Awesome points, thank you! I was just trying to make the point that commodification and legalization are separate issues and that psychedelics have special qualities that make them different from other commodities. I believe that we can fight commodification while promoting legalization/decriminalization, which I think is what most of us want anyway.



Reframing the conversation a bit, how do you think we can fight this recontextualization as individual members of society and psychedelic users ourselves? I feel like everyone here is doing a great job pointing out all of the problems that exist with the commodification of psychedelics and other spiritual activities, but how do we fight back against them?

I often hear arguments about cultural appropriation and how "it is wrong" for cultures to steal rituals, artifacts, beliefs, ceremonies, holidays, practices, etc. from other cultures, but I am always curious about this argument. Exclusivity can be ego-driven, and it feels wrong to me to disallow others from participating in your cultural actions simply because they are of a different culture. But if we expect people to authentically imitate our cultures, how authentic must they be in doing so? At what point can we just accept that cultures morph over time due to intercultural influences?

My questions kind of sum up to this one: what do you all want to see happen as cannabis and other psychedelics spread and penetrate mainstream culture? How can we make this happen in a way that respects indigenous users, such as ayahuasca shamans? What are the steps we can take individually (besides complaining) to ensure that they are popularized in a responsible fashion?

There's many millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of people who go to considerable lengths to avoid investing their money in companies that deal in weaponry, tobacco, alcohol, gambling, etc., because the money you make from those investments is blood money and unethical, by anybodies measure, plain and simple.

I think we should be grateful for the gross commodification of those things we hold sacred.
It serves a pertinent reminder that none of these things, not cannabis, not ayahuasca or other psychedelics, not yoga, none of those things will take you anywhere you're not already headed. They are only vehicles, or tools.

“Verily, Allah sends astray whom He wills, and guides whom He wills.” [Faatir, 35:8]

I sliced out the middle part of your question to answer second as I felt it was a bit different than the first and third paragraphs.



So, personally, I think you're asking some of the more important questions of the current moment(s) in psychedelic culture/history.

I think the first (and most significant) point I'd like to make with regards to the question is that these are fundamentally political questions. That is, they deal with power relations within and across cultures, and, in many cases, rely on pre-existing social hierarchies and mechanisms of control/domination.

So, consider that Doblin has explicitly stated that "the psychedelic counterculture was a mistake." In making this statement, Doblin completely steamrolls and whitewashes the roll of psychedelics (and/or psychedelic activists) in the anti-war, civil rights, feminist, and other social movements of the time. In seeking to divorce psychedelics from this cultural context (and the catalyzing role they played for numerous people and organizations) Doblin essentially recontextualizes these drugs to fit his desired narrative of psychedelics as a wellspring of mental health progress. The act of divorcing psychedelics from their sociocultural contexts is a strategy that bears tremendous significance in this moment, when the question of the role of psychedelics is up for grabs in a way it may never be again.

So, perhaps the first way one can fight back is to understand the social and political histories of psychedelics, the war on drugs, etc. and challenge distortions of these histories that are commonly presented in pop culture (or by figures who have something to gain from the distortion). With the understanding that different groups have different things to gain from their portrayals of psychedelics (e.g. advancing the positions that psychedelics are benign medicines that pose no threat to the economic order of industrial capitalism/militarism/etc.) I think it's important to be clear on why psychedelics have the history that they have (from MK-Ultra to social/political catalysts and beyond).

Beyond that, I think the community as a whole needs to be more comfortable with advancing structural analyses and having open discussion/debates, especially on some of these incredibly important issues/themes. At the present moment, it seems like many of the conferences/events/press from within the psychedelic community are focused on a certain level of acritical "cheerleading" which is understandable given their taboo nature, but I think is detrimental in other ways. Ultimately, I think we have to make a mess, there's no "right" (certainly no clean/orderly) approach to working through these perspectives...but that's just like, my opinion, man

As to the second question you pose, "what do you all want to see happen as cannabis and other psychedelics spread and penetrate mainstream culture...What are the steps we can take individually (besides complaining) to ensure that they are popularized in a responsible fashion?"

