Drug scheduling in general is bullshit. Why would you punish someone for putting a substance -- literally a chemical in it's reduced form -- into their body?
The government has fooled the general public into believing that substance abusers are "scummy, violent criminals", which is a bit of a overgeneralization. There's no point fighting back against the public on their beliefs, they are already too blinded to see reason, the only way to stop this "war on drugs" crap is to all form together to abolish drug enforcement agencies altogether. We shouldn't be petitioning for legalization of certain drugs, we should we petitioning for legalization of ALL drugs. That doesn't mean we should hand them out like candy, but we shouldn't lock people up for using them either. It still boggles my mind to think how these ridiculous scheduling laws still exist. Phrases like "heroin addict" is a pejorative that conjures up images of 'manics' who break into pharmacies and whatnot; in that case, arrest them for breaking into said pharmacies, not for using the substance itself. On the other side on the same coin, "chain smoker" is seen as glorifying and 'cool', where's the logic in that??
Bit of a rant
I greatly applaud this rant and just made one like it in the Kratom megathread.
Drug laws, the DEA and the entire war on drugs is an archaic yet deep rooted hypocritical and tyrannical never ending scourge.
Certain societies, and in the case of most mind altering drugs ALMOST all societies, somehow decide certain things are "taboo" and once this happens and the plague of thought-cancer starts to spread it's like a virus without a fucking cure.
Almost ALL of the world has decided that by and large, altering your brain with mind altering substances is somehow "WRONG" and any substances aside from alcohol or caffeine that have not been yet made illegal are only legal because they have slipped under the radar or are not considered enough of a "threat" to said governments from these countries.
I mean really I wonder EXACTLY what happened to the state of the world between the early 20th century and now because if you read about the VERY early 20th century, like 1910 and earlier back into the late 19th century, MOST drugs were LEGAL!!!
You could get heroin or coke over the counter and it must have been GREAT!!!
Then SOMEHOW things were changed, someone decided that all these drugs needed to be made illegal in the early 20s and the entire war on drugs began.
It then caught hold in like EVERY country.
When if EVER will we go back to how things were before when drugs were NOT considered taboo??
Probably never.
Never mind that great minds like Aldous Huxley saw great value in substances such as LSD and Mescaline to name a few...modern laws would have him thrown in prison for being a "junkie".
Oppose the laws in ANY way you can.
They may take Kratom from us and they may continue to ruin lives, but the good news is they will never stop people from getting high on SOMETHING.
For every one person who's lives they ruin there's probably another 10 who are doing what they want without hurting anyone.
They can't win this war.
They can make money off drug users though, and that's probably good enough for them because most of the people in power really aren't trying to protect or help ANYONE or else drug use would be considered something you should only be sent to hospitals for, not prison.