there have been people using drugs and alcohol of all varieties and methods of use all around me since i was a little kid. i've seen lots of people die from lots of different kinds of drugs and have lost at least $1/2 M in personal property to theft by dope fiends. my cousin came home from vietnam in 1969 with a heroin habit he still has. in lala land during the 80's, i was around celebrities with 1/2 mil/yr blow habits and watched an average of 2 bodies a week get tagged and bagged.
when i was real young, i was called gifted and imaginative. when i got big enough to hit back, now i was deluded and rebellious and needed to be doped up to make me behave properly. somebody smoked a joint with me when i was almost 12 in the spring of 1966. i knew immediately that this was the drug that was going to help me respond to aggressive authority figures without going into an adrenalin rage. over the years, it has helped me with the quirky chemistry that gets me high on my own juices. it helps me to quietly back away from bullet proof billy bad asses, eat when i can't eat and sleep when i can't sleep. of all the drugs the psychiatric pharmacopolies would like me to be taking, THC is the safest and most effective with the least debilitating side effects.
sometimes if i'm in a lot of pain, i might add some tar heroin to the weed and i might do a little cocaine as a performance enhancer a few times a year(only for rehearsal; not in front of an audience). i also do psychedelics such as LSD, peyote and psilocybins a few times a year but am very old school about that and rarely do it alone. i've been in ceremony with these and agree with leary and others about having the proper set and setting.
in fact, it is my firm belief that the so-called bad drugs that were here when we got here are safer and more effective when administered properly by qualified professionals or at least distributed through a regulated and taxed supply chain, than any of the synthetic analogs they've been replaced with. many of the FDA approved 'medicines' in the pharmacopoeia are more dangerous and more addictive, so much so that they never should have been approved in the first place.
some people are content with life the way it flows through them. other people like to experience altered states of consciousness and may develop a relationship with a psychotropic plant or several. many people who use drugs and alcohol use them to force their consciousness away from its normal waking state for relief from the frustrations and anxieties that are overwhelming them.
none of these people are criminals and it is wrong to put the distribution of these substances into the hands of criminals who sell adulterated products at inflated black market prices. it is even more wrong to tax the people to support the criminal justice and penal systems needed to process these people as criminals.
abraham lincoln pointed out that to attempt to legislate morality was contrary to the principles our republic was founded upon. prohibition laws do not eliminate the demand and only open the door to criminals to take over on the supply side.
the war on drugs is just another fraudulent war brought to us by the multi-national industrialist banker gangsters of the military-industrial complex. never lose when you play both ends from the middle.