Personally, I don't want to see psychedelics become popularized, at least not in the manner the they've currently been going. Obviously, my wants don't matter, it's happening regardless. But I do believe that this popularization falls into the PR realm in the sense that entrepreneurs, NGOs, and media companies have significantly more resources to spread their take/opinions than I (or any of us here) do. I don't want to deny people the psychedelic experience, but I think the way most of the popularization (from enthusiastic press coverage to people like Tim Ferris singing the praises of LSD microdosing) goes doesn't actually engage with or present relevant frameworks for the psychedelically-naive to work with the type of ontologically challenging, paradigm-shattering, or truly transformative experiences that make psychedelics such powerful sociocultural catalysts in the first place.

Honestly, my approach has been to try and advance some of the commentary/critique that I see as lacking within the community at large. But I think there's also a lot to be said for the roles that we play in spreading the experience/substances themselves. The way we introduce other folks to these drugs and the experiences they facilitate is incredibly important, I think. If we can show our friends and family the incredible potential of these compounds, rather than letting tech CEOs pitch them as uber nootropics, or allowing for them to be understood as "medicines" that can only be used if you are "unhealthy" or "ill", I think there's significant room for orientation there, and in ways that allow for realization of some of the more "dangerous" psychedelic potential.

For me, there's a category mismatch between dominant cultural institutions and psychedelic experiences. Or put another way, the sociopolitical landscape needs to be drastically altered, at least concurrently, with the popularization of psychedelics, if we want the popularization of psychedelics to have any hope of not falling victim to dominant culture (and commodification, among other things). I see it as a recursive process that, if we don't start/continue making strides with pretty immediately, will start to take off in the direction of whoever is able to get out in front of it (most likely those with greater resources/abilities to advance their positions).




For me, this particular case (popularization/commodification of psychedelics) is not really about cultural appropriation. The issue certainly crops up around "traditional" ceremonies and the retreat centers that offer them, but I think this case is less about the adoption of the elements of one culture by members of another culture and more about ensuring that psychedelics are able to occupy a non-commodified (less commodified?) position where the messages that seem most at odds with the destructive elements of dominant culture (notions that everything is love, we're all connected, nature is not at our disposal, senses of wonder, etc.) are able to flourish and inspire meaningful action/growth for individuals and society so that perhaps humanity might survive beyond this current moment of social insanity.

It's late and I feel like I'm starting to ramble, so I'll leave it at that for the moment...always happy to clarify/continue

Luckily, the relative size of the cartels didn't realy have anything to do with the content of my argument.
The point i realy wanted to make, was that changing the legal status of cannabis is not likely going to make things worse. Unless more people would want to use cannabis, 'because it's legal now'. I don't see how the drug trade could get any more bloody than it already is because of legalisation.
But i don't see the crime organisations going away either. They have distribution networks, and they have their own 'police force', if you could call it that way. (in some places it's even the official police btw, that's on their paylist). Plenty of opportunities to use them elsewhere. Wich is exactly what they are doing anyway.

So it's not going to be all rainbows and Sunshine once it's legal. They will need to legalise some other drugs as well if that's what they're after But small growers and users will definately benefit. The users will no longer have to fear the police, and small growers will no longer have to fear the people who come by with 'busines offers of the kind that are hard to refuse'...ánd the police. Wich surely isn't a bad thing.

I don't doubt that, and I'm one of them.

The point is the state is the one to blame. The purpose of a business is to make money, and so the more money a business makes, the better a business it is.

Similarly when a company dumps toxic waste in the sea and gets away with it, it's the state's fault for letting them get away. They shouldn't be allowed to do that. But if they are, and it saves them money, they will. It's not in their interest to protect the environment.
This conflict of interest should be recognized and dealt with at the legislative level.

Yes, business and the state are interconnected, and they shouldn't be. In the last couple of centuries we've managed to detach the Church from the state, now it's time to detach business from it.

In the meantime we can boycott businesses we consider unethical and encourage others to do so, but not everybody will follow suit.

Maybe that's the only way psychedelics can enter mass consciousness at this point in time, and change the attitudes towards them and get them legalized.
It may not be our ideal, but it may be better than nothing.

Their full potential may not come to the surface now, but hopefully it will one day when people are ready. Improving their image and legal status is the first step.

The revolution of the 1960s was too rebellious, chaotic and ungrounded and so it had to be put down. It taught us revolutions like that are not the way to go.
Now it's time for evolution - slow, steady and sustainable.

