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July 23, 2008
Support for the Drug War as a Litmus Test for Intellectual Honesty
Stated as succinctly as possible, the most obvious lesson I've learned from the almost seven years I've spent conducting an essentially solitary study of California pot users is still evolving, but in a more precise direction, one still somewhat surprising to me, and distinctly at odds with popular notions of human nature: rather than special beings created in the “image and likeness” of an all-powerful creator, we humans are cognitive mammals driven by our existential fears to create the comforting fantasy of a humanoid, all-powerful God.Connecting the dots between a plodding low-tech study of vilified “druggies” and such breath-taking heresy is not as far fetched as it might seem; for one thing, there have been growing suspicions in that direction for well over two centuries, but the human tendency to deny troublesome truth has impeded their articulation. Equally importantly, our modern information explosion is making the increasingly rich treasure trove of human culture more available and searchable by the week. Added to that is the the fact that my birth in the early Thirties gives me irrefutable personal experience that exposes certain key assumptions of the drug war myth as bogus. Finally, there is a lifetime of clinical experience that has allowed me to recognize the logical incompatibilities between NIDA-inspired “Behavioral Science” and the growing commercial interest of Big Pharma in the endocannabinoid system.
Perhaps most convincingly: there is the consistency with which daily news from around the world reveals that the same emotional problems being effectively treated by my pot smoking patients are so universal as to expose the continued endorsement of cannabis prohibition by governments as both the litmus test referred to above and, given the current drift of world affairs, serious cause for alarm.
That one can find abundant, well-financed, propaganda offered in refutation of the ideas voiced in this short narrative is undeniable; perhaps the best way to understand their underlying intent is the degree to which they don't mention alternatives to our wars on terror or drugs and implicitly support notions that global warming is a myth, further expansion of the human population is of no concern, and the technologically enabled Utopia imagined in the mid Twentieth Century is still possible.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at July 23, 2008 07:28 PM