Political prohibition of drugs devours its children

The Saturn myth portrayed in Ovid’s poem Fasti is about a ruler so terrified of losing power he destroys his own children to protect it. His brutal act violates the duties and expectations of a regime that tries to preserve itself by annihilating itself and its future from within. No better example exists than the kinds of despotism emerging from a drug war: fear, instability, more fear, further repression, and ultimately the collapse of a ruler’s legitimacy.
It’s no surprise the drug war is driven by its own delusional prophesies of doom. The doomsayers’ common themes proclaim that alcohol will destroy society, that drugs will collapse civilizations, that drug users are inherently dangerous, and that addiction is a moral epidemic rather than a treatable medical problem.

Public policies can do harm to civil liberties, public trust, institutional legitimacy, and the wellbeing of common citizens. In his latest book, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, Jonathan Turley employs what he calls the Saturn gene to explain how revolutions and political movements can mutate into the kind of autocracy that guarantees their failure:

It is a story played out over and over again in history as ambition becomes activism, activism becomes extremism, and extremism becomes authoritarianism. Call it the Saturn gene. We are all Saturn’s children with an inherent impulse that rests within each of us: the capacity of all mortals to become monsters. – Jonathan Turley, p. xvi, Rage and Republic, 2026.

Sources of drug war harm include the criminalizing of millions—especially young people, thereby feeding mass incarceration, destabilizing families, communities, and generating violence through black markets.

The drug war erodes trust in government by incentivizing corruption in police and courts, by creating law enforcement systems that violate civil liberties, and by producing outcomes in opposition to stated goals, such as creating more dangerous drug substances, more violence, false arrests, and SWAT-style home invasions in which innocent people that can include police officers sometimes die.

Prohibition policies sacrifice future generations by criminalizing youths and adults for minor drug possession, thereby creating lifelong barriers to employment, housing, education, and complicating intergenerational family relationships in communities targeted by drug law enforcement. It creates harsh penalties, militarized policing, mandatory minimums, added surveillance programs and asset forfeitures.

Prohibition is pictured as having begun with noble aspirations. In certain cases the stated objective of drug enforcement policies appears to have provided a plausible disguise for motives driven by the types of politics generated when a society combines moral profiteering with the behaviors associated with a Saturn gene which evolved as part of the sociobiology of genetically sourced xenophobia and nationalism.

The perceived legitimacy of the drug war continues to collapse at an accelerating rate. It collapses a bit more each day researchers learn something new about how the brain works, or how certain drugs affect the brain at the molecular level and at the levels of conscious awareness.

Future use of mind tripping drugs will aid in encouraging the development of new technologies, new therapies, and better public policies. It’s already happening. Citizens will want to celebrate their good fortune by recognizing a new era of drug liberty where minds are set free to thrive and evolve. Political leaders who believe in absurdities will continue to commit atrocities, but the drug war will become obsolete – no longer at anyone’s disposal as a convenient political tool. Maybe best of all, never again will people be compelled to feel guilty about feeling good.