I'm not sure cannabis has strong enough an agenda to bring about a big change on its own, but it can open the doors to other entheogens.

No. I'm afraid that argument is totally spurious.

Wich part?

Ofcourse the state does have a responsibility.
If there are no laws, then the most ruthless businesmen will Always make the most profit. Because they'll Always be willing to go just a little bit further then people with a conscience. And this way they'll create a prisonners dilemma: if you want to continue doing busines, you'll have to follow. Doing the right thing will ALWAYS be a disadvantage for you, in such an environment.

This principle applies to labour rights, environmental laws, tax collection, and even a to thing like consumer safety (remember the melamine scandal in china?).

But even in a more basic way, the government has a responsibility to protect it's citizens.
If you don't imprison violent sex offenders, you are partly responsible for the consequences. Sexual predators will simply continue to ruin countless lives, untill they're safely behind bars. Maybe not a very politically correct thing to say, but very true nevertheless.

I think it has gone somewhat crazy really.
But afterall its prolly all those people who grew before legalisation that now finally can have fun making stuff they really like.
Imagine if art was illegal. You would see tons of artists suddenly propping up when it goes legal.

And also i find it good because all those THC extracts and all improve the medicinal applications a lot.

I disagree. And you've completely neglected the acute harm/damage to people and ecosystems that this approach carries with it. A point I made with regards to your last post, as well.



Again, your "analysis" leaves a good deal to be desired, and isn't really supported by historical facts. If you learned that "revolutions" (if that's what you want to call it) like the events that took place in the 60's are not the "way to go," again, I feel kind of sad for you. The 60's had an incredibly beneficial effect on social structures/institutions in that it forced them, in many ways, to actually engage with some of the common and popular demands, many of which were only marginally/incrementally engaged with and still require significant work. Without that "rebellion" or "chaos" we would likely be significantly worse off than the disaster we find ourselves in today...and that's downright terrifying to contemplate.

Furthermore, your conceptualization of "evolution" (as teleological, slow, steady, etc.) seems rather flawed in a number of ways (see: punctuated equilibrium for one example). It might sound nice, but even as a rhetorical device, this plea for people to just behave themselves and hope for gradual change is severely lacking, imo.

As to this:



This is pretty fallacious reasoning, as I detailed in my earlier response to your claims that corporations that supply the munitions for (and carry out) war crimes bear no responsibility. You seem to have ignored my reply to your position, so I won't repeat it here, just reiterate that your position is rather ill-supported.

The part where you argue that immoral behaviour on the part of an individual or corporation is somehow excusable because the state either failed to legislate against it, or failed to enforce legislation.

If you believe in objective morality, surely you hold the agent of immoral behaviour responsible, rather than the individual or mechanism that failed to stop them?

If you don't believe in objective morality, surely it is mankind pursuing business-as-usual villainy against itself and hardly worth comment?

Businesses operate within a system and the system determines how they're 'scored'. Within capitalism, the measure of your performance is your profits, stock price etc., not how ethical your operations are.

In the context of the system these companies operate within, it doesn't make a lot of sense to say they're responsible. They're doing what they were created for.

When the state needs a batch of missiles someone will fulfill the order. If one military industry company suddenly decides to quit the unethical business, another will jump at the lucrative opportunity. You can't expect them all to turn it down. As long as there is pie on the table, there will be someone to take it. It only takes *one* such unethical someone. And in a society that votes in a government that wages war, there is millions of them.

Again, you have completely neglected numerous systemic components that de facto invalidate your assertions. I listed three of them earlier:

Regulatory capture
Manufacture of consent
Monetization of speech

But that's hardly an exhaustive list.

Your argument crumbles to dust if we examine it solely through the lens of regulatory capture. Once we start apply the other lenses, the dust blows away.

And of course, your entire premise is based on the assumption that the authority of capitalism and the state are both legitimate...a rather tenuous assertion at best.

Sure. Ofcourse i dó believe that every agent is responsible for his or her actions. But that doesn't mean that the state has no responsibility at all.

Look at what deregulation did to the financial sector. The whole world is still feeling the pain of the crisis that started a decade ago.
It takes just a few realy bad apples, to corrupt an entire sector.

