Although you focused on divination, there is a huge problem with "following the science" when it comes to studying drugs. This is because Western governments and their materialist scientists are focused exclusively on the potential downsides of drug use. Such "science" is political. This is why we have a National Institute on Drug Abuse in America and not a National Institute on Drug Use. The scientists' job today is to prove that drugs are dangerous. They ignore all glaringly obvious holistic benefits of drug use. And so our materialist scientists gaslight Americans by telling us that drugs like coca and opium 11 have no positive uses whatsoever. Sigmund Freud knew better12. So did Galen, Paracelsus and Avicenna. But modern science is blind to anecdote, history and common sense. This is why our FDA promotes brain-damaging shock therapy for the depressed and yet refuses to approve of a wide range of drugs whose intermittent use could make shock therapy unnecessary13. This is what they call "following the science" in the age of the Drug War: depriving the depressed (and endless others) of all inspirational medicine -- you know, the kinds of medicines that inspired the Vedic religion14, the kinds of medicines that our predecessors considered to be panaceas!
This is why drug prohibitionists want us to "follow the science," because they know that materialist science is blind to the obvious when it comes to drug benefits. And so they hold drug use to standards that we set for no other risky activity on the planet, thereby forcing millions to go without godsend medicine, merely because such substances could be misused by white American young people -- the white American young people whom we refuse "on principle" to educate about safe drug use. This is why hospice kids in India go without morphine 15 today, because fearmongers and demagogues have taught us to fear drugs rather than to use them as wisely as possible for the benefit of humankind16. This is what comes of "following the science" in the age of drug prohibition.
This is all due, in turn, to a category error. It was a mistake to place passion-scorning materialists in charge of mind and mood medicine in the first place. By so doing, we have created endless jobs for materialists -- but only at the cost of completely disempowering human beings when it comes to healthcare.
It is folly to put bureaucrats in charge of second-guessing drug prescriptions: what such bureaucrats are really doing is second-guessing the various philosophies of life which are presupposed by the way we use psychoactive drugs.
I'm told that science is completely unbiased today. I guess I'll have to go back and reassess my doubts about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
High suicide rates? What a poser! Gee, I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that the US has outlawed all substances that elate and inspire???
Anytime you hear that a psychoactive drug has not been proven to be effective, it's a lie. People can make such claims only by dogmatically ignoring all the glaringly obvious signs of efficacy.
A generally educated person meets new ideas with curiosity and fascination. An illiberally educated person meets new ideas with fear. --James B. Stockade.
Self-medicating has always been the most basic of human rights, until the medical industry demonized the practice for obvious financial reasons.
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!
Our government treats drugs like uranium and spends hundreds of billions of dollars trying to scare us about them.
Did the Vedic People have a substance disorder because they wanted to drink enough soma to see religious realities?
The government causes problems for those who are habituated to certain drugs. Then they claim that these problems are symptoms of an illness. Then folks like Gabriel Mate come forth to find the "hidden pain" in "addicts." It's one big morality play created by drug laws.
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