How can we win? The first thing we need to do is start using a little different language when it comes to our fight with the current governmental status of "drugs."
The use of the word "drugs" is pretty loaded. Let's face it, the public has been effectively (although patchy and somewhat faltering) brainwashed that drugs are "evil, wicked, mean and nasty." We need to use different terms. Like when I am discussing the entheogens that we use for spiritual reasons I call them "sacraments." In a population where 90% believe in a Deity and 80% that considers themselves to be religious and 70% that pray at least occasionally, who would be opposed to someone taking the sacraments? Tell the Catholics they can't have their wine and wafers and see what war that would begin.
This is a little harder to do with things like cocaine, speeds, heroin, and the other various chemicals that definitely not only have stigmas surrounding them but definite medical and social problems surrounding them as well. While it would not really hurt my feelings if these were not re-legalized the simple fact is prohibition does not work and the fact they have been criminalized is currently leading to horrific crime and the underground that goes along with the black-market.
Why not refer to these as OTC medications? All of them do have a legitimate usage -- speeds do help those with allergies, asthma, ADHD/ADD and people driving to vacation spots, heroin helps those in chronic pain where morphine tolerance it too high as with cancer patients (the government is actually using it some now) and the other chemicals do have medical uses-- but the key with these is the same key to OTC medications: they are for use not abuse. As a general rule OTC medications are not abused. The same would be true if all the non-entheogenic chemicals were re-legalized -- at least abuse would drop but there are always people who will abuse things. I hear of people taking way to many vitamins and laxatives which is abuse and causes just as much damage as the criminalized non-entheogenic chemicals (OTC medications). The second thing is that "drugs" have been legal for thousands of years. It has only been the last 90 years that cocaine, heroin (& opium) and 35 that the others have been made illegal to secure political power against the movements in the 60's.
This needs to be brought out very clearly. We need everything re-legalized, not decriminalized or legalized -- we want them re-legalized. It might not seem like a big difference when reading this, but psychologically it makes a huge impact in the thinking models people use. It also demonstrates that they were legal until the recent past and reminds people that all their illegality has done is take away our freedom and create the current situation.
Forgive me for this little rant, but I truly believe that much of what is causing our "side" problems with our movement is the language we are using. If "they" define the language they will always win. Language is the heart of communication and thought. If we re-define everything with language that suits "our" side of this war then we will have won one of the hardest battles. From that point on, we will begin dominating the thought/thinking and communication that surrounds the subject. We will also be free of the limitations that the brainwashing of the past 35 (to 90) years has instilled -- people are against drugs, not sacraments or OTC medications. People are against crime and the black-market, which surrounds drugs, not medications and sacraments which needs to be something that is brought up constantly -- without drugs there is much less of a black-market. If anything, money, power and privilege are drugs and I agree that we should all "just say no" and make the actual drugs illegal.
