Wednesday, December 08, 2004

A Split Second in Eternity: The Mystical State of Drug Policy

By Tracy McLellan

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Posted 12/08 | Add a Comment

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  1. Tracy, thanks for the informative artice. Please give your views on the drugging of older folks in nursing homes etc. I have seen some pretty bad reactions in the elderly who given anti-depressants. It seems to me that the policy is, if the pharmaceutical companies are making a big profit then that drug use is OK’ed.Also slightly off topic but related. It is interesting to note that the FDA which has been “protecting” us from foreign drugs from Canada and elsewhere is now bringing in flu vaccines from other countries. That goes to show what a little pressure from citizen groups can do.

    Posted by rosemarie jackowski from  on  12/08  at  03:51 PM

  2. Thanks for the article. What right does the state have to determine what an individual consumes? If the state determines that an individual’s behavior may become dangerous to society under the influence of some substance then the state must at the very least apply its laws equally to all such substances.

    Posted by kim from  on  12/08  at  04:12 PM

  3. pa·ter·nal·ism:  n.  A policy or practice of treating or governing people in a fatherly manner, especially by providing for their needs without giving them rights or responsibilities.

    Our government institutions and organized religions often come from the same womb; the womb of somebody else knows better than you, and your value is contingent upon recognizing and acknowledging their superior value.

    It is not surprising, therefore, that autonomous self-discovery or -realiztion (by whatever means) ... is the natural enemy to paternalism.

    Posted by Nader Rider from  on  12/08  at  04:25 PM

  4. I am confused.  Drugs are virtually legal in this country.  I have NEVER NOT been able to score a sack of of the kind bud in more than a day or 2.  The stuff is readily available.  More so than it probably should be.  You can grow it in your back yard if you are sneaky enough. I can’t believe people spend time writing books saying drugs should be legal when for all intents and purposes, they are! And they have been since the 60’s when JFK and LBJ let them loose on the counter culture hippies in an effort to ruin this country and sell it off to the commies in the USSR.  (It’s documented… read about it.)

    I am NOT philosophically opposed to people choosing to use drugs.  I’ve been around the block quite a few times myself. I used to smoke, drop, snort and shoot anything I could get my hot little hands on.  But when I grew up, got a job and earned a massive income, I realized that their is no greater high than putting on a suit every morning and figuring out a way to screw poor people out of the few measly dollars they have.  I know I can put it to better use than they can, they’d buy crack with it.  Me, I buy Jack Daniels.  I hardly ever smoke the ganja anymore. And I will never use my arm as a pin cushin again. It was keeping me down from my true potential.  Thanks to the Lord and GW Bush, I have now fully realized my true potential.  I live on the edge, run an internet porn site, and retain a massive income. 

    As a teenager, I definitely halucianated on mushshrooms and LSD. Laughed my little butt off too.  Big fun. But let me warn you, LSD can fry your brain.  A kid I went to high school, with who shall remain nameless (his name is Fred Smith) took a bunch of LSD.  Now he spends his days playing with his own feces and urinating on himself.  He has also been known to masturbate in public.  I am definitely glad I was on vacation when those tabs were going around.  I think they were called ‘Dancing Testtubes.’ I would have only taken 1, but I heard Freddy took 7.  Even if he didn’t fry his brain then, he’d probably be a basehead today.  And we all know crack kills.

    Do like Nancy Reagan said when her husband had things going right in this country and around the world in the booming 80’s… JUST SAY NO!

    Over and Out.

    Posted by Cole Deiso from New York, New York  on  12/08  at  11:11 PM

  5. The most entertaining troll of all time said:
    “And they have been since the 60’s when JFK and LBJ let them loose on the counter culture hippies in an effort to ruin this country and sell it off to the commies in the USSR (....)

    their is no greater high than putting on a suit every morning and figuring out a way to screw poor people out of the few measly dollars they have.  I know I can put it to better use than they can, they’d buy crack with it.  Me, I buy Jack Daniels”

    enough said

    Can mr. entertaining troll tell us where it is documented that JFK and LBJ “let loose” the drug culture?  I am thinking this is either the Lydon LaRouche theory of the Queen of England being the biggest dope pusher out there, controlling both sides in the cold war and/or a perversion of the truth of MKultra (i.e. CIA tests of LSD and other hallucinogens on unwitting people, all the while hounding people like Tim Leary - who may have been a bit of a flake, but certainly was politically a threat insofar as he connected the psychedelic with the radical (though its been said that he was working with the CIA the whole time, who knows?)

