Rebuttals to Common Prohibitionist Arguments 6: "Do you want your surgeon operating on you while high?"

"If you are for legalization, do you want your surgeon to be high while he operates on you?  Or your pilot to be high while he's flying the plane?  Or your bus driver, child's teacher, etc."


The rhetorical question makes many unsupported assumptions:
Assumption 1: Prohibition prevents people from getting high.

                Prohibition fails to prevent people from getting high, so the odds are the same my surgeon will be high with or without legalization.  Any decrease in drug use due to prohibition is negligible. 

Assumption 2:  A substance that is made legal will, as a result, be used by everyone.

                    Currently many thousands of substances are legal and on the market, yet everyone is not "on" them all the time.  Though alcohol has been legal since the mid 1930's, there are many millions who manage to avoid being drunk as they do their job.  Ditto for pharmaceuticals, all of which have side effects. 

Assumption 3: Using cannabis prevents people from doing their job well, or even adequately.

                          There is just no evidence of that when it comes to the vast majority of jobs.  Naturally, no one wants a service worker whom they rely on to be impaired, on anything!  It makes no difference if the impairing substance or activity is legal or illegal; cannabis, or modeling glue. 

Assumption 4: Cannabis couldn't possibly benefit anybody's health or work.

                              Do I want my surgeon to have used cannabis before operating on me?  Well, let's see,... is he epileptic and prone to seizures if he doesn't use cannabis?  Then, absolutely, YES, I unequivocally want him to use cannabis before he operates.  Why, would you want your surgeon to skip his vital anti-seizure medication before operating on you?  That seems a bit, well, reckless.  

  That's just one scenario, but others come to mind: muscle spasms, chronic anxiety, depression.  Any of these might negatively affect a surgeon or pilot's performance, so if these conditions can be mitigated by the use of cannabis, and without any serious side effects, then that is clearly a positive.

In the end, this argument boils down to the same old simplistic moralistic screed: "drugs are bad, mm'kay?"

Rebuttals to Common Prohibitionist Arguments 5: Legalization is not an "Experiment"!

I often hear people referring to Colorado's new policy of cannabis legalization as an "experiment."

Countless articles, even those written by people who are ostensibly in favor of legalization, purport to analyze the results of Colorado's "legalization experiment."  Prohibitionists try to warn us to wait for the results of this "experiment" before launching legalization campaigns in other states and nationally.

As you can guess from my scare quotes, I disagree with the characterization of legalization as an experiment.  For all of human history, cannabis has been free by default.  No one ever imagined banning this widely-used and boundlessly-useful plant until the 1900's.

So clearly, prohibition is the experiment. Truly a failed, deadly experiment.  Legalization is the ending of that experiment and the restoration of the default.  Banning substances does not work to the benefit of society.  This has been made abundantly clear by the prohibition of alcohol, and the drug war, which only drove usage rates up, as well as adding a host of other problems.

Let's end this failed experiment of prohibition and restore normalcy.

An end to war: wordless cartoon.

This cartoon depicts the simple, universal solution to ending all conflict, war, and hatred.  Should be fairly self-explanatory.  Without words, it attempts to reach across language barriers.

Deer in the Headlights Drawing

My illustration of a classic saying.  Here, I apply it to prohibitionist shill, Kevin Sabet, who often appears in public, arguing on the "con" side of cannabis legalization.  Thankfully, with the easy flow of information on the internet, his flat and hollow arguments are now falling on deaf ears. On a drug policy forum that I follow, this image came up in conversation after Sabet had his rhetorical ass handed to him by Ethan Nadelman of the Drug Policy Alliance, so I thought I'd whip out this li'l toon.

Kevin Sabet as the proverbial deer caught in the headlights of the cannabis legalization vehicle.

Rebuttals to Common Prohibitionist Arguments 4

"Cannabis is correlated with schizophrenia."

This line of argument is an insidious attempt to convince the ignorant that cannabis causes schizophrenia. In fact, there is no scientific evidence to support this.  Correlation does not equal causation, but this distinction is too subtle for the average person who reads the above headline.
There is evidence to suggest that those who are prone to schizophrenia will more likely use cannabis, likely because the cannabis eases the negative symptoms of the schizophrenia.

