Life, Liberty, and the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

Avid Drug User (def): Constantly lost in a downward spiraling haze of addiction, with the inability to live in a world with ethics and morals.

This is what the average American thinks of a person that occasionally attempts to engage in mind opening experiences by way of using illicit substances. This definition generally comes from the person who is easily persuaded by watching an advertisement, the person that blindly follows a religion, the person who believes that “gullible” is not in the dictionary. You know, the type of person who has his child ask, “why do I have to do that?” and he replies, “because I said so!” If you haven’t caught my drift, I am talking about majority of people that do not have much foundation in their arguments from lack of true education on the subject. Due to America’s harsh stance towards illegal substances there has yet to be a need to provide a true education of drugs and drug culture to the youth. Instead we have a bunch of power happy, hypocritical, misinformed adults preaching to a brainwashed youth, perpetuating the very cycle that made these adults the ignorant bunch that they are today. The West has a tendency to demonize the unconscious and regard it as the enemy. Drugs tap into these various realms of the unconscious and therefore many have been deemed illegal based on false pre-tenses and assertions. I feel that through a complete reformation of Western belief systems towards illegal drugs humans have the possibility to delve into a previously untapped spiritual and emotional enlightenment.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that drugs are for everyone. The irony is, the people that preach the necessity for a ban on all drugs are probably the one’s most susceptible to having their lives destroyed from occasional drug use. My only hope is that one day the general public will be more informed than they seem to be today. If we could truly educate the youth about the effects of drugs and not bombard them with anti-dug propaganda that screams, “IF YOU TAKE DRUGS YOU ARE THE DEVIL!” It is much easier to make a good decision when coming from an informed background, don’t you think? I mean, you wouldn’t ask a parking enforcement agent how to fix a rocket ship, so why would you ask a person who has been sober all their life to combat the negative effects of drugs? That just doesn’t make any sense.

So in an attempt to inform the mass public, I’m going to begin with a broad overview of the history of how some drugs were made illegal, just because I feel that a good place to start is from the beginning. Let’s kick it off this section with what I feel to be the mildest drug around, it happens to be the one with the horrible misnomer of “the gateway drug,” – marijuana.

In the 1800s in America most states had no problem with marijuana because it was used as hemp to make clothes, ropes, sails, and it was occasionally used for medicinal purposes. Then the Mexican Revolution rolled around in 1910 and this brought a large amount of Mexican immigrants to the United States and with them they brought the custom of taking a little puff here and there in their downtime. Then the Great Depression rolled around and angry, jobless, white Americans were looking for someone to blame and just like at a big high-school, Americans picked on the “new kid.” The Americans did not hate the Mexicans because of marijuana, but rather the criminalization of marijuana came about because of the hatred for Mexicans and marijuana was guilty by association. In order to rationalize this illegalization, bogus studies were produced that linked “mary jane” to crime and violence that was primarily committed by, you guessed it, Mexicans. If you don’t believe me, watch Reefer Madness in your free time, I’m sure you’ll get a kick out of it.

Next on the list is the stimulant cocaine. Its use in America was all well and good in the early 1800s. Paolo Mantegazza, an Italian doctor came back from his visit to Peru and saw Peruvians use the coca leaves, and he decided to test it out on himself. He felt that it had medicinal use for the treatment of flatulence and whitening of the teeth. Then a chemist by the name of Angelo Mariana read Mantegazza’s work and thought that this drug had the potential to be used to his economic advantage, and put these wonderful coca leaves into his wine. Coca leaves then found their way into Coca-Cola (hence the name) and was eventually used to treat morphine addiction in 1879. A little known psychologist by the name of Sigmund Freud published work by the name of Über Coca in which he described the effects of cocaine. He said that cocaine causes, “...exhilaration and lasting euphoria, which in no way differs from the normal euphoria of the healthy person...You perceive an increase of self-control and possess more vitality and capacity for work....In other words, you are simply normal, and it is soon hard to believe you are under the influence of any drug....long intensive physical work is performed without any fatigue...This result is enjoyed without any of the unpleasant after-effects that follow exhilaration brought about by alcohol....absolutely no craving for the further use of cocaine appears after the first, or even after repeated taking of the drug...” Then in the 1900s the stance towards cocaine began to drastically change. Intense racial discrimination and a widespread social panic were primarily responsible this change. In 1914, Dr. Christopher Koch of Pennsylvania’s State Pharmacy Board was quoted as saying that, “Most of the attacks upon the white women of the South are the direct result of a cocaine-crazed Negro brain.” There is very little evidence to support this claim however this is what majority of American’s stance towards the drug became, and this bastardization of the effects of the drug have held strong until this very day.

Last, but most certainly not least, I will talk about the illegalization of methylenedioxymethamphetamine, more commonly known as MDMA or ecstasy. Chemical compounds similar to MDMA have been experimented with since the late 1800s, but the actual chemical composition that we find in ecstasy pills today was synthesized by Anton Köllisch, a German chemist. Later on the U.S. Army was involved with using MDMA in some lethal dose studies on animals in the 1950s, and was occasionally used for recreational purposes in the late 1960s. Then came about Alexander Shulgin, a chemist who many call the “Godfather of Ecstasy.” He tried the drug for himself in 1977 and shared it with a friend and psychotherapist Leo Zeff. They concluded that the drug had potential for therapeutic use. The use of the drug became fairly popular in various nightclubs in the 1980s and spread from there. Then the damn DEA had to get involved. The drug was proposed for scheduling by the DEA in July 1984 and they deemed that the drug has no medical use and a “high potential for abuse.” Most of the experts that were called about to give their knowledge about the drug recommended a DEA Schedule III prescription for the drug because of its positive uses in psychotherapy, even the judge, Francis Young, made this recommendation. But the DEA was on a violent tyrannous warpath to criminalize the drug, and cast all this knowledge aside in order to classify it as a Schedule I drug. With this particular classification it made it so not even experimental research could be done on the drug. Why did the DEA really want to do this? Because right-winged politicians associated the drug with the onset of a hippie counterculture that did not coincide with their view of the direction that America needed top be going in. That’s just ignorant and unfortunate.
So, now do you see why I am such a strong proponent for the change in American’s drug policy? If the researchers of the drug came out and said that these drugs had negative effects, then hey, I might listen to them; but when you make something illegal solely due to the hatred of a minority, that screams of so much prejudice it’s unbelievable. I mean as America aren’t we promised life, LIBERTY, and the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS? Well goddammit, let us pursue our happiness. Minor out.