War On Drugs – A Pharmacratic Inquisition

By James Donahue

Since former President Richard M. Nixon first declared a “War on Drugs” in America in 1972, and even a century before that, when the United States and China launched the so-called “opium wars,” there has been a growing prohibition campaign against the production and use of certain “psychoactive substances” declared by governments to be “harmful or undesirable.”

These declarations, imposed by Christian moralists who saw the use of mind-bending or “psychedelic” producing substances as harmful and dangerous to society, became the first stages of a religious inquisition against an earth-linked and ancient shamanistic communication system that has been in effect throughout recorded human history. It became an effective tool for imposing Christianity on world cultures that perceived their god(s) in visions brought on by the use of certain natural herbs.

It was the expressed purpose of the Roman Catholic Church, and a Christian-imposed culture that became a spin-off from that church, to sweep the world, proselytizing as many who might accept the Christian story. To achieve this, the use of mind-altering drugs that allowed people to see through the fallacies outlined in Christian dogma had to be prohibited. Thus was born the inquisition.

The name inquisition is historically used to describe the Christian imposition of its dogma throughout Europe and the Middle East. It is defined as a political or religious inquiry or tribunal engaged in combating and punishing heresy against the established doctrines of the ruling power. The decisions by the tribunal are characterized by lack of regard for individual rights, prejudice on the part of the examiners, and result in cruel punishment.

As stated earlier, the control of the plants used to produce visions among shamans, and to produce an escaped mental state among the enslaved workers, began in China when the United States and China agreed to control exports of opium to the United States in 1880. Earlier, when China attempted to control the use of the drug among its people, it touched off the great opium wars that lasted from 1834 to 1860.

The Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914 became the first real ban on the domestic distribution of opiate-containing substances in the United States. The act was eventually interpreted by police as an authorization to arrest and prosecute doctors who prescribed opiates to addicts. Opiates, by the way, are still considered to be among the best natural pain killers in existence.

Marijuana was targeted as a “drug” in 1925 by the International Opium Convention and within the next decade, all member states had some form of regulation of cannabis. Prior to this, there was a law on the books in the United States that required all farmers to produce hemp, a form of cannabis in the interest of national security. The plant was used in the production of rope, vital on naval ships at sea, and in the production of paper.

In the United States, the first control of cannabis came in the form of the Marijuana Tax Act, passed by congress in 1937. This act didn’t exactly prohibit the production of marijuana, but called for a one dollar nuisance tax on the distribution of the substance. It also required anyone distributing marijuana to maintain and submit to the government a detailed account of any transactions. Obtaining the tax stamp thus became a confession by growers that they were producing and possessing marijuana. The act resulted from propaganda that claimed marijuana caused insanity, criminality and death.

By 1951, after it was clearly understood that marijuana was not the evil “drug” as believed when the tax act was passed in 1937, Congress passed the Boggs Act, which increased penalties. The 1956 Daniel Act produced even stiffer penalties for possession and distribution of marijuana. By then, the story was that while there was no proof the use of marijuana caused physical or mental harm, its use led to the use of more dangerous drugs like heroin, thus creating the gateway drug theory.

Nixon, a known amphetamine user, launched to contemporary “War on Drugs” in 1969. He declared the abuse of “illicit substances” as public enemy number one and pressed Congress to pass the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. The Drug Enforcement Administration was created in 1973 to enforce this act. The act made it a federal crime to manufacture, possess or distribute marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD, peyote, opium and any other substance that could be used to cause a person to be in a hallucinogenic or euphoric mental state.

The Church of the Navajo, which used the peyote plant in its religious practices, fought this act and eventually gained permission for a restricted use of the substance by its shamans and its church members for religious ritual only.

Similar battles by voters in several states to legalize marijuana for medical use have been going on all over America, without much success.

Also the U.S. war on drugs has sent its tentacles out to such places as Peru and Bolivia, where the native use of the coca leaf, as a recreational herb and ceremonial tradition, has been threatened. The problem has been that the coca plant has been used in the manufacture of cocaine, a major product exported to the United States. Attempts by the U.S. to get the governments of these countries to prohibit the use of coca, and to destroy the plants, are even now threatening to generate open warfare against the United States.

While it is rarely publicized, a similar effort to destroy the poppy crop in Afghanistan, a major agricultural crop used in the production of opium and heroin, also is rekindling a fierce hatred for the United States.

While this so-called war by church-supported government agents against these natural earth substances rages, there has been a secret spiritual awakening occurring, mostly among the youth, all over the world. Some are utilizing some of these substances, either illegally in countries where they are prohibited, or legally in parts of the world where they are accepted, to traverse the “veil” and gain new awareness of what appears to be a parallel universe. From that perspective, gazing back at the structured world in which we struggle reveals a fabricated jungle of lies and deception.

It is a plastic world, a perverted product of our religiously structured and brainwashed minds.