The rate of cannabis usage has gone up tremendously in the last forty years. If cannabis were truly a cause of schizophrenia, we would have seen schizophrenia cases increase at a proportional rate.  What we see instead is that rates of schizophrenia are steady for this period.  Therefore, there is no causal link between cannabis use and schizophrenia.

What prohibitionists who use the above argument will never do is to compare that correlation to that of alcohol and all manner of mental health problems. No, they always insist on looking at cannabis in isolation, never mentioning that alcohol has a much clearer causal link to mental disorders than cannabis ever could.  The same is true for countless other legal substances and risky behaviors.

Finally, citing any specific harm of cannabis as a reason to keep it illegal is just specious.  If it is truly harmful, then there is all the more reason to bring it under the control of a legal and regulated system. Leaving its trade to organized criminal cartels allows it to cause so much more harm than it otherwise would.  Countries that have enacted policies of Harm Reduction over prohibition have seen their rates of usage decrease, even as harms associated with drug use and the illegal drug trade have all but disappeared.

Burning Man 2008 mushroom trip - part 3

continued from Part 2 ...

Part 1 here.

I found I had energy to stand, and the music's rhythm inspired me to jump out of the chair and dance frenetically.

The music playing was reggae, one of my favorite genres.  I danced as I like to do, letting the rhythm move me.  At some point, a song came on with lyrics that sounded to me like, "I wonder why Babylon be fighting marijuana?"  This spoke deeply to my own bitterness and anger at the prohibition of cannabis, and I yelled out, "Yeah! What the fuck, right?" looking to the other people dancing, who acknowledged me with silent nods.  I danced until I got tired, then I went back to the bar where I'd originally been offered the saki.  This time, I accepted a shot of saki and it went down really smooth.

The dust was still thick, and I was thinking of moving on from this camp, so I asked those camping there to help orientate me.  I asked where the Man was in relation to us, and they pointed up the adjacent road, not the way I was expecting.  I was incredulous, at how much I'd been turned around.  Putting my gear on, I said goodbye, and headed up the spoke towards the Man.  I figured I'd have better luck walking along the Esplanade, keeping the large theme camps to my right. 

It was somewhat better tracking by the large landmarks and signs.  I was still looking for the Entheon art galleries. Just as I thought I must be getting pretty close, I saw a sign that said "Do not ask us where Entheon Village is."  This was a sure sign that I was near, but very frustrating, since of course I had been thinking of asking for directions.  I figured that many a lost psychonaut had bothered them, to lead them to erect the sign.

I ducked into a dome to wipe my glasses, and a woman inside was chanting at a small shrine on one side.  She was chanting "Nam myoho renge kyo," which I learned is a phrase in Japanese that is supposed to bring one to a state of bliss, by repeating it.  I huddled in there, avoiding the dust, just glad for the shelter, and a place to sit.  For awhile I went unnoticed by the lady, but after awhile she invited me to chant with her.  I was a bit weirded out, but I figured what the hell, it's Burning Man, so I chanted with her for awhile with little enthusiasm.  Soon after, she invited me to kneel with her at the shrine to continue chanting.  I told her I was "good" where I was, huddling by the door, watching the waves of dust sweep by.  I was dubious that just chanting a phrase, let alone that one particular phrase, was going to bring me happiness, and anyway I was already happy.

Soon I left that shelter and walked on, coming to another dome, another group having a party.  I was talking to a girl and the subject of the weather naturally came up, the blinding and stifling whiteness outside. I told her about how I'd invoked the windstorm, given it power, and she got a very serious look on her face, as though taking my power over the weather seriously.  She gravely told me, "I hope you got what you wanted from the storm."  I had to acknowledge that in fact, I did get what I wanted.  From my first year, I always liked walking through a dust storm, and I have come to associate that feeling with this magical welcoming playa.  But by now, I had gotten my fill, and really just wanted the dust to go away.  Apparently my power did not extend to stopping the storm quickly.

