WORLD WORLDWIDE SPAIN News Journal Update - (en) Spain, CN #434 - The remedy - Victor Dupont (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Let's imagine that, between the first and second half of the last

century, it was decided worldwide to prohibit all artistic expression.
Let us imagine the political authorities of that time pointing out the
danger constituted by such a 'vice'. Poets, actors, sculptors,
musicians, etc., would be perceived as criminal agents and their
entirely toxic and lethal products (in a mental and spiritual sense).
Scientific endorsements would be added to this absurd opinion: doctors
would lend their voices on brain and muscle atrophies caused by the
music of Satie or Stravinsky, the distortions in the nervous system of
compulsive readers -didn't Cervantes enlighten us on the dangers of a
gentleman who confused reality and fiction for his excesses with books? -.

For their part, the ineffable members of psi communities, always
subservient to the arbitrariness of power, would have a lot to
contribute: the creation of sculptures could be associated, for example,
with perverse materializations of psyches affected by childhood traumas.
And it would be necessary to prosecute, with all possible punitive
apparatus and haste, those objects that carry aesthetic pathologies. Art
consumers would then not be seen as sophisticated people, but rather as
mentally ill.

The burning of books and the burning of drugs have something in common:
the smoke released from their bonfires is an incalculable combustion of
annihilated pleasure.

With the obvious differences in the case, this has been the case since
the last century with the prohibition of drugs. They will tell me that a
substance is not the same as an artistic object. And of course. But the
point is another: the arbitrariness of the underlying criteria. Plato,
Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, to give famous examples, warned of the dangers of
some artistic expressions and, in certain cases, directly censored or
prohibited them. The burning of books and the burning of drugs have
something in common: the smoke released from their bonfires is an
incalculable combustion of annihilated pleasure.

Prohibitionism is one of the worst moral experiments in history. He took
away a tool from people (which, like any other, can cause harm if you
don't know how to use it). It is only comparable to what the repressive
culture has been doing with sex from its foundations. Raising this is
something so simple that the ignorance of the defenders of the current
state of affairs is sad and angry at the same time.

Returning to the comparison at the beginning, suppose that a few decades
after the prohibition of art some sensible propose a reform: «why not
legalize painting? As we know, it does not produce effects as harmful as
poetry or theatre. I recently heard a politician say that the
legalization of cocaine is impossible to propose, although it is
convenient in the case of marijuana. Oh yeah? Cocaine is a very
interesting drug. At least in my case it goes well in certain states
that I want to go through under its coat: talkativeness with it
resembles a waterfall with slow and accelerated tempos, depending on the
dose. The head is a little faster, and the speed of its effects works as
a high-tonity mood modulator with great immediacy. It allows what could
be called a complex drunkenness, because it makes the organism more
generous in receiving other substances that, ingested in a combined and
balanced way, cause sensations of great physical and mental subtlety.
Its disadvantage: the short duration of its stimulus.

No. Drugs should not be legalized. You cannot legalize painting or
poetry or caresses. Let's not be ridiculous. The ban must be abolished.

Drug comes from the Greek pharmakon: remedy and poison at the same time.
If I use the first person here, it's not to shock, but to point out
something: when by some eventuality these issues come out into the
stupid public consciousness, the voice of consumers is hijacked. The
television channels are flooded by police chiefs, psychologists,
psychiatrists and, finally, the occasional 'addict'. And the addict is a
construction of the same prohibitionist devices. A character
individualized by repressive rites, and made available to the media
spectacle: infantilized, inferiorized, and reduced to a moral
caricature. Put to confess in front of everyone, he paradoxically steals
his word.

Finally, the first person in this case indicates a revulsion for so much
hypocrisy. The history of drugs is extremely rich, like a line of
quality or a good painting: it is almost four thousand years old and
cases of abuse have only been recorded in the last hundred and fifty.
This has to be thought of from a cultural framework that pushes the
consumer towards illegality, absolute secrecy, silent behavior and full
of danger. From the fruits of the poppy to the discovery of alkaloids,
from the depths of psychoactive forests to the magic in the pharmacy
window; from mystery rites to Baudelaire and Rimbaud smoking opium. The
open doors of perception were closed, and since prohibition was
instituted, an interesting story has been forgotten amid random
shootings, low-quality substances, stigmatization, police bullets, and
collusion between states and drug traffickers.

No. Drugs should not be legalized. You cannot legalize painting or
poetry or caresses. Let's not be ridiculous.

The ban must be abolished.

The repressive culture that gives rise to prohibition must be abolished.

And separate the many at once, spitting on this customary hypocrisy.

https://www.cnt.es/noticias/el-remedio/
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