Opinion

This morning I searched the vast image catalog of Shutterstock for some photographs that illustrated the general concept of abolishing the drug war. I was sure I'd find something since the site has over a billion images submitted by well over half a million...

In the "Wisdom of Life," Arthur Schopenhauer sums up an unspoken assumption of Western philosophy when he writes: "Every man is pent up within the limits of his own consciousness and cannot get directly beyond those limits any more than he can get beyond...

I have no doubt that the occasional use of criminalized plants, including psychedelics, would improve my life, make me a better person, help me enjoy nature and art, and encourage me to help others. It would also entirely obviate my need to become an...

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...

If you want evidence that the American people have been bamboozled by the Drug War, just search the Web for “famous drug users.” Almost all of the “hits” will feature the judgmental term “addiction” (rather than “habituation” or “use”) and almost none of the...

First America takes away the citizens’ right to manage their own pain by rendering opium illegal. Then the American psychiatric field decides that it will treat the resultant epidemic of depression by damaging the patient’s brain, i.e. by treating depressed patients using electroshock therapy. Imagine...

Hollywood owes Richard Nixon a posthumous Oscar. If the 37th president of the United States had not launched a paramilitary crackdown on the use of naturally-occurring substances in the early ‘70s, we would have no movies like the following: American Gangster, Asian Connection, Bobby Z,...

Recent research has clearly demonstrated that psychedelic inebriation is associated with decreased activity in the brain. That’s right: the more vivid the imagery and insights that you access in your “trip,” the less active the brain is. This is the exact opposite of what...