A hitman will maybe justify his actions by saying "if i don't do it, someone else will".
And ofcourse that is not a valid justification at all. I do agree that you can't dodge personal responsibility with such reasoning. But the fact is that people use this kind of reasoning all the time.
By choosing not to intervene, a government is responsible for creating an environment in wich people can get away with such reasoning.

See my last posts. When government is the shadow cast on society by big business, arguing that government is choosing not to intervene in the regulation of industry is a tautological argument.

You are, in essence, saying that business is not responsible for its actions because the state mechanisms that are controlled by business (again, see: regulating bodies and regulatory capture, and I'll reiterate again that that's only one component) are not stepping in to stop business from doing the things that business is doing.

Can you see how absurd that is? Where is the pressure for deregulation coming from? Who is proposing and passing those measures? What does public opinion polling show? In all cases I can think of, the actions taken by advocates of deregulation and "market discipline" (market discipline, that is, except when industry needs a state-bailout, and then back to the strict dictates of the market once the golden parachutes have been deployed) has nothing to do with the interests of the general public, and everything to do with the incestuous relationship between corporations and the state.

Pretending that there is a distinction, in state capitalism, between business interests and state interests is laughable, at best. There's governmental documentation that explicitly lays that assertion to rest. Two of the more significant historical documents (one from the "right" and one from the "left") show just how unified political actors are in their distaste for popular sentiment and limits on corporate control.

See: The Powell Memorandum and The Trilateral Commission's The Crisis of Democracy

I'm not saying that busines is not responsible for it's actions.

What i'm saying is that any state has a responsibility towards it's people. And that there can be no justification for dodging that responsibility.

Take the example of the hitman. Ofcourse the hitman is responsible for his own actions.
But by turning a blind eye, the state is responsible for creating an environment in wich the hitman can do his busines. He can point the finger at other hitmen and say that "if i don't do it, someone else will".
If hitmen in general would be hunted down, and imprisoned, he could not be doing that.

What you describe is, what is generally refered to as 'corruption'.
For curruption to exist, there need to be at least two agents. I don't see the point of argueing wich of these agents is most responsible, because you need the consent of all of the agents involved.

The thing is that evil people do exist. There are serial killers, rapists, people who rob, steal, destroy, businesses that pollute the planet, empty our oceans.

So we need laws. We need good legislation and agencies to uphold these laws. And ways to keep these agencies in check as well, ofcourse. I don't believe in a world without any such thing.
I don't think that in a world without any government, people would be able to defend themselves against all the evil that exists. Not in a world with over 7 billion people and so much technology, so much knowledge and so many ways to kill and destroy.
Any vacuüm of power would be filled in no time. Plenty of people willing to do that.
I think history has shown by now, that things can Always get worse. Especially when people believe it can't (weimar republic, syria, Iraq, etc.).

Wich is why 1-we need a government, and 2-we need to be very critical towards that government. Most people here would not want to live in a world without 1 and 2. If someone claims he would, i'm Always asking myself whether he fully oversees the consequences of his wishes.

My apologies, I got confused and thought I was addressing Jagube, whose arguments I was referring to, arguments that conflated illegal and immoral actions and held the state responsible for both.

I think these arguments, interesting as they are, have drifted pretty far from the question of the commercialization of cannabis.

Personally, I think that the commercialization of cannabis or psychedelics (though I would never put these two things, or the commercialization thereof, in the same category) is par for the course, no more stimulating than the commercialization of wine, or holidays, or the sale of tie-dye t-shirts at walmwart.

If your "spirituality" is so closely tied to these "things" which can be bought, sold, legalized, forbidden, commercialized etc. that it traumatizes you, I would suggest that perhaps you look elsewhere for a more stable, durable expression of your spirituality which may lead you to a more stable, durable truth.

Now, if you despair at mankind's tendencies to seek out the lowest commonly profitable denominator (taking "profit" in an almost insanely broad meaning of the word), consider three positions you/one might occupy on a notional bell-curve or spectrum;

1. That you are a "top end" outlier, in that you live extremely ethically and mindfully in the light of a broad understanding of reality and leave little or no footprint on Mother Earth. If this is the case, you are a statistical anomaly and largely irrelevant to what it means to be a human being in 2017.

