Why the FDA should not schedule Laughing Gas

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Why the FDA should not schedule Laughing Gas

The laughable proposal to crack down on nitrous oxide

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

August 8, 2023

Brian submitted the following comment to Regulations.gov regarding the proposed "scheduling" of nitrous oxide and related substances. For the background story on the laughable proposal, see FDA Wants Public Input On International Scheduling Of Nitrous Oxide And Other Drugs Ahead Of WHO Meeting. To comment on the anti-philosophical proposal, visit this link at regulations.gov. (Deadline for comments is August 24, 2023.)

William James is considered by many to be America's greatest philosopher. His entire philosophy was inspired by the world he encountered under the influence of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas . In his master work, "The Varieties of Religious Experience," James wrote the following: "No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded." When you "schedule" substances like laughing gas , then you are censoring science and philosophy.

You are also denying godsend treatments for chronic depressives like myself. For laughing gas improves mood -- not just the gas itself, but LOOKING FORWARD to use. Materialists may not be able to "prove that" with their reductive reasoning, but, frankly, it's common psychological sense. Even the Reader's Digest knows that laughter is the best medicine. Instead of scheduling nitrous oxide, we should be teaching safe use and making it available to researchers and the depressed.

I perfectly understand that some folks may misuse it -- but we should teach them, not arrest them. We have got to stop acting like drugs must be banned if they are capable of misuse. All drugs can be misused. We must teach, not practice fearmongering. You may feel like you're saving a few hundred users from their own folly by scheduling, but you are simultaneously throwing millions of the depressed under the bus, along with philosophers who wish to follow up the studies of William James.

Instead of SWAT teams ready to arrest Americans, we need SWAT teams full of educators, ready to teach safe use wherever drug problems arise. That could surely happen if we spent the multi-billion-dollar DEA budget on educating rather than arresting.

The DEA scheduling system is political, not scientific. It outlaws drugs that have inspired entire religions. Coca was considered divine by the Inca, mushrooms by the Maya, and the psychedelic Soma inspired the Vedic-Hindu religion. We have to stop using the scheduling system to outlaw substances that inspire religions and philosophical thought. That kind of censorship is not what America should be about.

In conclusion, when you schedule mind-expanding substances like laughing gas , you are not just denying godsend treatment to millions, but you are censoring science and philosophy and telling researchers to "stand down" in their attempt to study ultimate reality. William James would be rolling in his grave to know that his philosophical field of inquiry has been shut down by government. Let's be the free country that we purport to be. Let's not censor science and philosophy.

Please do not "schedule" laughing gas and other related mind-enhancing substances in a way to limit their legitimate and beneficial use for science, philosophy, and the depressed.

Laughing gas is already out of reach for myself for practical reasons, and so I have to suffer without relief for depression that is untouched by the Big Pharma ¹ ² drugs that have made me chemically dependent for life. That's why we actually need to make substances like laughing gas ³ MORE available, not less.

Scheduling and cracking down is not the answer. That's why the drug situation in the country is now incalculably worse than it was in 1914 when Congress first affectively outlawed a plant in violation of the natural law upon which America was founded. Let's learn from our mistakes. Let's start educating instead of outlawing. Let's start educating about substances instead of "scheduling" them. The prohibition thus created has already had ruinous effects by resulting in no-go zones in inner cities. For as Ann Heather 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."

Laughing Gas

Notes:

1: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
2: 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)
3: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
4: Firearm Violence in the United States Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Johns Hopkins University (up)

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against the hateful war on US

Why don't those politicians understand what hateful colonialism they are practicing? Psychedelics have been used for millennia by the tribes that the west has conquered -- now we won't even let folks talk honestly about such indigenous medicines.

Americans heap hypocritical praise on Walt Whitman. What they don't realize is that many of us could be "Walt Whitman for a Day" with the wise use of psychoactive drugs. To the properly predisposed, morphine gives a DEEP appreciation of Mother Nature.

Drug prohibition is the biggest tyranny imaginable. It is the government control of pain relief. It is government telling us how and how much we are allowed to think and feel in this life.

Attempts to improve one's mind and mood are not crimes. The attempt to stop people from doing so is the crime.

When Rick Strassman and Michael Pollan call for continued prohibition to protect young people, they ignore the ENORMOUS fact that prohibition has destroyed inner cities around the world. Wake up, guys! Prohibition is evil, not drugs! Ignorance is evil, not education!

Getting off antidepressants can make things worse for only one reason: because we have outlawed all the drugs that could help with the transition. Right now, getting off any drug basically means becoming a drug-free Christian Scientist. No wonder withdrawal is hard.

"The Harrison [Narcotics] Act made the drug peddler, and the drug peddler makes drug addicts.” --Robert A. Schless, 1925.

Just saw a prosecutor gloating about the drug dealers she has taken down.How much is she getting paid to play whack-a-mole?

They drive to their drug tests in pickup trucks with license plates that read "Don't tread on me." Yeah, right. "Don't tread on me: Just tell me how and how much I'm allowed to think and feel in this life. And please let me know what plants I can access."

SWAT raids have increased by 15,000 percent from the late 1970s to today, resulting in 50,000 to 80,000 SWAT raids annually in the US alone. --War On Us

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