Posted on by Nathan Riley

If It’s Fun, It Must Be Illegal

If it’s fun, it’s illegal—a common conviction of my youth. Often said in jest, in the 1950s as I grew up it was folk wisdom. My parents were 11 years old when Prohibition took full effect in 1922 and drank in their teens illegally and with glee. Hence the folk saying if it’s fun, it’s illegal was grounded in history.

By 1932 their rebellion became legal. Franklin Delano Roosevelt downplayed his support for repealing prohibition, and he suffered no backlash in his landslide victory. My parents never supported prohibition and spent little time justifying their view; prohibition made government do bad things. Virtually everybody in New York City agreed.

But the specter of prohibition stayed with my parents; they never thought marijuana should be illegal. They were quick to realize cigarettes caused cancer years before warning labels. My mom compromised and smoked 3 cigarettes a day, my father, whose willpower I found awesome, simply stopped. It was an individual decision. Government’s obligation was to do research and to dispute tobacco’s propaganda, but the bottom line, the decision was up to the individual.

My parents and I do not object to government expressing strong viewpoints about personal habits. My objection is to the use of government coercion. The application of punishment is rarely fair. Marijuana is illegal, but nobody bothered the fans at a Grateful Dead concert. They were clearly getting high and the police stayed away. The Dead, in turn, made sure caretakers were immediately available to help people who had bad trips.

Yes there was potential for harm, and the sensible response is helping people who are in trouble. It was manifestly obvious that most people were having fun and weren’t in trouble. The law was not enforced.

But these laws are aggressively enforced against spurned groups, especially the black and brown communities. White people with ties to the community skate when drugs are found, but the courts all too often bring down the hammer and police sweeps arrest thousands for doing the same thing that white people do without punishment. Even when it came to the tricky question of selling the illegal drugs, whites find legal exits that are denied to black and brown. There is no racial justice in drug enforcement or, for that matter, prostitution enforcement.

Forcing the law to accept individual choices would end these racial injustices. Clearly, imprisonment is unjust and doesn’t fit the crime. The push for legalization is a push for equal justice. Some people who do drugs need help. They should be able to get medical care, counseling, and other assistance without court orders insisting on little evidence that it is necessary. Medical care should not be guided by the Drug Enforcement Agency and the courts. It’s a private matter between the patient and the doctor. Doctors should be free to use their best medical judgment on the proper treatment. That would clearly include allowing patients to use drugs while attention is directed at other problems.

Legalization would bring additional medical impacts. The corporations making drugs would have to adhere to safety rules. Bad trips, fentanyl poisoning, and other ill effects would be reduced dramatically. Perhaps the most important benefit is that users will get safety information that stays the same because the product is uniform and its dose is standardized.

Under prohibition, unskilled people willing to risk arrest are forced constantly to change their preparations. Law enforcement in its fruitless efforts to stamp out drugs frequently bans an ingredient. These legal interferences mean drug users often are forced to take a new drug they are not used to. It is a dangerous form of government interference.

These legal strategies encourage additives like fentanyl, which have a big kick but often catch users by surprise. A little bit of fentanyl can produce a big high, but, as we well know, it also brings overdoses. The legal manufacture of drugs is a safety precaution for users.

The public is well aware it can buy dozens of different kinds of alcohol. But they only select drinks they like. The fact that the currently illegal drugs would be available and uniform would not require the public to buy them. We know for a fact that people exercise choice when it comes to getting high. Adding legal drugs to the list is not a big step.

It would be irresponsible to say drugs have no risk. Carl Hart, the Columbia professor who has spent his life studying drugs has found that 70% of legal users would enjoy their habits without ill effects. At the same time, he also clearly states that 30% have trouble. Making something legal does not mean it would be safe. Football is legal, but it is fraught with injury. Smoking is legal, but many smokers get cancer. Driving is legal, but hardly safe without drivers paying close attention and following the rules.

Making drugs legal will not make them safe unless the users exercise caution. But making drugs manufactured according to uniform standards would make the exercise of caution much easier and allow users to tell other users about safety.

And perhaps the most important benefit is racial justice. We don’t have to depend on police learning new habits; they will not be allowed to arrest gamblers, drug users, prostitutes, porn watchers, and other habits that are the private business of the individual.

I must renew my plea for somebody to offer help. Everybody I have approached has declined. I’m 83 and nearly blind and need a functioning adult to help me get this project off the ground. Interested? Contact me by email.

