How Can You Ban Mind Expansion?

Posted by Tristram Burden Mar 23, 2007

The drugs debate in the UK has been heating up this past week with a lot of exposure given to the links between Cannabis usage and an increase in the likely-hood of the onset of schizophrenia in developing minds.

As mentioned previously on these pages, the links between mental health risks and psychoactive drugs are indisputable, but should this have any impact upon their legality? If we're to say that any substance or behaviour which leads to mental illness or a risk thereof is to be banned, where does that leave the onset of mental illness when not drug related? What do we ban then, and who do we blame?

It's been pointed out that the prohibition of cannabis is one of the reasons for the stronger varieties like skunk being more widely available. Also, a huge percentage of cannabis is sourced from the British isles, giving further access to strengths which previously were out of reach for anyone who couldn't afford repeated trips to Amsterdam, possibly a consequence of regular smokers getting bum deals for too much cash.

While the mental health risks of very strong varieties of cannabis are right to be brought into the public domain for debate, it still seems that the media is doing its time old trick, and focusing upon the few extreme cases to the detriment of the positive experiences and benefits. While these benefits certainly include pain relief for chronic sufferers, and relief from the symptoms of debilitating diseases like ME, they extend further into the quality of our consciousness. And the quality of consciousness, while being far from a hot topic on the airwaves, naturally has a direct link to our quality of lives. If we could measure the quality of the average consciousness, I guarantee deep disappointment. While many of us are swamped by television, advertising and the combined noises of a myriad of strange machines, day-in-day out, others are in perpetual fear for their lives and sleep to the sounds of bombs dropping and their kin being shot. While part of the quality of consciousness depends upon a pleasant environment, more important is the need for adaptation, empathy, perspective and willed transcendence.

This crucial area of our daily lives, consciousness, still remains a mystery to the popular sciences, and if it can't be explained by the High Priests of Learning, best not discuss it or the limits of their knowledge becomes plain and the public lose trust in their voices. However, as a possessor of consciousness, each human already possesses everything they need to understand it: their own minds.

Experimenting with different states of consciousness is more possible than ever in contemporary culture, although some authorities still inhibit the distribution and possession of substances which can enable some thorough explorations. While dreaming, meditating, magickal ritual, or a simple walk in the wilderness can inhibit the 'running mind', that mind which twists and turns from one thing to another in a cacophony of anxieties and meaningless thought, the human species should not be blocked by any method it chooses to explore consciousness because of a simple technicality like law. One's individual conscience, and one's individual morality outreach the narrow black/white boundaries of Legal/Illegal. Full liberation is enough of a responsibility in itself without listening to the gnarled, grey face of social authority.