I'm still wrapping my head around the Kafkaesque world faced by so-called drug offenders in America as detailed by Colleen Cowles in "War On Us."1 For merely possessing a few pills, Americans are being charged with felonies. Felonies! An estimated eight percent of Americans have felonies, according to a study cited by Cowles, and thirty-three percent of African Americans. 33%. This means far more than that they can be sent to prison for years. Once out, they can be denied educational loans, evicted from public housing, rendered ineligible for food stamps, and forced to submit to drug testing on demand. Even after they've completed years of harassing parole, the law seeks to prevent felons from getting on with their lives. As felons, they are barred from working in a host of jobs, which Colleen tells us include, but is by no means limited to: childcare worker, electrician, engineer, judge, nurse, manicurist, midwife, optometrist, psychologist, school-bus driver, social worker, teacher... even watchman. It makes you wonder what jobs they ARE allowed to hold: circus clown, perhaps? Ayurveda healer? Video game tester? (full-time pundit against the War on Drugs?)"In 2018, the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association mounted an ad campaign against criminal justice reform in that state. The New York City Patrolmen's Benevolent Association campaigned against parole reform. The California Correctional Peace Officers Association spends approximately $8 million annually on lobbying to defeat criminal justice reform, ranging from opposition to reform of three strikes laws to prison expansion."
"First, police departments compete for federal anti drug grants with number of arrests and drug seizures strengthening their application for those grants. The grants also incentivize departments to pay for SWAT team armor and weapons, further militarizing our police forces. Secondly, the ability of police departments to pad their own budgets using civil forfeiture statutes makes drug arrests more lucrative than pursuing other types of arrests."
In "The Book of the Damned," Charles Fort writes about the data that science has damned, by which he means "excluded." The fact that drugs can inspire and elate is one such fact, although when Fort wrote his anti-materialist broadside, drug prohibition was in its infancy.
Endless drugs could help with depression. Any drug that inspires and elates is an antidepressant, partly by the effect itself and partly by the mood-elevation caused by anticipation of use (facts which are far too obvious for materialists and drug warriors to understand -- let alone materialist drug warriors!).
In the 2015 movie "No Escape," the only place that was safe from anti-American hysteria was an opium den. How ironic that the U.S. forced Iran to outlaw opium.
"Dope Sick"? "Prohibition Sick" is more like it. The very term "dope" connotes imperialism, racism and xenophobia, given that all tribal cultures have used "drugs" for various purposes. "Dope? Junk?" It's hard to imagine a more intolerant, dismissive and judgmental terminology.
Magazines like Psychology Today continue to publish feel-good articles about depression which completely ignore the fact that we have outlawed all drugs that could end depression in a heartbeat.
Scientists are responsible for endless incarcerations in America. Why? Because they fail to denounce the DEA lie that psychoactive substances have no positive medical uses.
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."
People are talking about re-scheduling psilocybin, but they miss the point. We need to DE-schedule everything. It's anti-scientific to conclude in advance that any drug has no uses -- and it's a lie too, of course. End drug scheduling altogether! It's childish and wrong.
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.
The goal of drug-law reform should be to outlaw prohibition. Anything short of that, and our basic rights will always be subject to veto by fearmongers. Outlawing prohibition would restore the Natural Law of Jefferson, which the DEA scorned in 1987 with its raid on Monticello.
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