The "war on drugs" has been a morally reprehensible disaster. It rewards sloppy reasoning and credulous advocacy "research", it embodies hypocrisy, and worst of all, it has caused far more death and suffering than the drugs alone ever could have-- by indirectly funding murderous cartels, by imprisoning peaceful/ non-violent "offenders" and separating people from their families, by denying people the right to (effective) alternative medications, and from the way bigoted law enforcers have used these laws to disproportionately disenfranchise minorities. Anyone who fails to see this is living under a rock. Or works for the abominable DEA.
(This is not a call for violent action against the DEA. Nor is it a call to harass them. But it is a call for people to wake up and challenge the status quo)
It's not just marijuana that we should rethink. Even some of the harder drugs have some medicinal value that the media has neglected. MDMA has repeatedly been shown to alleviate (or even completely cure) otherwise treatment-resistant PTSD. This needs to be an option, at least for war veterans; anyone who goes through hell to defend their country and to protect innocent people from those who'd prey upon them should have the option of using a substance that alleviates the effects of their time in hell. LSD (in a comfortable setting) may help terminally ill patients come to terms with their mortality. And Psilocybin (and LSD) may alleviate cluster headaches. But the shameful media hysteria surrounding drugs has prevented more reasoned public discussions. And so most people aren't aware of any of this research. Instead, we mostly hear about naive teenagers taking triple doses of "ecstasy" and then dying nasty deaths. Of course these deaths are terrible and tragic, and of course we should try to prevent them, but we're not doing anyone any favors by shamefully exploiting these deaths to push for unreasonable legislation.
But forget about the medicinal aspect. Telling adults what they're allowed to do with their own bodies in order to "protect" them--telling them they may not use certain substances even when those substances will not affect other people-- is obnoxiously condescending and infantilizing. We are not children and politicians aren't our parents. And they apply that kind of reasoning very selectively and hypocritically. They tell us that marijuana should be illegal because of how harmful it is, which is (at best) a ridiculous exaggeration and also comes from a line of thinking that is applied inconsistently; legislators never apply that kind of reasoning to alcohol (you can buy gallons of 151-proof alcohol in any state without worrying about getting incarcerated for "intent to distribute"), to fattening and harmful foods that contribute to diabetes and the obesity epidemic, to cigarettes (which contain dozens of very harmful toxins), and to many other things. These (totally legal!) things kill thousands of people annually and cause non-fatal but debilitating suffering for millions of others. So why don't our politicians "protect" us from them? And it doesn't work; naive people are still going to get their hands on dangerous drugs, often from shady and unreliable dealers.
The solution isn't to wage a counterproductive and expensive "war" on drugs. Imagine if all of the money that has been utterly wasted on this war had instead been spent on (a) thorough and honest educational programs (that teach people about the pharmacology and toxicology of certain drugs and in the process help them form their own evidence-based conclusions on the risk and benefit ratios), (b) independent labs that can test these drugs for contamination or adulteration, and (c) more effective rehabilitation centers for actual addicts. So many victims of this "war on drugs" would still be alive. So many people wouldn't have had their lives and careers ruined. And the world would be a much better place.
