Cleaning out my email VI - The war on some drugs.

The "War on SOME Drugs" is a sad little pet peeve of mine, just because from top to bottom it's so antithetical to common sense.

First, prohibition doesn't work. Period. People will always find ways and substances to change their state and their emotions. Always have. Always will. The country's last experiment with prohibition and alcohol, one would think, would have informed people that outlawing substances doesn't work. But America never learns, apparently. All prohibition does, from Capone to the Crips to the Cartels, is breed a culture of violence. It's no coincidence. What's more, the very act of outlawing something makes it more tempting and more prone to abuse. Basic human psychology.

What's more, on a basic level, the very concept of making substances that grow naturally upon the earth - marijuana, coca, mushrooms - illegal, strikes me as the most asinine, unrealistic and surreal move ever.

And all of these plants and chemicals have a long tradition of consciousness expansion. There's even a not unpopular theory that the ingestion of psychedics is what triggered the development of human language, by kickstarting the brain. Not to mention almost all religions have a foundation of ingesting "sacred" substances to commune with god, no matter how far into denial modern religion is about that.

And I cannot stand laws that are designed to "protect me from myself" or prevent "potential" criminal acts. Seat belt laws annoy me to no-end. The drinking and driving laws are insane. That ingesting a substance makes you criminal is nuts. Impaired driving can result from many things - cell phones, music, conversations, you're just an idiot - but the idea that a single precursor behavior is singled out and made "criminal" astounds me. Punish the act. Not whatever you believe causes the act. For every "drunk" driver there's a dozen who have a few beers and drive home. For every "drug fiend" who jacks a car there's a dozen who light up a blunt, eat a bag of cheetos and pass out in front of the TV. Seat belt, drunk driving and even drug laws strike me as little more than revenue generating scams. That or protecting the very vested market interests of the big business of liquor and tobacco in America. And don't even start me on prostitution. If selling is legal and fucking is legal, why isn't selling fucking legal? Unless you're in Nevada, of course. Or Amsterdam. Or hundreds of other places not crippled by BS puritanical nonsense. Laws make criminals.

And no one, absolutely no one, should have more of a say about what I put into my body than me. If I don't have that right, I really don't have any rights at all. Which, honestly, I don't. Whether I have rights or not are, practically, determined by whether the guys with the guns are in a good mood that day.

And the fact that SOME drugs are illegal while alcohol and tobacco are over the counter? The hypocrisy alone astounds me. It's all sad, arbitrary nonsense.