Free Consciousness or Bust

Posted by Tristram Burden Mar 11, 2007

There is no basis for policies on drugs to be founded upon perceptions of users as violent, abusive and potentially harmful to themselves or others, a Royal Society of the Arts study has recently concluded. Public perception, and the social policies which inform it, have long been confronted with the almost universal idea that drugs make people dangerous, or the simplistic view that drugs are taken by dangerous people, who when on drugs will cause more harm than good, to themselves or others.

While careful observation might afford the same results, this study which occurred over a two year period, draws attention to our strange hypocritical position on drugs. And very succinctly pointed out that if we where to put legal and illegal drugs side by side, alcohol, our most beloved drug, would rank with some of the most harmful and illegal ones. While the study seemed limited exclusively to the social effects of drugs, it provokes an illuminating illustration about the distance between public perception about drugs and their social role, and the hidden world of personal accountability and responsibility that exists in opposition to it. A secret world where people use drugs responsibly, where there are no dark dens, no hooded people crowding around a shimmering pipe and tin-foil, random acts of cruelty occurring all about them in the shadows as gun shots ring out in the distance.

There has always been a culture entirely divorced from the criminal image that drug usage has attached to it, a culture far more alive, vivid and, perhaps, socially and culturally intrinsic, which except in the underground press, and the minds of the few more possessed of common sense, has been pure anathema to this strange hidden hand which manages to distort public views about these things, most active since the late fifties and early sixties, growing louder in voice and resulting in the historically abnormal clamp down on any mind-altering substance which was not alcohol. Let's be clearer about this, when I say distort the public view, that is not to say some system of mind control, but rather an uncalculating and instinctual lie posing as 'public perception' which is invariably the opinion of the policy makers, journalists and researchers who have the ways and the means to produce a 'public' which in essence, was never there, with opinion and perceptions which are entirely their own, and bears little relation to the millions of minds they purport to represent.

Saturday's Independent ran a story about Patricia Tabrami, the hash-cake Delia Smith, comparing her brushes with the law to Emmeline Pankhurst, rightly contextualizing the legalisation of cannabis as a civil rights movement. Who has the right to determine what a person does with their consciousness? How can you regulate consciousness, and what people do with it? Anyone so switched on as to reply “Don't you watch TV, man?” can take that as a rhetorical question. The other answer of course lies with the regulation of drugs. A recent spike in this ongoing push towards a change in social policy towards cannabis in particular, but illegal drugs in general, was the integral issue that bad mental-health and psychoactive drugs don't mix, which is something I know a good few people have managed to find out for themselves, myself included. It remains important however, that individuals get the responsibility they deserve over their own minds. And it remains equally important for the government to acknowledge all its policies which serve to undermine quality of consciousness and life: consistent support of television, despite the far-reaching studies of its ill-effects, and perhaps more controversially and far from being solved, the perpetual junk, signs and symbols and sounds, any mind is bombarded with in an urban environment, without consent, in the form of advertising – corporations actually messing around with peoples desires and integral socio-biological drives. How does that get past anyone?

But at least some definite policies are being formulated about drugs in the places where the hidden hands gather, and public opinion seems to be ending its long, meandering fumble in the dark, and getting proper definition. There is no longer a Drugs are Bad, Drugs are Good divide, but a more complex reasoning which could be likened to people acknowledging that not all Islamics are militant extremists, and that not all governments mean well by their people. If we keep going like this, one day we'll realise that greed and hatred perpetuate human suffering, and that unconditional love and regular, healthy orgasms far exceed the importance of perpetuating the economy. One day...

Read about the study...http://www.rsadrugscommission.org/

Read the results...http://www.rsadrugscommission.org.uk/pdf/RSA_yougov_survey_results.pdf

iCooking with the Cannabis Granny by Ian Herbert, The Independent, Saturday 10th March, 2007.