Unexpected leadership - or not so valuable?

According to Time magazine, an unexpected leader in the move to legalise illegal drugs has emerged: Latin America.

Time is saying that Mexico and Guatemala - countries always reputed to be extremely hard on illicit drug-related crime - have especially via President Otto Pérez Molina taken a new approach to the problem of illicit drug use. Even in the Southern Cone, whilst the step of legalising such drug as heroin is not yet considered seriously, there are still moves to decriminalise these drugs; however it could certainly be done much more effectively without government interference except perhaps via excise taxation. Without government interference, the enormous problems of extremely high murder rates and political lobbying from artificially high prices and profits would be greatly ameliorated. So would the problems of government deficits that are likely to emerge in Latin America from very low fertility rates during this century.

If citizens were free to purchase any amount of illegal drugs and not just the small amounts advocated presently in Uruguay, it would be their own responsibility to avoid dangerous use of them, and even people who are very rich might be more responsible about the financial costs of having to deal with medical problems resulting thereby. The alternative of allowing decriminalisation of cultivation only for personal use is a little better since the benefits may be greater, but still questionable since there are difficulties of proof in courts of law.

Thus, whilst it is unexpected for some that Latin America is doing so much about the issue of drug legalisation, and in many ways a welcome move, one should be a little cautious about what a government-regulated marijuana market may bring in Uruguay - a nation already known for big-government policies. It may simply become a source of taxes that affect business and feed cultural problems already endemic in the Enriched World from high taxes.

A major revelation when facing the inevitable

Although in recent months I have taken quite a bit of interest in research on psilocybin as a medicinal drug for the treatment of severe anxiety - a problem I have had virtually my entire life and which does not go away as I age - a recent article in the New York Times is extremely revealing about how psychedelics can be very effective at dealing with these difficulties and potentially avoiding major personal problems that are naturally likely when a person faces the ultimate finale of death.

Titled “How Psychedelic Drugs Can Help Patients Face Death”, and featuring an amazing picture of a woman floating in a wet coniferous forest , it discusses how Pam Sakuda, a terminally ill cancer patient, was chosen by Charles Grob to see if psilocybin was capable of reducing fear of death in terminally ill cancer patients. During the therapy, both Sakuda and the therapists were blinded so that they did not know what was being administered, though a specially soothing atmosphere was used to help her. Sakuda was told to try to recall precious memories of the past  and clutched a number of pictures as she lied on the bed, along with almost shamanic music. this method was originally developed by Czech psychiatrist Stanislav Grof in the 1960s. Although Grof had no interest in the recreational use of psychedelics, the atmosphere of the Nixon era did effect him very severely and he was forced to turn to alternative methods.

Pam Sakuda, who died over four years ago, described basically this experience on video shortly beforehand:

“I felt this lump of emotions welling up... almost like an entity”

“I started to cry... Everything was concentrated and came welling up and then... it started to dissipate, and I started to look at it differently... I began to realize that all of this negative fear and guilt was such a hindrance... to making the most of and enjoying the healthy time that I’m having.”

Former anesthesiologist Lauri Reamer describes a very similar experience whereby mystical states induced by psilocybin as a result of Roland Griffiths' study (already familiar to me) at John Hopkins University. Although, unlike my mother affected by serious breast cancer, Lauri had a remission period of fifteen years, she eventually stopped practising medicine and devoted her life to meditating - a story that for decades has titillated me but still has some attraction given the pain involved in the sort of medicine needed to treat cancer.

However, Charles Grob (not to be confused with Grof) says very clearly that patients must be primed in order to experience the beneficial effects of psychedelics, as their users were in Native American cultures. Psilocybin works by deactivating the anterior cingulate cortex, which can eliminate depressive problems. Making people less afraid to die is undoubtedly a positive goal since the huge medical costs associated with keeping terminally ill people alive can be avoided.

For this reason, legalisation of psychedelic drugs is a definite goal and I am even unsure what restrictions are really needed on their use. Government efforts to ban them because of their potentially dangerous effects are to say the least grossly overstated even if priming is necessary for their effect to be realised. Should we as a culture take a respectful attitude to them, there is no saying what will result, but potential benefits are better tested than potential harm.

Why a complete rethink of drug policy is needed

For a long time I had few opinions on the issue of illicit drugs such as cocaine, heroin (which I thought was spelled “herrawin”) and marijuana (which I thought was spelled “marawana”). My relatives have always been and remain appalled at people who use them, and I for financial and other reasons have never dared to try them.