Moving on, I next alighted upon a camp with a large dome and a sign reading, "Black Rock Diner".  It seemed open, so I went in.  Inside was a typical camp dining area with camp chairs and pillows arranged in a semi-circle around a long buffet table.  It turned out, they were not open per se, but were having their camp meal.  This camp, at scheduled times, served grilled cheese to all comers.  They welcomed me regardless, inviting me to help myself to their leftovers, since they were mostly done eating.  I was famished, and everything was delicious.  I managed to finish off a large bowl of pasta with grated cheese that they were just going to throw out.  In the meantime, I had fallen into a deep conversation with one of the main organizers of the camp and his girlfriend.  It was one of those discussions that flows naturally, yet changes everything.  I think my admission to being on mushrooms triggered it, but it ended up covering many things: zen buddhism, yin and yang, virtual reality and the matrix.  At some point, he asked me what I'm "all about," and I responded in the Burning Man spirit by saying I wanted to raidate joy and love, throw myself into every experience.  He cautioned me that such a happy-go-lucky approach to life will unconsciously create its opposite, like the yin-yang.  I couldn't quite grok at the time how my happiness could create misery, but his warning opened up a little window of awareness, such that I did see it later.  My exuberance could, and often did become a drag on others, as well as myself.

I left there with kind of a floating feeling, walking out into the pre-sunset "golden hour," and noticed the wind and dust had died down. I could once again see the sky and far down the streets.  People were in their camps preparing, and lots of people were moving up the street towards the man, set to burn in just a few hours.  I was drained from my day's trip: all the walking, the visions, the discussions, the dust.  I had burned myself out, and wanted nothing more than to crash in my dome.  I hate to miss the frenzy of the man burn, but I hate even more to ignore my body's messages that I need rest.  I had never found my goal, the Entheon Village art galleries, but at that point I didn't care, since I had seen more than my share of psychedelic art within the confines of my mind, art which had been animated and interactive to boot! 

Back at my dome, I quickly fell asleep, and woke up hours later, ready to join the aftermath of the Man burn, and see what the night had to offer.

Drug War Cartoon

The drug war has the police chasing their own tail: the massive profits from the black market get funneled to corrupt officers, prosecutors and judges.  There is no way of getting ahead of the problem, aside, of course, from permitting a legal regulated market to supplant the bloody illegal market.

Rebuttals to Common Prohibitionist Arguments 3

"If we legalize marijuana, then more people will use it, so therefore, we can't legalize it."

First of all, the degree to which use would increase with legalization is not well understood.  It is now widely acknowledged that the drug war fails to achieve its purported goal.  Most people are already doing what they are prone to doing: either using or not, whether or not it is legal.  Most people, when asked, say they will not change their habits as a result of legalization.  They just fear that everyone else will, but there is actually no real data that would support such a theory.  By comparison, the Netherlands has a liberalized cannabis policy, but has half the drug use we have in the States.

Many kids use cannabis as a way to rebel against society and to get their parents' attention.  Legalizing cannabis will eliminate that factor of it, and make it as uncool for kids as any other legal activity.  There may be a small percentage of people who don't use cannabis only because it is illegal, but it seems that the drug war is an awful lot of expense and lives wasted in order to affect only that small a percentage of people.

To the extent that legalizing may increase overall use, so much the better.  In states that have legalized medical cannabis, there has been a corresponding decrease in alcohol use and suicides.  There is still no fatal dose of cannabis.  Allowing people to use cannabis instead of having to turn to legal but potentially-lethal substitutes like Spice would save lives and improve public health.  Countless patients who currently take opiate painkillers could get equivalent pain relief from cannabis.  The number of conditions and illnesses which are helped by cannabis is vast, so, again, allowing such a valuable medicine to be accessed by all would certainly improve public health, and quality of life.

Of course, there's also the amazing potential benefit of hemp which, if used to its full potential, would completely replace our needs for oil, natural gas, wood, and cotton.  It would provide an abundant and rapidly-replenishing source of food which would effectively eliminate hunger in our country and potentially the world.  So, more people using "marijuana" (or its cousin, hemp) would indeed be a good thing.

Rebuttals to Common Prohibitionist Arguments 2

"Legalizing cannabis will send the wrong message to children, that smoking weed is ok."



My answer to that is we do not enact laws to send messages to children.  We enact laws to protect people from other people.  This is clear by the fact that our laws do not read like instructions to a child.  They are, first of all, written in legalese which no child would understand, let alone have the patience for.  There are no laws against running with scissors, or staying up past one's bed time, or refusing to eat one's vegetables.  To make laws governing adults based on the desired behavior of children means that no adult would be allowed to drive a car, own a weapon of any kind, drink alcohol, or have sex.

Social conservatives are willing to invoke "Think of the children!" in this one case, to restrict or punish others' behavior, but not to actually protect children from harms such as those caused by prohibition.

