you’, because the freedom it brings is freedom from mental mechanisms, which for a little while do not function ‘properly’. Imagine a cartoon humanoid robot hitting itself on the head with a hammer, in order to affect its built-in programming, so that it can stop following it long enough to make an escape. When a drug, or a near death experience, or intense toxic or emotional shock hit the organism of a human being, for a while some functions are impaired, and this makes a dose of freedom possible – while the program which forbids it, is not functioning at full strength. There are surely others, not so blatantly self-destructive ways of doing this, ways which actually make you healthy and have a long life span. But my point is not that drugs make me healthy, but that it should be everyone’s individual choice of what lifestyle they lead and/or change it whenever they feel like it. If I have made an informed choice to pay a certain price to achieve a certain effect – this is private. And if my choice was not informed, this is because your efforts created an environment in which taking drugs is like walking off a cliff with the hope that things will somehow work out.
Some day the hypocrisy will end. South American peasants will be free to produce legal cocaine, Central Asian peasants will be able to produce legal heroin, and one will be able to grow marijuana at one’s plot of land without fear. The third world peasant will have good money for once, the first world abusers will have cheap and clean drugs, the taxes alone will pay for many social services, the mafia will be forced to move on to more exotic businesses, or to adapt to a legalized business environment, and realize suddenly that good money can still be made, without the need of being submerged in soul crushing stress the whole time. Will this really happen? Won’t our civilization rather: a)
destroy itself by pollution?
b)
be destroyed by foreign fascism?
c)
be destroyed by internal neurotic pressure?
Can we influence events?