However, in part because of reading Socialist Alternative (who want a regulated supply of all drugs) and latterly such organisations as the Mises Institude (who prefer an unregulated drug supply), I have come to think that the so-called "War on Drugs" which has its roots in the Progressive Era but which was intensified during the Reagan and Bush Senior Eras, is the worst of both worlds. It does nothing to address the myriad reasons for the use of illicit drugs, and because many people become rich and influence government by means of dealing in these artificially expensive substances, it is very hard for the government to keep a clean sheet of involvement with drug smugglers.

Today, however, Britain's The Guardian has provided the most damning evidence about the failures of the "war on drugs", by showing how the potential therapeutic value of psilocybin as a treatment for extreme pessimism by keeping “unwanted guests” away from the brain. I can relate to that perfectly because even in my most normal moods I tend to be thinking about far, far too many things at once and cannot focus on what I want to because I remember titillating or dramatic details too well - generally so well as to scare me away from ever reading them again. In general, relaxing is especially difficult for me and I often disturb others in public places by being noisy when I am thinking of how to react. Although those near me would be crazy if I were to take psilocybin for this purpose and I would only do so if it were recommended by someone with serious knowledge of the drug and the problems I have, that does not mean that the benefits of taking the drug for other people may not be extremely valuable.

Nonetheless, a plan to phase out the “war on drugs” towards legalisation is a step away frm financially destructive policies that could also prove very beneficial in a medical sense.

Extremists may be fringe and crazy, but have genuine purpose

Ever since I became interested in politics and culture in the 1990s at the time Jeff Kennett’s obscene “Linking Melbourne” project served to remake Australia’s climate, my mother and brother have consistently said I support “fringe groups”, “special pleaders”, “lobby groups” and other tags. Nonetheless, I have always felt, and still do whenever something like:

1. Marthe Robin’s claimed fifty-three year fast on only a weekly Eucharist
2. the relationship between radical rainfall changes in Western Australia and Australia’s pro-freeway transport policies
3. the fact that New Zealand ecologically can maintain a far larger population than Australia
4. the notion that religious conservatives are much less selfish than atheistic liberals

is criticised aggressively by my relatives, I feel that they have read less than I have.

Ross Douthat, in his recent article “Pariahs and Prophets”, looks at the case of veteran libertarian politician Ron Paul and argues that, whilst Ron Paul’s ideas are extreme at at times abhorrent - especially regarding what he is supposed to have said about Martin Luther King’s supposed sexual misbehaviour and his tendency to blame intellectual or business élites for the United States’ problems, people like him are extremely valuable for the criticism they offer of fixed, long-term government policies:

But consider a third possibility. There’s often a fine line between a madman and a prophet. Perhaps Paul has emerged as a teller of some important truths precisely because in many ways he’s still as far out there as ever.

I can agree one hundred percent with the notion that very frequently it is necessary to be far-out in order to tell the truth. Ever since I joined the Public Transport Users’ Association, though my absorbing the ideas of radical Trotskyists (Socialist Alternative and the Democratic Socialist Party), Tim Flannery and Tom McMahon, and finally the Politically Incorrect Guides, I have always seen immense value in radical criticism. When a country is on an ecologically or culturally destructive path, its population (and even those outside thereof with interests therein) is very often wedded tightly to values that simply do not allow anything to be done to deviate from such a path. This is for instance, the case with the enormous greenhouse emissions in suburban Australia and with the selfish, ultra-materialistic welfare cultures of Europe, Canada and New Zealand. People who see a need for changes tend to be dismissed as extreme, when in fact there could be many long-term benefits from adopting radical changes.

The classic example I give to my mother and brother concerns what Australia’s climate might be like if it had successfully sold its last new car in 1990 and invested every cent of transport money on a high-speed national rail network. In my view, such a policy could have cut Australia’s greenhouse emissions immensely more than all the small measures taken since then, and if the rail service was good enough it would have more than compensated for the loss of mobility from private cars.

The same thing could be said for many other examples which on my present sojourn in Singapore with my brother have become irritating to me as well as to him. Although I can admit that more people would lose out from the radical changes I can easily see as essential than their advocates admit, every reform beloved of the Left - from universal suffrage to welfare states to decriminalisation of homosexuality and abortion - was won in Europe, Asia and most of the Americas by protest from below initiated by people with extremely radical ideas for their time. The same is true of reforms in America and former Stalinist nations beloved of the Right.

Fringe radicals almost always solved past social problems (whether real or not you can decide); there is no reason why the future will be different. We need to be careful before seeing people with radical ideas as madmen: they may have much more to offer than any mainstream politician.