors for individuals and communities alike.
But the Drug Warrior prefers that our children be proselytized about drugs, not educated about them.
It is a disgrace, and groups like DARE should be disbanded and held accountable for their brainwashing of our children in the idiotic know-nothing ideology of substance demonization.
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.
The "scheduling" system is completely anti-scientific and anti-patient. It tells us we can make a one-size-fits-all decision about psychoactive substances without regard for dosage, context of use, reason for use, etc. That's superstitious tyranny.
The healthcare industry turns all the emotional downsides of drug prohibition into "illnesses."
Outlawing opium was the ultimate government power grab. It put the government in charge of pain relief.
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.
Someone tweeted that fears about a Christian Science theocracy are "baseless." Tell that to my uncle who was lobotomized because they outlawed meds that could cheer him up -- tell that to myself, a chronic depressive who could be cheered up in an instant with outlawed meds.
Almost all addiction services assume that the goal should be to get off all drugs. That is not science, it is Christian Science.
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.
In 1886, coca enthusiast JJ Tschudi referred to prohibitionists as 'kickers.' He wrote: "If we were to listen to these kickers, most of us would die of hunger, for the reason that nearly everything we eat or drink has fallen under their ban."
Imagine the Vedic people shortly after they have discovered soma. Everyone's ecstatic -- except for one oddball. "I'm not sure about these experiences," says he. "I think we need to start dissecting the brains of our departed adherents to see what's REALLY going on in there."
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.
And what about those signs that read DRUG FREE ZONE? Posting signs like that around schools makes as much sense as posting signs that read: SEX FREE ZONE. You're only giving kids ideas about something about which they need to make up their minds as adults. For it's not education's role to teach kids the doctrine of Mary Baker Eddy with respect to psychoactive medicine. Kids have to make up their own minds: is psychoactive medicine a blessing sent from God or is it a curse sent from the devil, as the Drug Warrior seems to think? That's a decision for educated adults to make: neither DARE nor anybody else should try to influence their decisions in grade school, of all places, nor constantly nag them on the subject and thereby put unhelpful thoughts in youngsters' heads.
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