Episode 11: Surrendering the War on Drugs

Do you do drugs? Don’t answer that! I’ll respect your privacy. And which drugs anyway? Alcohol? Caffeine? Sugar? These all affect the mind enough to be properly called drugs – but they are the drugs modern industrial civilisation endorses, because they amplify its values of productivity, orderliness, political centralisation, cultural conformity and materialism. Other cultures in space and time have chosen different mind-altering substances as their own chemical allies in the pursuit of civilisational purpose, and give them nicer names, like ‘medicine’ or ‘magic potion’. The chief argument of this episode is that if you are not hurting anybody else, then you have the absolute right to put whatever substance you want into your body, free from persecution. Especially since many ‘drugs’ allow one to explore one’s own consciousness and sense of self; and if we can’t have such a freedom, then what freedom do we have at all? So let’s look at the case for why ALL drugs (or at least most) should be legalised and regulated; even those with a greater potential to cause us harm. We must see drug use in perspective as a fundamental human activity that can be good or bad depending on context and intention, and which like all things must be dealt with by education and consciousness, not by Big Brother beating us with a big stick. This is a controversial topic but if we can get this right, our societies will see immediate and exponential benefits, allowing us to flourish beyond anything we’ve come to expect.