The growth of the Drug Policy Alliance’s influence and emphasis contributes to the staggering increase in overdose deaths. * DPA gets political mileage from using the term “war on drugs,” and turning it into a negative term. However, the USA officially abandoned the term eight years ago, and then the death rate began to rise.
Foodies who admire Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma include parents opposed to marijuana and its manipulation into an increasingly potent, dangerous drug.
Pollan is writing a book about possible medical applications for psychedelics, which would fit nicely into an agenda promoted by the Drug Policy Alliance, MAPS and Erowid. Surreptitiously, these pro-drug lobbyists and groups are trying to legalize all drugs. If they get popular writers on board, it will be so much easier.
MAPS pushes pot as treatment for PTSD, even though an important study from Yale suggests that pot worsens PTSD in veterans. Bad psychiatric treatments are nothing new. At one time, the public also believed in lobotomies as a treatment for mental illness.
Drug Policy Alliance uses “social justice” reasons to push for legalization of all drugs, first through decriminalization.* The social justice angle isn’t a good argument, because drug dealers, legal and illegal, target minorities and poor communities. Dig a little deeper and social justice appears to be the excuse, not the true reason the DPA argues for drug legalization.
Psychedelics, Alternative Reality and Psychosis
Drug advocates are promoting many psychedelics as medicine: psilocybin mushrooms, LSD, marijuana, MDMA (Ecstasy) and ketamine. Psychiatrists of the ’50s and ’60s experimented with these drugs as psychiatric treatments. The most famous one, Scottish Psychiatrist R.D. Laing, experimented with LSD to treat some patients. Although he had genuine empathy towards the patients, Laing’s methods and those of his followers are often considered worse than failure. (Psychiatrist Isidora Ranjit-Singh explains: Laing “didn’t understand the interaction between illicit substances such as LSD and cannabis and mental health: illicit drugs are a contributory factor in psychosis. LSD is an awful drug that can result in seemingly psychotic flashbacks which can continue after the patient has stopped using it.”)
As long as we do not know the cause of many psychological issues, using psychedelics is like playing with fire. Emil Kraepelin, father of modern Psychiatry, maintained that catatonia and schizophrenia wouldn’t be solved until we know their cause. It doesn’t always boil down to genetics. When the root cause of a mental issue is trauma, there are successful therapeutic models and we don’t need new experimental drugs.
As for schizophrenia, marijuana is the one known trigger which can lead to this condition of permanent psychosis.
Psychedelics Study is Chance to Learn from Past Mistakes
Movers and shakers behind “medical” marijuana use the term “compassion” as a marketing scheme. To avoid FDA scrutiny, they devised a scam, recorded on videotapes, to bring about full legalization. Perhaps they’re pushing new “medicinal” uses for hallucinogenic drugs for similar reasons.
Ethan Nadelmann, formerly executive director of Drug Policy Alliance, explained the underlying plan on Reddit. “Michael Pollan’s forthcoming book on psychedelics and medicine will take media interest to yet another level. The more people know about this, the faster psychedelics will be legally accepted as medicines.” Nadelmann engages his followers with wishful thinking. In a TED talk, he said: “Our desire to alter our consciousness may be as fundamental as our desire for food, companionship, and sex.”
When Pollan has spoken to the press, he mentions psychedelics as “palliative” care in people facing the end of life. It sounds familiar, because the pot lobbyists initially promoted medical marijuana for end-of-life care. In reality, it’s mostly young men with pain who use “medical” marijuana, not the cancer and AIDs patients for whom it was intended. More recently pot advocates promote it to treat psychiatric disorders.
If hallucinogens can be used help in controlled settings, would those who become “caregivers” practice snake oil medicine? Would they set up they type of shams that plague “medical” marijuana? Again the public could be tricked, since everyone has compassion for the terminally ill.
There are strong ethical reasons not to endorse psychedelics, or to give so much power to psychiatrists and gurus. It would entail knowingly utilizing drugs that can make certain people worse. Furthermore, it would put incredible power into the hands of “caregivers” and psychiatrists. If teens get the idea that a drug is “medicinal,” they will think it safe to use –by anyone on any occasion.
When the US Government Has been “Right”
Although the US government gave some bad dietary advice over the past decades, it has revised some of the mistakes. Diet dictocrats now recommend eating eggs, the right kind of fats and fewer grains. Americans are eating better because they listened to critics such as Michael Pollan and many others.
The US government’s historical evaluation of and classification of marijuana in 1970 was never wrong. Judges and the FDA have consistently rejected the reclassification of marijuana.
Drug advocates wish to normalize drug use in order to capitalize on it. By using drugs, they hope to bypass the hard work it takes to obtain true spiritual growth. Modern America is not comparable to the ancient, ritualistic and shamanistic cultures that traditionally used psychedelics. We need our food to keep us alive, but we don’t need intoxicating, hallucinogenic drugs to sustain us.
Photos of passed out parents with toddlers have surfaced everywhere — the images of our addiction epidemic. (Above photo is from the East Liverpool, Ohio, Police Department.) Though it’s often heroin, fentanyl or opiates that kill, most of the young people dying today began their illicit drug use with pot. (Read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. ) We have created a new generation of traumatized children.
When those who were traumatized children put their own children in abusive situations, it’s easy to understand their failings. Selena Hitt’s boyfriend accidentally shot her baby, after both of them had smoked pot. Selena had been raised in foster care. Her mother died when she was very young, and most of the time her father was not available to care for her.
Policy More than other Factors Creates Problem of Drug Use
However, there’s a group of non-traumatized adults abusing their children because the United States has normalized the use of marijuana. Because marijuana users can be detached from life and are susceptible to psychosis, it’s important not to use pot if you have children.
