Nice putting out a larger context Vodsel.
Just:



Let's probibit cars because we collide with them, daily, on lethal scale?

To gain "the right mentality" it needs a learning process, but the ban prohibits that to happen, hence I fail to see the sense you speak of.

Should an illegal substance first have to become "used well at large scale" to gain credibility, and then using this credibility to break the ban? Now that would be nice, but something doesn't logic here, IME.

* * *


Framing a historical context puts events into perspective, like zooming out, it takes the pin point pain of an event and smears it out over place and time and then it seems all is not that acute. Things seem to become just "that way" and happen to "fit in".

While this has it's merits in some ways, at same time, it can also smell like an excuse for not recognizing that every single step and action in legislation is very well labored thought out and deliberated, not really that much "well, it all just happens that way".

If we only zoom out happily, staring to much at lines, we tend to forget they exist of dots, that there actually is no lines, but only dots.

Detail versus Overview?
I think it's a matter of where to put emphasis for a certain purpose to achieve, kind of what is it one wants to see for a specific reason.

Zooming out makes you also lame, nothing starts to matter much, that's very good for relaxing but not so good for bringing change.

Personally, I fail to see reason to put the ban on psychedelics into perspective, especially in these times, because I call them ultimate medicine.
Should we chicken out because of the potential of abuse? Is that really what I read in your post Vodsel (society = not ready)? I think we should chicken out on lack of use, and take some plunge, it could be wrong though, depending on the general conduct. At least the road "without", the road of the ban, could as well be a wrong bet too. Just look.

I concur on the eye-opener thingy, but:
even if you can prove that they are 100% safe (just imagine), they would still state you do not need it anyway.

The successes in cases have been established mainly on behalf of the usefulness, be it religious usefulness. Along the line they had to prove it is safe accordingly in the conduct of the praxis, but the main power was its NEED within religious practice, say usefulness.

I see no error in your logic setup, but legally they have weirder wiring. I've always wondered if the religious door is wider in USA than EU.

you know very well that unless one of us becomes the president , the situation will not change , not only that we'll need cabinet ministers too , or just lets wait a few more years until the government crumbles under the debt generated from the war on drugs

i think the war on drugs will ultimately cost the government so much that it will have to rethink its plans , as economy is very important to ordinary folks and ultimately when corporate's realize that there is money to be made ( atleast on cannabis ) things will be better , and already with being able to buy cannabis from pharmacy's , things seem to be moving in the right direction

Which is why researchers like david nutt are focusing on their use on symptom alleviation such as severe depression caused by altzheimer's and parkinson's, as well as PTSD. These conditions and diseases are reported to cost the government millions, and all the government is looking for is cost reduction. Nutt is playing the right card, to show them that a handful of easily synthesised substances can provide economic relief that will additionally improve the patient's quality of life.

You may argue that in the long-run, such an approach will still limit their prescription to neurologically impaired and terminally-ill patients, but there is also a longer-run after the long one, in which the legal and scientific literature will have the demonstrative power to keep public opinion out of the realm of hysteria and fear. At such time, the freak reports of the 60's will no longer be able to support any legal argument.

The goal is to manage ethically approved human testing, because that way you are creating official precedent, which stands robustly in the face of the law. Nutt already achieved to get an approval for mdma, and is planning to push for experimental approval on psilocybin.

Baby steps.

You said it.

Cannabis comes to Wall Street

@Jess - thanks for your comments.



I did not say I agree with the reasons or morale behind the ban. The fact a law is established in a society does not imply the law is morally right for me. I was just pointing out that the agents behind that ban are dynamic and interacting, not just a cause > effect arrow that we can simplify.



Perhaps "to make sense" was not the best way to express it. Perhaps I should have used "is to be expected". It does not make sense to me considering what I know, but my perspective and the resultant perspective at a social scale, in a given moment, are of course not the same.

I don't think the key is figuring out what should happen first. Everything will be (is) happening at the same time. The legal ban is not going to disappear spontaneously. The mentality of the group needs to change enough for the ban to end. People's experience and opinion, academic influence, generational change... hopefully, the ban of psychedelics will become eventually something irrational and obsolete in the eyes of a large majority, enough for pressure to produce an effect in the laws. Again, it's a dynamic process. Deciding whether is A, then B or B, then A doesn't make much sense to me.




You presume that zooming out leads to inaction, and most definitely it does not. Why would having a broader perspective keep you from working towards your goals? That's like believing that, once you realize a problem is very complex, you will quit trying to solve it because it's too complicated. And I strongly disagree.

On the contrary, understanding the balance of forces and the complexity behind a situation seems essential to me in order to influence it.



Once again, I did not suggest the ban is good, or that the potential of abuse should refrain us from doing anything. I simply believe that separating "the system" or "them" from the rest of the drama is a simplification, and I believe that a deeper understanding of context and social dynamics is a powerful tool to provoke change. A better one than the old "they want robots and that's why psychedelics are illegal" motto.

