Needing New Enemies: Salvia, Kratom, and Opposing the Modern Drug War

We have made great strides in bringing the war on cannabis to a close. There are rumblings about easing some of the nonsensical restrictions on psychedelics as well. However, the drug war, its slanderous propaganda machine, and its will to rob us of our own bodily autonomy are alive and well. As public perception of common drugs, like cannabis and mushrooms, is changing, the industries and government agencies that profit from the war on drugs are looking for new enemies to combat and new fronts to fight on. This is the hidden danger that will arise with our success at ending the existing oppressive policies. When the old illegal drugs begin to be legalized, there will be a push to criminalize new drugs, often for no good reason, to maintain this profitable system of oppression and this is something that we should be aware of and consider opposing.

This is not a new phenomenon. The war on drugs really started to kick off in this country (though it had been brewing for a while) when the prohibition of alcohol came to an end. We were left with freshly bloated law enforcement and other government agencies that had budgets to protect. When the "boogie man" of alcohol was no longer available as a convenient "threat" to "protect" us from, they began to shift their focus to substances that no one cared to regulate before. They used propaganda and false claims to scare people into supporting the rebirth of the prohibition that they had only just rid themselves of. We (well, our grandparents or great grandparents, in reality) were told that these drugs are immoral, that they will drive people insane, that they are alien and used by "scary" foreign cultures. "Weed will make your virtuous virgin daughters crave the company of dark skinned men" they said (I don't have the exact quote in front of me but it is actually even more racist sounding than that). However, we now know that all of that stuff was a pile of self-serving lies. Cannabis is as safe of a plant as any and that is something anyone, now, can see. Even the "bad" drugs weren't as bad as they were made out to be. Heroin is no worse than morphine in terms of how addictive it is and some have suggested (I don't take a position on this but it is worth noting) that it may be superior to morphine in a medical context because it causes less nausea and its intoxication (I have no experience in that realm) is less debilitating. Even cocaine has or, at least, had some valuable uses in certain situations (its numbing effects were useful in dentistry before other local anesthetics were developed, for example). The point is that the drug war functioned to protect bureaucracies and not our health and safety as they authorities claimed.

Now let's look at the current state of things with that historical context in mind. We are seeing the DEA and other law enforcement agencies (who stand to lose their budgets as weed and potentially other currently banned drugs are legalized) and the privet prison and drug treatment industries (who would miss their "valued customers") calling for new drugs (that no one cared to regulate before) to be banned. In some states, one can go to prison for possessing salvia now. The authorities say that it is, suddenly, dangerous to our health and safety. They show us "shocking" video of stupid teenagers "shockingly" acting stupid after smoking salvia and tell us that this is evidence as to why it must be banned. It "drives them crazy," they say (just like weed used to "drive people crazy" in the old propaganda films), but they have only proved that fifteen year olds act like fifteen year olds. To me, the resemblance to the past is too close to ignore and that leads me to believe that the authorities are up to their same old tricks.

There have also been several pushes to ban kratom recently. They present it as though it is a "poorly understood" drug from foreign sources. Here, the rhetoric continues to echo that of the past and it is equally as fallacious now as it was then. A thing being "unknown" does not make it dangerous, though it might make it seem dangerous to some people. However, just because somethings looks like it could be a hazard does not mean that we should treat it as though it is. Doing so would be akin to holding every person who shows up at our doors at gun point because they could be a threat. That is not untrue, anyone could mean to do us harm but treating everyone as though that is their intention is not the best course of action. "Sure they look like girl scouts selling cookies but they could be demonic cultists, looking to murder me and have a blood orgy in my innards while they summon the Old Ones; so I'd better get my pistol" would be an insane thing for a person to say (most would agree, anyway) but perfectly rational people will accept "it could be dangerous" as a valid cause to ban a drug. It is a flawed line of reasoning but it is repeated in the media and by the authorities so often that few take the time to question it.

Other "new drugs" are targeted too. I do not support the use of bath salts, spice, or other designer drugs but the way that they have been presented in the media and by the authorities is rather dishonest and is also reminiscent of the rhetoric of the early drug war. I feel like research chemicals and other designer drugs only exist because "real" drugs are banned and I acknowledge that many of them do carry actual and, sometimes, serious risks but the sensationalism that surrounds some of them is absurd. I am reminded of the incident in which a crazy person attacked and ate another person's face ( I will provide a link to the story below). The authorities and the media blamed the attack on bath salts for weeks and the public was told that they drive people to madness and violence. The problem was that it turned out that the attacker was not, in fact, high on bath salts. Of course, that bit of information was largely swept under the rug after everyone stopped caring about the story. He was just a crazy person (who had likely been ignored by the mental healthcare system) and he did a crazy thing. There are a lot of good reasons to avoid those types of drugs but saying that they turn people into blood thirsty killers stinks of drug war propaganda, to me.

What we are really witnessing (and this is probably obvious, at this point) is the same thing that happened after alcohol prohibition ended. The authorities see the writing on the wall. They know that we are not fooled by the lies about the drugs that have been prohibited so they are trying to use the same tactics to lure into supporting new prohibitions. They want to continue the drug war and they are looking for new enemies to fight so they can keep their budgets, keep subjugating people that threaten the establishment, keep over policing under privileged communities, and maintain the for profit prison system among other things. They are telling the same lies to continue the same acts of oppression, to put it simply.

Whether we have called for an end to prohibition, we oppose oppressive overreaches by the systems of authority, or we value the concept of personal freedom, it is important that we recognize how the old drug war is becoming the new drug war, that we make sure that we do not allow ourselves to be taken in by its lies, and that we stand against it's expansion. We can look at the propaganda of the past and see if it is the model upon which the current claims about new "threats" are built. If that is the case, we should take it as good cause to be suspicious about those claims. We must not respond emotionally when the media or the authorities say that this substance or that substance is hurting our children, making people become violent, or turning them into hopeless addicts until we are presented with hard evidence to support those claims. Finally, we must understand that using prohibition and law enforcement has been ineffective at addressing drug problems (whether real or manufactured) every time that the approach has been tried. In short, there is no reason to believe that giving the authorities more power and handing over even more of our freedom to choose how to govern our own lives and bodies will fix any of these (not actually) "new" (and often nonexistent) drug problems.

Peace.

Here is a link to the article about the facing eating guy:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rudy-eugene-fla-face-chewer-had-no-bath-salts-just-marijuana-in-his-system/

All the images in this post are sourced from the free image website unsplash.com.