Instead of using a law that jails tens of thousands of harmless people to try to send a message to your child, why not just sit down and talk to your child?  Barring that, there are emails, faxes, texts, phone calls, postal service, and telegrams that you can use to send a message to your child.  Let's face it, most kids aren't that interested in the subject of law, so such an indirect message as that is unlikely to penetrate.  Just talk to them, or better yet, be quiet and listen to them.  Maybe they have an important message that you need to hear.

Rebuttals to Common Prohibitionist Arguments 1

"Marijuana is stronger today than it was back in the 70's, so it is too dangerous to be legal."
This argument is dishonest on many different levels.  It is at once untrue, misleading, irrelevant, and a counterargument to prohibition.

It is untrue that highly potent strains of cannabis are a new thing: they have always been around, just not at their current level of distribution.  Back in the 70's the supply was not as reliable and Mexican shwag (not good quality) weed was all most people had.  Yet, there were already tales circulating about the "White Widow","Maui Wowie", "Northern Lights", "Purple Haze," etc.  From ancient times, people have used hashish, resin scraped or extracted from the plant.  Hashish is almost pure THC and other active chemicals.  What prohibitionists call "skunk" is much less concentrated than hashish which has always been used safely by humans.

The argument is misleading, in that it ignores the fact that when a drug is stronger, people tend to take less of it.  To imply that a cannabis user uses the same amount of potent cannabis as they would of weak cannabis, is like saying drinkers of vodka will drink the same volume of liquid as beer drinkers.  Stronger cannabis is less unhealthful to smoke, because less volume is needed, so one's body doesn't get as much tar or other carcinogens.

It would be irrelevant if cannabis is stronger today, since there is no fatal dose of cannabis, and even the strongest cannabis is relatively safe compared to hundreds, perhaps thousands of legally-traded substances.  For instance, any strength  of cannabis would still be safer to smoke than legal "Spice" or "K2", which are pot-substitutes that popped up on the market as the result of pot's prohibition, and which, though entirely legal, has been responsible for at least a few deaths, allegedly many more.  Of course no one makes a fuss about "extra-strength" pain relievers in pharmacies, despite the many deaths caused annually by analgesics.

Finally, the little bit of truth that was buried in the original claim: that distribution of potent cannabis has increased, is a great argument against prohibition.  So, you're saying, we've fought against cannabis for 40 years, and now it's even stronger and more widely distributed?  Prohibition laws motivate dealers to sell more concentrated product, since smaller packages are easier to transport, so any increased concentration and wider distribution are a direct result from the drug war.

Rundown

Welcome.  I am free radical, artist, musician, dancer, writer, activist, healer, dork, etc. 
On this blog I will be posting my creative output for all to enjoy.
I play guitar and sing, my own original songs and covers of others' work.
My art is mostly cartooning and abstract painting.  Also do vision drawing and painting.
I write poems and stories, as well as comedy bits and sketches.
Philosophy and spirituality are of prime interest to me.  I don't accept that we cannot know the purpose of existence.  I feel there is far more to this life than science can detect.
Magic pervades all existence.
In my experience, prohibition of certain popularly-enjoyed and/or addictive substances is not only a failure of policy, but an atrocity that rivals the holocaust.  I am active in the effort to change these laws.  I welcome any discussion of this important issue. 
The earth is a precious thing and must not be squandered over a little petty wealth for a few privileged individuals.  The way the world is going cannot continue for long. 
The #Occupy movement is a chance for any and all to get involved in making positive change.
We are at a crossroads, a tipping point, regarding humanity's history and destiny.  Major shifts are about to take place, are already taking place.  The picture is vague from up close, but when one pulls back, the total pattern is clear.  [The transcendent object is about to manifest.]
I practice some healing arts including Laughter Yoga, soul reading, ritual dancing.  I can extend my aura to heal or guide others. 
These, among others, inform my spiritual practice: Alan Watts, Terence McKenna, Ram Dass, Thich Nhat Hanh, Dr. Madan Kataria, Graham Hancock.
Burning Man is my Home, where I live my true intention for a week each year.  Cartoon Commune is my theme camp and radical interactions and barely-believable experiences await anyone intrepid enough to make the journey.

My contact information:
My other name is David Fleischmann
I live in Laguna Beach, in Southern California.
You can email me at dookieholder@gmail.com
Message or friend me at http://www.facebook.com/thefreeradical