With any and all chems theres a difference between use and abuse, if people could all learn to use the tools given to them properly then it would be a perfect world. However this is not the case and we have reckless people that ruin legitimate use of these and other chems in research and recreation, not all recreation is abuse, and not all use is recreation.

I agree, and am ashamed that such logic goes unquestioned when these drugs are being banned. Nowadays, drug-banning seems to happen solely by momentum: "We banned similar drugs, so we should ban these new ones too on the same grounds. What were those grounds? Nevermind, let's just ban."

I'll monitor myself against the simplification syndrome.

Also true, a broad view does not automatically leads to loosing sight of detail.
But it is a trap to keep in mind, that widening can lead to shift of focus. It is a common trick exploited by politics to re-direct attention of problems, let's keep awake.

Thank you for the responses.

I wish all reckless abusing users to have their unexpected epiphany, the life changing reality check for the better.

Jees,

thank you for saving me form being bullish, (DMT at work). I think I was very diplomatic by not jumping on Vodsel in his "corporations have their reasons for banning the mind plants..." my paraphrase.

Yet as the summary of this thread I learned few things:

1. not to compare plants with alcohol, all key people in power (judges, politicians, priests) are alcoholic, and thus dumb. ( couldn't resist myself....lol...) So touching anybody's drug of choice is not good.

2. working in all ways, and documenting our progress or justifying the USEFULNESS is fundamental. Thus we can have religious, therapeutic and recreational use respectively.

3. the collateral damage is given, and should be part of legislation, or immune to it.

4. I also think that the Eurocentric, or if it is not in Bible then it is evil, should also be part of the defense.

I still cannot see how saying that some corporations have their reasons to endorse the ban of certain "mind plants" could be outrageous to anyone. Of course they have reasons. Isn't it obvious?

And it should be obvious too that pointing out motives behind a behavior is not the same as accepting the behavior, or agreeing with the motives.

Not really, why is it obvious? What are the logical steps that lead to such an "obvious" conclusion?

Companies are out for 1 thing: economical profit, at cost of everything else.
They have largest profits from non thinking unhappy stressed employers/customers.
Those people work hardest and consume most to compensate for their inner dis-balance.
Stressed and sick people need pills and this and that = good for business.
A happy person does not need much to compensate for = bad for business.
Mind plants bring balance along and make for inner peace, no use for that 3rd iphone.
(^ I really hope you could observe these benefits yourself, if not, the best is yet to come)
Companies rule over legislation and justice behind the curtains, thus also over the bans.
Far fetched?

Well, this is both far-fetched and oversimplified in my opinion....I can hardly resonate with this flow of arguments. It has to be more sophisticated than e.g. Apple not wanting psychedelics to be legal so as to boost iphone sales to unhappy people who, apparently just buys to compensate for inner disbalances. Are you bringing a straw-man argument here?

I don´t know whether this would be "obvious" to everybody, but I tend to think about this topic as follows ("You" is not you, Infundibulum, of course; just a random capitalist in the pharmaceutical industry):

(1) your company makes good money because people eat lots of the pills you produce (for whatever reason: physical, emotional etc...)
(2) there is some evidence that a certain plant also "works" and has less bad side effects
(3) these are plants that grow in nature and/or it is easy to grow them
(4) when people realize that the plant is better than your pills, they will stop buying them, and your profit will drop
(5) therefore you don´t want the plant to be legalized (plus you know very well that people buy your pills partly because they are addicted to them). You´ll play the old moralistic game like "but they alter your consciousness - maybe they should remain illegal for the safety of your children" etc...

This is how it is "obvoius" for me at least.

well it should be obvious to everyone why big pharma would worry about competition from cannabis. Its self explanatory. Its really no surprise that the tobacco, alcohol, and pharmaceutical industries financially backed anti-marijauna/drug efforts

"Early on, the pharmaceutical industry fought back by spending money on anti-pot efforts, but the same NORML investigation that fingered the alcohol and tobacco industries as heavy backers of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America found that Big Pharma was doing so as well. “They were so embarrassed by that revelation” says MAPS founder Rick Doblin, “that they mostly stopped spending money on anti-marijuana lobbying efforts.”

you could say the same about a lot of these other psychedelic plants that have been showing a lot of promise for things such as depression, anxiety, headaches, IBS, addictions, etc. Its seen as competition, and you can't patent something like ayahuasca, for example.

And then you have things like the private prison industry... which thrives partially due to all of these arrests made because of the mere fact that these drugs like cannabis, etc, are illegal. Obviously they aren't on the legalization of drugs bandwagon

Indeed, Apple makes high tech, no laws.
Certain families pull the strings.
In that, over-complication is as deceitful as black-white simplification.

I think UC put very well some of the reasons. We may agree or not that use of psychedelics tends to disconnect people from the hard-core consumer society, but some of the correlations are quite straightforward... it's hard to question that an end to drugs prohibition, including cannabis and other mind altering substances, would directly threaten profits in the pharmaceutical business and the prison industry, and indirectly other groups such as the weapon industry.

as dennis mckenna said in regards to all this

"what isn't patented is prohibited"