    But where do the commies fit into this?  Kruschev admitted smoking hashish a few times in Egypt, but I can’t see Brezhnev - who truly thought that long hair on the Czech students was a sign of “Gnostic Capitalist Revelry” while he was right about the first and last words.

    Posted by j cummings from  on  12/09  at  02:20 AM

  6. Perhaps to understand why certain (politically selected) drugs remain illegal we should study the
    history of U. S. alcohol prohibition.  The notorious gangster Al Capone made most of his illegal money from alcohol prohibition.

    Capone often bragged that he “owned” the city of Chicago.  Obviously,
    he didn’t own all of the city of Chicago, however he had most or all
    of the politicians and police who ran the city, on his payroll.

    Al Capone was a successful businessman and it’s not unreasonable to suspect that the drug cartels of today are following his business
    model.

    It’s also not unreasonable to suspect that the drug cartels may have many high-level politicians and police officials on their payroll.

    Obviously, the type of politicians the drug cartels would have on their payroll are those
    who advocate the continuation of the status quo of
    drug prohibition which is making the drug cartels so fabulously wealthy.

    I’m not saying that any specific so-called
    “drug warrior” is on the
    payroll of the drug cartels--just a little suspicious.  I’m just a
    little suspicious of the motives of all of the drug war cheerleaders.

    Posted by Kirk Muse from Mesa, AZ  on  12/09  at  09:46 PM

  7. I’m no expert on your question Rosemarie, but obviously, I would be against drugging senior citizens, or anybody else for that matter, against their will.

    Posted by Tracy McLellan from  on  12/10  at  09:02 PM

  8. Creating numbness to avoid dealing with the harshness of reality… may be a cultural proclivity of ours.

    Posted by Nader Rider from  on  12/14  at  02:25 AM

  9. Mind- and consciousness-expansion, Cosmic Consciousness at its furthest, and degrees and facsimiles thereof are not numbness.  I would recommend you look at the website of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies to see the seriousness with which some highly credentialed professionals treat this issue.  I’d like to reiterate that I consider this to be an issue of religious freedom, that is, there is none.

    Posted by Tracy McLellan from  on  12/14  at  12:34 PM

  10. I was referring to the post which immediately preceded mine, Tracy, in which a reference was made to drugging senior citizens.  I’ve been to many homes for senior citizens, and many of them used two major forms of numbness for their clients: the boob tube, and drugs.  I’m a strong advocate of consciousness exploration/expansion too.  Have you seen http://www.whatthebleep.com yet?

    Posted by Nader Rider from  on  12/14  at  02:31 PM

  11. Sorry about that Nader Raider.  I’ll take a look at the site you’ve mentioned tomorrow.

    Posted by Tracy McLellan from  on  12/15  at  12:01 AM

  12. America’s new Attorney General is actually an expert in devaluing human sovereignty and a fan of Carl Schmitt - see my piece here.  Cuba - as I put it was distasteful in its treatment of a far smaller group - and under EU pressure has released most of them.  My intent in making that point before was to show the absolute hypocrisy of people who complain that “the left” which is not one entity, look at all the arguments! - can be against “freedom” or such, when a popular book among Americans last year was Fareed Zakaria’s “Future of Freedom” in which democracy was ruled out as inefficient.  How can someone arguing from a pro-American position not acknowledge that their argument is severely retarded by the factor that it is the left, not the right, that now believes in the sovereignty of individuals, whiel the right is “outraged over the outrage” to quote Zell Miller, at Abu Ghraib and other atrocities. The fact that a system can encourage ideological trolls such as yourself says it all.

    Posted by j cummings from Canada  on  12/30  at  03:13 PM
    13. Commenting is not available in this weblog entry. {/if}

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