Legal Acceptance of Cannabis Could Encourage Lawmakers to Embrace Magic Mushrooms
by Bethan Rose
Note: Veriheal does not support or endorse any political candidate or their policies. We merely report on the facts as they are presented and their implications in regards to cannabis and psychedelics. Veriheal also does not support illegally consuming therapeutic substances but acknowledges that it transpires because of the current illicit status, which we strive to change by advocating for research, legal access, and responsible consumption. Always consult a physician before attempting alternative therapies.
People of color who suffer from racial trauma and mental health symptoms are seeing improvements from psychedelic therapies. The effects of LSD, MDMA, and Psilocybin were said to show positive results on those who had suffered racial disparity leading to declined mental health. Could the reason the US Federal Government decided to ban psychedelics be because it would make people feel good? (Sarcastic voice) Surely not. The War on Drugs has ruined the lives of an untold number of people. Cannabis was, and still is, one of the Fed’s favorite things to bust people for. You might say they could sniff it out like a pig sniffs out truffles. For the longest time, the smell of cannabis was the reason behind frivolous and unwarranted searches and arrests of many people.
The War on Drugs was and is a failure. The Federal Government should have called it the War Against People of Color and Minorities. Statistics have even exposed major racial disparities in arrests. After decades of lies, destroying lives and families, the government is beginning to acknowledge that the War on Drugs FAILED. Of COURSE, it did! It was a war against the people from the start. It was never about keeping America safe; it was about high society not liking minorities and wanting a means to remove them from their presence. And, if you can make money on that while you’re at it, then it was that much better to these individuals for which I have reserved names.
Under the Nixon administration, America adopted the 1971 Controlled Substance Act. This made laws tougher on substances like cannabis, mushrooms, LSD, and others. Nixon domestic policy adviser John Ehrlichman spoke with journalist Dan Baum in 1994 and was quoted telling Dan, “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people.” He continued telling Dan what so many of us already, unfortunately, know, saying, “You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.”
Some of the same sorry slobs that supported tougher drug policy then, the same ones that drafted, authored, and endorsed bills that lead to the mass incarceration of America and its profound dependency on pharmaceutical drugs, run our country today. Current US President Joe Biden takes credit for the 1994 Crime Law. Everybody’s favorite inauguration meme man Bernie Sanders also endorsed this bill. The bill was actually called “The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.” It was signed into law by the president of the time, Bill Clinton.
This law was created supposedly to counter out of control and continuously rising crime rates. Many criminal reform justice activists point to the 1994 Crime Law as the culprit behind America’s mass incarceration of its citizens. This law hit communities of color the hardest. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act created harsher, longer federal prison sentences while promoting states to follow suit. It facilitated funding for more prisons and police officers. It also urged law enforcement to make more drug-related arrests awarding them via grant programs, obviously escalating the War on Drugs.
Psychedelic therapies are proving to be highly successful at helping people who suffer from depression and anxiety. “A cross-sectional internet-based survey included questions about experiences with racism, mental health symptoms, and acute and enduring psychedelic effects.” The effects of LSD, MDMA, and Psilocybin were said to show positive results on those who had suffered racial disparity and effects to their mental health such as stress, depression, and anxiety. The study was rather thorough for being conducted online. In total, 26,710 replies were received. By the time they had cut through all of those who did not qualify for the study, researchers were left with only 313 participants. The conclusion to this study begins perfectly, saying, “Humans have ingested psychedelics since the beginning of recorded history to defuse from harmful mental patterns, potentiate psychological growth, and heal from trauma.”
The War on Drugs attacked citizens of America, destroying lives and making people feel unsafe. It gave power to authorities over the people allowing them to imprison the largest population of any country in the world in just a few decades.
Now, politicians are like, oops, did we do that? Maybe we were wrong. So their answer to this is to legalize or decriminalize cannabis (because it’s not really legal until I can take it with me everywhere like beer or cigarettes) and to start decriminalizing psychedelics, none of which should ever have been made illegal in the first place. So next, they tax the H-E-double hockey sticks out of it and claim they will use that money to help rebuild communities of color and to address racial disparity from the failed War on Drugs, and we’re supposed to believe them? It sounds like a way for them to squander off more tax dollars to me. While a small portion of America enjoys psychedelics such as LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, and others, the vast portion of our country is addicted to other substances like tobacco, alcohol, pills, and sugar.
In my opinion, they have screwed our country and the American people for so long the only thing they can do is grant us legal access to the medicines we used to embrace before problematic substances like pharmaceuticals, tobacco, and alcohol became normalized. Psychedelics have been around since the beginning of recorded history. It seems wrong that a handful of people took this away from the masses on the basis of assumption. It makes a person curious as to if elected representatives of the people can read or know how to research things like the benefits of psychedelic therapies? The bigger question is, even if they were to read the research and gain the knowledge they currently lack, could they set aside their own agendas unlike those that preceded them in favor of what is best for the people?
Awesome article! Psychedelics heal! Psilocybin patients matter just like cancer patients matter. We are not drugies, we are focused on our healing and that’s it. We can’t continue to let them mock us and make us feel like we are addicts looking for a high. I encourage u to write more articles similar to this.
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