just read a tweet in which a certain MLLanzillotta1 claims that he is not pro-drug, he's simply "pro-pragmatism."
This is the usual line of the bamboozled libertarian. They believe with the conservatives that there are, indeed, these horrible things out there called "drugs" that should not be used, but they acknowledge that people are going to use them so (sigh!) we should do our best to help them as needed.
I couldn't agree less with this approach to opposing the Drug War.
Here is the reply I posted on Twitter:
I am pro-drugs, because right now we fry the brains of the depressed with shock therapy rather than let them chew the coca leaf. Sobriety is no goal in itself. Most suicides could pass a drug test. The idea that drugs are "bad" is Christian Science.
Folks like MLLanzillotta1 fail to grasp the fact that "drugs" is a political term, not a scientific one, and that medicines like coca and shrooms have inspired entire religions. Nor do they realize that the meds that we classify as "drugs" can do extraordinary things, like cure stuttering overnight (as in the case of Paul Stamets and shrooms), help us envision the DNA helix (Francis Crick and LSD) and inspire great stories (HG Wells and Coca Wine). "Drugs," as MLLanzillotta1 calls them (or rather slanders them) inspired Plato's view of the afterlife. For "drugs" is just modern slang for "substances of which botanically clueless politicians disapprove."
But MLLanzillotta1 has plenty of company. Whenever I talk about such things, I try not to get too excited from the favorable reactions I receive, because I know that most folks hate prohibition for the wrong reason. They think it was a good idea that does not work, or that prohibition is cruel as currently implemented. But they are usually completely ignorant of the fact that the very term "drugs" as used today is a modern invention which proposes a sort of pharmacological dualism, in which we have the evil "drugs" on one side of the extant pharmacopoeia and the sainted "meds" on the other, what Julian Buchanan refers to as drug apartheid.
ML and company are victims of Drug War propaganda. They've been indoctrinated to "hate drugs." They may well have received a teddy bear from DARE as a child for saying no to Mother Nature's godsend medicines. The media then shielded them from stories about POSITIVE uses of "drugs," by featuring "users" as scumbags. We don't see Jules Verne drinking coca wine on TV and in movies: instead we see a scroungy looking "bad guy" in denim "snorting blow" under a dangling light bulb in a cellar with a prostitute on his lap. Then we check the urine of ML and company, not to see if they're impaired, but merely to see if they are Christian Science heretics, using substances of which religion founder Mary Baker Eddy would disapprove.
No wonder ML says to himself: "Yeah, drugs are really bad, indeed!"
But with uninformed friends like these in the anti-prohibition movement, who needs enemies?
I am DEFINITELY pro-drugs -- because it is Big Pharma's "meds," not "drugs," that have addicted me for life, ML.
Meanwhile it's DRUGS like MDMA and psilocybin that could help bring about world peace and end school shootings.
Who is not in favor of that?
Or would we prefer nuclear annihilation to legalizing MDMA, in the same way that we currently prefer frying the brains of the depressed to legalizing the coca leaf?
Scientists cannot tell us if psychoactive drugs are worth the risk any more than they can tell us if free climbing is worth the risk, or horseback riding or target practice or parkour.
I think many 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.
Folks point to the seemingly endless drugs that can be synthesized today and say it's a reason for prohibition. To the contrary, it's the reason why prohibition is madness. It results in an endless game of militaristic whack-a-mole at the expense of democratic freedoms.
The FDA tells us that MDMA is not safe. This is the same FDA that tells us that "shock therapy" is safe.
To oppose the Drug War philosophically, one has to highlight its connections to both materialism and the psychiatric pill mill. And that's a problem, because almost everyone is either a Drug Warrior, a materialist, and/or has a vested interest in the psychiatric pill mill.
I think we should start taking names. All politicians and government officials who work to keep godsends like psilocybin from the public should be held to account for crimes against humanity when the drug war finally ends.
When people tell us there's nothing to be gained from using mind-improving drugs, they are embarrassing themselves. Users benefit from such drugs precisely to the extent that they are educated and open-minded. Loudmouth abstainers are telling us that they lack these traits.
Besides, why should I listen to the views of a microbe?
Had we really wanted to "help" users, we would have used the endless godsends of Mother Nature and related synthetics to provide spirit-lifting alternatives to problem use. But no one wanted to treat users as normal humans. They wanted to pathologize and moralize their use.
In an article about Mazatec mushroom use, the author says: "Mushrooms should not be considered a drug." He misses the point: NOTHING should be considered a drug: every substance has potential good uses.
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, Why I Am Pro Drugs published on October 28, 2022 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)
just read a tweet in which a certain MLLanzillotta1 claims that he is not pro-drug, he's simply "pro-pragmatism."
You have been reading an article entitled, Why I Am Pro Drugs published on October 28, 2022 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)
