[HN Gopher] Drug history is a backdoor to cultural history
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       Drug history is a backdoor to cultural history
        
       Author : benbreen
       Score  : 41 points
       Date   : 2024-02-02 00:01 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (resobscura.substack.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (resobscura.substack.com)
        
       | echelon_musk wrote:
       | The absurdity of defining a psychoactive drug was played out in
       | the UK when the Psychoactive Substances Bill was passing through
       | Parliament in 2016 [0]. Indeed, food (spices etc.) is
       | consciousness altering.
       | 
       | > The Act was due to come into force on 6 April 2016. It was
       | delayed indefinitely due to a lack of clarity as to what the
       | meaning of "psychoactive" is, and what substances are covered by
       | the law. It eventually came into effect on 26 May 2016.
       | 
       | [0]
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoactive_Substances_Act_20...
        
         | mikecoles wrote:
         | So is smelling different environments (mountains vs shore).
         | Guess you'll have to stop being so anal when discussing such
         | subjects.
        
           | codr7 wrote:
           | I would rather see the law stop being so anal about it.
        
       | pstuart wrote:
       | This is an excellent reminder to read @benbreen's new book.
       | 
       | I'd argue that our inability to deal with the fact that drugs are
       | a natural aspect of humanity is at least as damaging as any harm
       | that comes from said use.
       | 
       | The "Just Say No" campaign (and others of its ilk) has helped
       | condition the general population to reject any thoughtful
       | discourse on how to properly integrate this behavior in a way
       | that minimizes the damage and maximizes the reward from such use.
        
         | ngai_aku wrote:
         | For others reading this comment, the book referenced is
         | __Tripping on Utopia__
         | 
         | https://benjaminpbreen.com/books/tripping/
        
           | pstuart wrote:
           | Thanks, I should have noted it!
        
         | thegrim33 wrote:
         | You're really not saying anything meaningful. Whether something
         | is a "natural aspect of humanity" doesn't mean anything at all
         | about how we should discuss and handle it.
         | 
         | Humans have murdered each other for as long as we've existed.
         | Would you advocate for "thoughtful discourse" on how to better
         | integrate this fully natural aspect of humanity into our
         | society? Has all of our generations of telling people "just say
         | no" to murdering each other just conditioned our society to
         | reject thoughtful discourse on murder?
        
           | mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
           | Integrating murder? No. But pretending it will go away at
           | some point is still effectively delusional. Violence? There
           | are endless ways of integrating violence or the need to
           | commit it into culture in moral ways. Martial arts for
           | instance. Finding healthy outlets for violent urges is an
           | important part of human culture.
           | 
           | What it means specifically is that we will always have to
           | deal with it, and can't ignore it or hope it goes away
           | someday.
        
         | mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
         | Yeah, it's easy to undo the war on drugs in terms of laws; just
         | write new ones.
         | 
         | To undo the cultural damage will take generations.
         | 
         | In Norway there's increasing political support for
         | decriminalisation of drugs after the Portuguese model, but
         | culturally I see much less progress. Because now the debate is
         | couched purely in medical terms. "Imprisoning addicts is
         | wrong", "replace fines with medical treatment", etc. While not
         | wrong, these perspectives are missing the bigger picture. We're
         | merely changing drug use from being something we want to
         | eliminate by law enforcement to something we want to eliminate
         | by medical treatment.
         | 
         | The "want to eliminate" part is the real problem. We shouldn't
         | want to, because we fundamentally can't. We need to instead
         | have a culture of responsible drug use, like we already do for
         | alcohol. Most people who drink don't drink very often, because
         | that's the cultural norm. For illegal drugs, the dominant
         | cultural norm is total abstinence. The problem occurs e.g when
         | you try to give advice to a young person who just discovered
         | they like weed. When you come at it from a total abstinence
         | point of view, you will seem out of touch to them, and they
         | will subsequently ignore everything you say, even if a lot of
         | it is true.
        
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       (page generated 2024-02-03 23:01 UTC)