2. That you belong in the big lumpen hump of the bell curve which includes both those at one end of the hump, stuffing their mouths with GMO unicorn burger and driving SUVs purchased on the never-never, and those at the other end, taking public transport while reading Kafka and eating a cress and arugala salad they purchased at Pachamumu Wholefood Cafe on Main St.
If this is the case, you may express a variety of behaviours, and express a variety of opinions, but you are statistically representative of Humanity as a hyper-successful species that, like a desert full of rabbits, wasn't quite smart enough to be able to regulate its own success in order to, counterintuitively perhaps, truly succeed.
You might have the sort-of maybe later desire to be a number 1., and no doubt can express the kinds of opinions worthy of a number 1., but somehow, you just kind of need to get on with life, burn electricity, fossil fuels, pesticides, antibiotics, etc.

3. That you are slavering double Y chromo compulsive rapist who lives on panda-flesh and the smoke of burning rainforests. Probaby also a statistical anomaly.

Chances are you, like me, are a number two. In which case we give a good representation of what humanity is really like, a "true" humanity, in which the idea of a large majority of people, as individuals, as corporations, and as individuals making up corporations, voluntarily acting in a moral way the large majority of the time, is a bit of an irrelevance.

I mean, if it was going to happen, wouldn't it have happened already?

It's not a bright picture, but I believe it is a truthful picture, and so, what it boils down to for me anyway, is the question that since everybody is just doing whatever the hell they want anyway, would you rather be happy, or right?

I'm committing the worst sin of the forum, that is replying prior to reading the entire thread.

I live in a rec legal state, that is Oregon. We denied legalization for nearly a decade while the bill was fine tuned. The bill we finally passed did so because it had the support of long time users and growers.

The concern is valid over cororate pot, and making sure that those who stewarded the plant through prohibition would continue to profit and now be able to provide for themselves and families legally.

Also pay taxes, start farms and above ground business and hire people. The revenue it has generated in a little over a year is very good for my hurting region.

For me, i have easy cheap access to fine herbs, can buy as much or little as I want, i know the strain, it is tested for pesticides and thc/cbd content, and i have lots and lots of choice.

A lot of us feared legalization for some of the reasons op stated, but a well crafted bill and good oversight has created a pretty good situation IMHO.

I love living in a legal state.

dragonrider, you're doing the same thing you've done every time we've had a discussion of this manner. You are sidestepping the specifics and speaking in metaphors/analogies.

Metaphors and analogies have their place, but when I actually provide the documentation of the events and concepts in action to which I am referring, and you take an end-around to discuss "hitmen" it really hinders any actual discussion.

If you want to lay culpability for corporate actions at the feet of the state, you have to acknowledge the mechanisms through which the state functions. If we see that under state-capitalism, those mechanisms have been bought out by corporations (not surprising, see: capitalism) and are effectively NOT in state control, you can call it whatever you like, corruption, logical outcomes of the system, whatever.

The fact is that's the reality of the situation. And ultimately the reality of the situation, not some imagined political order or metaphorical story, is what matters.

So again, when you say that the state is responsible for regulating business, yet we have decades of documentation on the modern American state that shows that regulatory agencies have been run in the interests of business, as well as plenty of documented evidence that colonial American and post-colonial American government were structured to be out of the hands of the populace, you are essentially trafficking in tautologies.

Yes, regulating agencies should have the ability to regulate. The reality is they don't. The reality is that elections have been highly correlated with campaign funding/spending for the past 100+ years in the US. The people funding those elections are not the populace. This is how the system was set up!

James Madison explicitly said:



So again, you can call this corruption, but the reality is that it's systemic design.

I have plenty of historical evidence and documents to back up this position...the evidence is overwhelming. It's important to engage with the on-the-ground realities and actual situations, not just abstract notions of how things "should be." In at least one of the conversations I can recall on a related subject matter, you simply stopped posting after I made a similar request that you support your position with evidence and engage with the real world rather than abstractions.


As to your arguments about the "necessity" of laws and governments...states are literally the bloodiest institutions in human history. I understand you find them to be necessary, but there is little to no justification for their authority, other than "might makes right"...which isn't valid, imo. When people argue in support of governments, I wonder if they don't fully understand all of the consequences and documented atrocities that go along with their support. When they start talking about how, without laws, everyone would start raping and killing each other, it really makes me wonder if laws are the only things stopping them from raping and killing right now.