Liberal critics of the drug war keep saying that it’s failed. But this misses the point, because it implies that the drug war was not necessarily a bad idea, but merely one that turned out to be ineffective in combating illegal drug use.
To the contrary, the drug war never had the right to succeed because it was wrong from the start to ban naturally occurring substances, the gifts of Mother Nature, the birthright of humanity, especially when these substances are banned for political motives. If Americans have any birthright, they surely have a right to the medicinal and nourishing output of Mother Nature and cannot be rightfully separated from that bounty by coercion.
But there’s one class of drug war victim that’s rarely recognized today: that is the millions of depressed persons who have gone without effective medications for decades now thanks to Richard Nixon’s politically motivated scheduling and slandering of psychoactive substances.
Richard Nixon’s political assessment of such drugs remains on the books today, thanks to the fact that the self-dealing DEA, an agency that exists to “fight drugs,” is the same organization tasked with deciding the legal status of drugs. That’s the mother of all conflicts of interests, one that will continue to eat away at the democratic process until the DEA is excised from the body politic.
Before saying goodbye to the DEA, however, we should publicly try its leadership in court for having knowingly barred millions of depressed Americans from receiving priceless therapy. How did the DEA do this? By scheduling these drugs based on political motivations, completely ignoring to this day the well-documented benefits of drugs like LSD and psilocybin to change lives for the better in a positive and medically monitored setting.
What’s the cause of depression in America?
The DEA. By denying Americans the medicines that have been shown to dramatically ease that malady.
But the DEA will only be held accountable when politicians start valuing patient outcomes over political outcomes.
