Hard News: When the drug warriors turn
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Very late post, but I just remembered this and thought it was pretty salient. If you want an idea of the degree that high-level obstruction hinders evidence-based discussions on the subject, here's the DEA head talking about marijuana. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykwaXsQY6Eg
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" there still needs to be developed an angle which takes into account the actual positive reasons that people might want to do drugs."
Perhaps the starting point should be recognition that ALL substances have a use and an abuse ; indeed , anything can be used or abused.
That leads immediately to the prime suspect - drug "education".The issue is the children isn't it? Adults can make their own decisions, and wear the consequences.
Kids are taught that all "drug" use is abuse, and one toke will lead you to hell.
Anyone with an half an ounce (sic) of sense immediately realises that this is a lie.
So what other drugs have they lied about? Well , most of them actually( designer drugs might be the exception since little is known about them).
The end result is people with alcohol and P habits.Even alcohol, cocaine and heroin have their uses, cf the well-researched Brompton cocktail. Anyone remember the little benzedrine nasal inhalers that were used in the 50s and 60s?
Heroin is very useful in certain painful terminal cancers.Bottom line; don't bullshit the kids.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
Anyone remember the little benzedrine nasal inhalers that were used in the 50s and 60s?
Presumably you're referring to those little items sold as Benzedrex. Still available in the US, but banned here in the early 2000s. You'd have to be very old indeed to remember when they contained real benzedrine. Despite the misleading name, by the end of the 50s the active ingredient was the P-like propylhexedrine. As you say, don't bullshit the kids.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
Thanks for the correction : propylhexedrine it was.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
You could still get a buzz off it.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
"very old indeed"
Harrumph!
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"Methylphenidate was first synthesized in 1944 . . . by Ciba (now Novartis) chemist Leandro Panizzon. His wife, Marguerite, had low blood pressure and would take the drug as a stimulant before playing tennis. He named the substance Ritaline, after his wife's nickname, Rita."
As Lou Reed said, those were different times.
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Alan Watts on the use of the psychedelics (LSD, mescaline , psilocybin, and cannabis) :-
, . . . there are two specific objections to use of psychedelic drugs. First, use of these drugs may be dangerous. However, every worth-while exploration is dangerous—climbing mountains, testing aircraft, rocketing into outer space, skin diving, or collecting botanical specimens in jungles. But if you value knowledge and the actual delight of exploration more than mere duration of uneventful life, you are willing to take the risks. It is not really healthy for monks to practice fasting, and it was hardly hygienic for Jesus to get himself crucified, but these are risks taken in the course of spiritual adventures. Today the adventurous young are taking risks in exploring the psyche, testing their mettle at the task just as, in times past, they have tested it—more violently—in hunting, dueling, hot-rod racing, and playing football. What they need is not prohibitions and policemen, but the most intelligent encouragement and advice that can be found.Second, drug use may be criticized as an escape from reality. However, this criticism assumes unjustly that the mystical experiences themselves are escapist or unreal. LSD, in particular, is by no means a soft and cushy escape from reality. It can very easily be an experience in which you have to test your soul against all the devils in hell. For me, it has been at times an experience in which I was at once completely lost in the corridors of the mind and yet relating that very lostness to the exact order of logic and language, simultaneously very mad and very sane. But beyond these occasional lost and insane episodes, there are the experiences of the world as a system of total harmony and glory, and the discipline of relating these to the order of logic and language must somehow explain how what William Blake called that "energy which is eternal delight" can consist with the misery and suffering of everyday life.9
The undoubted mystical and religious intent of most users of the psychedelics, even if some of these substances should be proved injurious to physical health, requires that their free and responsible use be exempt from legal restraint in any republic that maintains a constitutional separation of church and state.10 To the extent that mystical experience conforms with the tradition of genuine religious involvement, and to the extent that psychedelics induce that experience, users are entitled to some constitutional protection. Also, to the extent that research in the psychology of religion can utilize such drugs, students of the human mind must be free to use them. Under present laws, I, as an experienced student of the psychology of religion, can no longer pursue research in the field. This is a barbarous restriction of spiritual and intellectual freedom, suggesting that the legal system of the United States is, after all, in tacit alliance with the monarchical theory of the universe, and will, therefore, prohibit and persecute religious ideas and practices based on an organic and unitary vision of the universe.11
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I'm beginning to like you Farmer Green quoting Alan Watts at length. The conservative pushback came in the 70's and has been going on ever since.
But its getting close to the time humanity took a good long look at itself en masse (that'll be fun) and the way we live on our 'third rock from the sun'.But while the money men and politicians are banging on about the economy and rushing about doing "free trade" deals, putting on a show of being all leaderly like. And we're being all nice and adopting intellectual postures about the amount of ancient bullshit people still believe.(there's no rush take your time) And the rest of us have sport to distract us. As is said 'there's shitshow of that happening'.
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Farmer Green, in reply to
<q>But its getting close to the time humanity took a good long look at itself en masse (that’ll be fun)
‘there’s shitshow of that happening’.</q
Well FG agrees with you that it will happen, simply because it must.
He just wonders what sort of a shitshow will cause it to happen ; something fairly exciting he guesses.
Crisis/opportunity. Yes please.
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