Up to eighty percent of child abuse and neglect involves substance abuse, a fact that violence prevention groups often ignore.* The denial is helpful to the strategy of making drug use socially acceptable. NORML, Marijuana Policy Project and Drug Policy Alliance wish to normalize drug use.
The same groups that promote legalization suggest that harm reduction strategies work. Policy based on harm reduction promotes “responsible use” of drugs, which doesn’t work. Recently, a five-year-old drowned, because her babysitter used pot at 8:30 a.m. and stopped watching her.
The Widespread Problem of Traumatized Children
One of our Parents Opposed to Pot members in Colorado has a 13-year-old son who suffers from PTSD. His older brother threatened and terrified him while in a marijuana-induced psychosis. (The older son, now 17, is in recovery, while the younger son is being treated with EMDR for PTSD. )
Genetic and environmental factors that influence drug use are compounded by a society that normalizes drug use. Our blog on suicides tells of teens and young adults who lived in environments that normalized marijuana use. For the most part, they did not use marijuana because of trauma, although one was a veteran.
Drug-Related Deaths far Outnumber Deaths by Cars or Guns
The Center for Disease Control recently released statistics about accidental deaths:
52,404 drug-related deaths, up 11%.
37,757 died in car crashes, an increase of 12%.
36,252 gun deaths, including homicides and suicides
As we try to cope with a growing number of children affected by ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences), the United States is embarking on a program to legalize all drugs. Little children are losing their parents at an alarming rate, adding to the trauma and ACE scores of the future.
Taking away children from drug-using mothers is not the answer, because separation from the moms also creates traumatized children. Child protection workers are in a Catch 22 situation. Techniques described in Part 2 can perhaps help the children traumatized by parents’ drug use.
*Our information is mainly from CASA Columbia. A good current reference Ed Gogek’s book, Marijuana Debunked. Several studies are mentioned in our six-part series on child abuse deaths related to pot. Parents Opposed to Pot has tried to share stories with Futures Without Violence, but they banned us from posting on their Facebook page.
Social Justice is a pretext, the handy catch phrase to get people to support the legalization of pot. The idea doesn’t come from disadvantaged minorities. “Marijuana legalization is the worst way forward to reforming drug policy for the minority community,” claims Will Jones, founder of Two is Enough D.C.
Jones, whose family has always been involved in the Civil Rights movement, is enraged by the social justice message. “If you aren’t a minority, maybe legalization does look ok because you’re not going to have the deluge of (pot) stores in your community,” Liquor shops are on every block in his neighborhood. Jones admonishes the marijuana industry for “cherry picking criminal justice issues to conveniently pick a statistic that helps them.” Of the places that voted to legalize pot, only Washington DC has managed to stay free of commercial pot stores.
It was easy to cut through the illusion by watching Ethan Nadelmann at the Democratic National Convention last summer. Nadelmann, director of Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), was bragging to his supporters about how profitable the marijuana industry is. At the end of the video, when the cameras was on him, he added “and don’t forget social justice.” It was an afterthought. He must have been joking.
The Reality Where Pot is Legalized
In Denver, the pot businesses have located mainly in low-income minority neighborhoods, taking advantage of those with the least amount of political clout. Buzz Feed reports that black people are being shut out of America’s weed boom. Blacks own only about one percent of the 3,600 storefront marijuana dispensaries in the United States. Hispanics may own even less. For the most part, whites alone have benefited from the huge profits in the weed industry.
Where’s the Real Social Justice in a Mind-Destroying Drug?
We question the sincerity of those who promote “social justice” as a reason to legalize marijuana. What is the “social justice” in promoting a substance that lowers your IQ, weakens memory and directly contributes to the mental illness as a causal factor? Even without drug testing, using pot makes some people lazy and less likely to get a job or hold onto it.
It’s unfortunate that blacks and Hispanics are arrested more frequently for pot than whites. Complex social problems like police bias never have simplistic solutions.
Alternatives that don’t involve Legalization
Convincing people that hundreds of thousands of people are in prison for marijuana use is one of the false narratives of the legalization movement. The Sacramento Bee recently investigated and couldn’t find a single low level marijuana offender in California prisons.
Those who believe in social justice, should look into policies to reduce drug-related crimes and its ugly bedfellow, drug addiction. Even if the “war on drugs didn’t work,” it’s false to claim legalization and incarceration are the only options. Those trying to legalize marijuana intentionally scramble the messages so the public confuses decriminalization with legalization.
There are plenty of ways to revise and improve criminal justice without harming people, and drug use harms people. Drug courts and treatment have been criminal justice options for more than 20 years.
Criminal justice experts agree that loosening drug possession laws would have little effect on the total numbers in prison.
The Clearest Motivation of the Marijuana Legalization Ballots
Kevin Sabet, President of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), said: “An exploitative new industry, reminiscent of Big Tobacco, has hoisted the banner of “Ending the War on Drugs” for an ulterior, but far more straightforward motive—making a lot of money at the expense of public health. He explains that marijuana legalization ballots are written and advertised entirely for the benefit the industry’s bottom line.
Since legalization, the number of actual marijuana users has increased to 13% of people ages 12 and older. Thirty percent of those users, or 6 million people have Cannabis Use Disorder. The business model of increasing addiction and making money off of those who are addicted is working.
Investors and politicians claim that legalization can end the black market. Evidence from Colorado and Washington shows that cartels are emboldened by legalization and the black market still thrives.
Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) promotes a falsehood that marijuana is safer than alcohol, another delusion. Instead of encouraging less drug use, MPP, DPA, NORML and the ACLU manipulate opinion. Financial opportunists connected to these lobbies pretend pot is harmless and that arrest discrepancies will be solved by legalization. This marijuana industry and drug promotion organizations are devious, not compassionate.