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August 31, 2008
Willful Blindness?
Although the intensity with which our modern world prefers wishful thinking to reality has been gradually revealed to me over the past several years, there are still times I find it shocking. That’s when I need to remember that not long ago, and to the extent I thought about it at all, I assumed the drug war was a politically correct nuisance humanity could afford.However, aggregating the histories of thousands of illegal pot smokers demonstrated the (unanticipated) degree to which a pervasively false doctrine can weaken society; also how the history of global marijuana policy, within the context of what was actually known about pot and what were asserted to be its dangers, is one of shocking dishonesty and ignorance at the highest levels of both government and Science.
That discrepancy between fact and drug war dogma has become so great that one can say with confidence the policy will be forced to change dramatically; but how soon, how quickly, and how much, are still completely uncertain.
But the longer that repudiation takes, the greater will be the embarrassment our species will have to deal with. On the other hand, just recognizing that we have to deal with it could be a very hopeful sign of progress.
To put it into a more practical focus, when Obama was listing the vexing policy issues his administration plans to address, the drug war wasn’t among them. That no one listening to the speech would have expected him to mention drugs is a measure of the honesty-in-policy and honesty-in-government problems our species must still deal with.
I can't help noting that the SF Chronicle's glowing comments on two recent press releases from the AG's office demonstrated just how little both our former "Governor Moonbeam" and our major print media outlet have understood what's been happening since he was last in Sacramento.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at August 31, 2008 07:18 PM