But what would such a rational understanding look like? Today, drug use is divided into two categories: medical use, and abuse. When a drug company wants to sell a new psychotropic compound, it needs to do two things. First, it must assure that, although psychiatrists will prescribe it, no one will like taking it. This assures that it will not be designated a "controlled substance," which would have an enormous negative impact on its sales. Second, a disease must be fabricated for which the new drug is "indicated," and the disease entered into the compendium of ersatz diseases, the DSM, mentioned above. The categorization of all drug use into either "medical use" or "abuse" is what makes such logical contortions necessary. Drugs, considered scientifically, do not naturally fall out into the categories, "medicine" and "drugs of abuse." As described in the digress in the ETFRC discussion of the neuron, drugs naturally fall into three different kinds of categories (the examples following are for the case of imipramine [Tofranil®], a "tricyclic antidepressant": chemical ("dibenzazepine", pharmacodynamic ("norepinepherine/serotonin reuptake inhibitor", and intentional ("antidepressant". The new fourth level of description, one may say the "political-moral," added to the chemical, pharmacodynamic, and intentional categories that drugs fall into is a cultural and political artifact, not a natural kind. Categorizing drugs as "good" and "bad" is logically meaningless, and a rational understanding of drugs would reject this simpleminded and worthless conceptual scheme. Categorizing them as "legal" and "illegal" is offensive and intolerable to anyone who values the principles detailed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights – an unfortunately small and ever-diminishing population. As far as a rational drug policy – this makes no more sense than the idea of a national shoe policy, or a national shaving cream policy.


Eaton T fores, you are awesome.