It is time for a post-drug war Marshall Plan | openDemocracy

Fifty years ago almost every United Nations member state signed up to support a global prohibition on the non-medical use of certain drugs. Ever since, citizens all over the world have repeatedly voted for governments that proclaim the virtues of fighting a "war on drugs". Through taxes we pay governments to enforce drug laws to protect us, our children, our communities and our countries from the all too real harms of drug misuse.

However, the regime of prohibition (the criminalisation of production, supply and use) has been applied only to certain drugs. It has rarely been applied to tobacco and alcohol. But who does this prohibition protect?

In a classic protection racket, a racketeer threatens damage to a business, or harm to an individual, unless the victim pays the racketeer "protection" money. The 1961 UN Single Convention on drugs, to which the UK is a signatory, frames its approach in terms of a concern for the "health and welfare of mankind" and a desire to "combat" the "serious evil" of "addiction to narcotic drugs". It then places an obligation on signatories to put in place a blanket prohibition (and thereby eliminate use and eradicate supply) in order to protect us from this "evil".

For contrast, that following Summer in 68 a group of us from the RCA film school went to the US and made a commissioned picaresque movie along Route 66 from Chicago to LA. Our actor was fellow student Tony Scott, who sadly took his own life yesterday. He was fearless, honest and immensely kind. Great fun to be with. I haven't met him since our student days, but he was not a chap one would forget.

You can't be me, I'm taken

Certainly the Prague Spring does enter into the international zeitgeist of the times and was an experiment in openess initially encouraged by the Soviet Politburo. It actually was the Soviet Politburo that sought to replace Novotny with Dubcek as Novotny was considered far too reactionary, repressive and corrupt by Politburo standards. (I'm aware this claim goes against low-brow hagiography popular in the West.) It is no wonder the corrupt Novotny flunky Jan Sejna chose to flee to the West rather than the USSR (where he eventually recycled himself as a rightwing darling alleging Czech torture of Vietnam MIAs with, I suppose, good old LSD).

That the Slovak Dubcek got out of hand simply reminds one of similar cases in the Western hemisphere where invasions of Central American and Caribbean states were the order of the day at the time. Castro, too, was favourably pumped in the American press before he "got out of hand." The best laid plans often do go array.

prague spring being the fruit of psychedelising the area may be a reach, but then if LSD were an agent in this political transformation, it would likely have been downplayed, especially by the media, similarly to how it's been downplayed as agent in the development of the WWW, the discovery of DNA, and who knows how much else?

seems the only place where it entered the media narrative as serious change agent was in the field of music, and even that semi-mutedly..

now there is a little allowed if it's to help mop up the psychic messes of war, where they truly are at their fuckwit's end on what to do about the growing military (and ex-military) suicide factor, a very embarassing factor it is too, seeing as the dominant media narrative about war is that it's a noble career path, and if that were true why would so many have been so ashamed as to off themselves?

so the promising new research into MDMA for PTSD is allowed space, like psilocybin use for alleviating fear of dying for terminal patients.

notice the pattern?

when all else fails...

this is reality pushing up the rug of denial, and mighty little bumps at that.

consider also how 'they' were all over it when they thought it could be used as a weapon, before it became a recreational drug of choice for millions and research (professional at least!) was shut down.

the introduction of crack to the ghettos during the reagan iran/contra just say no years, and the worldwide proliferation of heroin since the afghan/kosovo adventurism neatly fulfill the current topsyturvy narrative that suits the 1% just fine, thankyou very much...

acid promoted feelings of compassion and connectedness, so it's entirely possible it was responsible in a roundabout, indirect way for many socially inspired events and phenomena, such as prague spring, but hard evidence seems still thin, as if we could say centuries -millenia?- of use of hashish helped bring about the arab spring. one day that theory could be toutable, but now would have no media valence, zip, zero. time still has a lot of telling to do in this regard...

if leary had not come along, it's possible that psychedelics would have remained in the serious science camp, and may well have earned a different media treatment than it has now, but then there is another scenario suggesting the diffusion of certain social movements like deep ecology, selp-help, computer science and countless others, including music would have remained less invigorated.

DIY mysticism has had a chaotically dualistic effect through history, on one side the breakthroughs of huxley, alpert et al, on the other the many 'acid casualties' that stemmed from the use of an exponential power tool in often inexpert, unprepared situations, eyegrabbing media scare tactics and contributing to the 'war on drugs' mentality.

all the while big pharma sales have gone ballistic and kids are socially engineered by 'good' drugs from a very early age...

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

In my case, that is not an easily done thing. Not because my mind would not open, but because I have a completely different way of thinking than most people, so there was very little common experience. I am autistic.

Before I became "experienced," I was an introvert of the most unusual type. I would talk for hours with a couple of people on my newspaper delivery route on a regular basis. One was a retired English teacher, the other a widow in her 70s. I now know this is the sort of thing that is a sign of my form of autism.

After enhancing my empathy, I find that I can talk to almost anyone, and while I am still an introvert when it comes to making friends, no one would ever call me that based on my conversational skills and willingness to engage just about anyone.

I am getting ready to go to work soon, so I will have to check back when I get home (2300(-5GMT, I think)) and perhaps expound on this topic then.

Mark

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

"At least our time backstage was punctuated by some fascinating incidents. My favorite: Paul Kantner and stage manager Bill Laudner of the (Jefferson) Airplane trying to dose the main water supply (and the coffee urn) with some speckled-pink tablets of acid, and being busted by Bill Graham, who excoriated them mercilessly until Laudner sought to trump him with "Bill! You don't understand! This is in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Czechoslovakia! Prague Spring, man!" Bill was not impressed enough to acquiesce, however; it was agreed that the tablets would be given out by hand, individually."