Posted on by Nathan Riley

It’s Time for “Whatever” People to Unite

Freedom Democrats reach a cross section of America among  them are viewers of porn and its performers , are close to the LGBTQ+ community, sex workers and their clients, and drug users. They number in the millions and respect each other’s habits and do not tell other people how they should live their lives.

Political scientists tell us voters join their friends and become a stable voting bloc. A key organizing tool of this new group are weekly parties. The “whatever” people form the core of the Freedom Democrats.

Around 2015, many drug reformers rejected the idea that drugs are a problem. Millions like to get high, and they objected to a negative focus that fed shame. In truth and in fact it is absurd that the pleasures of drug use should be considered criminal. People having a good time are not committing a crime!

Marginalizing people with demeaning laws betrays our heritage; the right to the pursuit of happiness is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. So fundamental is this right, that the Declaration insists that governments are “instituted” to “secure these rights.” Laws prohibiting drug use directly conflict with the Declaration. For this reason, reformers rejected the idea that their drug use requires government management.

This blog hopes open minded people will unite and vote.

For years, arguments supporting drug legalization accepted the idea that drug use is a problem. Reformers made the case that criminalizing drugs was bad policy; it increased the danger of drugs and the risk of harm to users. In 1981, the futile fight against drug use cost $1.5 billion; currently, it costs $35 billion. Except in those states that made marijuana legal and collect tax money rather than spending it. As early as 1944, NYC Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia issued a study backing marijuana legalization. In the eighty years since then, expert after expert voiced support for similar conclusions. What is new is the growing recognition that even “hard drugs” like heroin are used just as safely as marijuana or alcohol. These scientific conclusions buttress the arguments for the universal right to get high, guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence.

Roughly ten years ago, and growing every year, drug users and reformers reject the notion that these pleasures are unmanageable. A vocal advocate for this change repudiated many of his earlier ideas. Carl Hart, a professor at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, when he started his study of drugs, thought drug use was a major cause of the crime and poverty infecting black neighborhoods like the one he grew up in. Over the years, Professor Hart’s research led him to repudiate this hypothesis; he concluded it was nonsense.

Drug use is often scapegoated as a cause of poverty, which is more closely tied to society’s neglect. Students in these neighborhoods often receive minimal encouragement at school, their families struggle and don’t earn a living wage, and government services are inferior to nonexistent. Explanations for downtrodden conditions cannot be reasonably traced to the bad habits of the residents. It’s an unworkable explanation. Middle class people use more drugs than the poor, they can afford it, and their lives don’t fall apart.

Those blaming the poor’s problems on drug use seldom mention that a half-a-million people are arrested every year, “to say nothing of the shameful racial discrimination in marijuana arrests,” wrote Professor Hart. In 2013, black people were four times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession. At the federal level, three-fourths of the individuals arrested for marijuana possession were Hispanic. Undoubtedly, the growing legalization of marijuana has improved this situation, but its main lesson is still in its infancy: society can absorb legalization without trauma.

Moreover, Hart’s years of research on drug use in a university setting dispelled the notion that crack, meth, or psychedelics were more addictive than marijuana. Other legal substances like alcohol, caffeine, or food most adults have no real problem handling but which cause some people real difficulty. The connection between overeating and obesity is a far greater health problem than drug use. But there is no call to wage war against food and make it illegal.

By propagating the myth that drugs made people dangerous, society gave new life to older racist prejudices enflaming fears that marginal groups like Blacks, Chinese, or the Irish threatened society. Myths about the danger of drug use spawn alarming headlines, increase media audiences, and justify increased funds for police, drug testing, and treatment programs. The true beneficiaries of drug prohibition. By casting it as an evil, politicians were relieved of the obligation to offer a helping hand other than making the only acceptable outcome: stop using the drug now.

Professor Hart’s fury and sense of moral failing was directed at himself and other drug users who showed little solidarity with the persons ensnared by hostile laws. In his radical book Drug Use for Grown-Ups, the professor clearly admitsthat he lived a happy life using drugs. It increased “affability, euphoria, and energy—all conducive to a party atmosphere.” If he was free to enjoy his life with these drugs, the Professor insisted that morality demanded solidarity with others captured by the criminal law. Adults who use drugs sporadically for pleasure, Hart insists, must come out of the closet for the same reasons that lesbians and gays made their habits known. Once people realized that their friends and neighbors were gay, it became difficult if not impossible to believe that it was a problem. Hart makes a convincing case that users will also change people’s attitudes.

He describes delightful moments with his wife, often with enhanced intimacy and sexual pleasure. Drugs accompanied him in many special moments in their marriage. Hart’s pleasure is not pot, he likes heroin.

The conclusions from his research reinforced his politics. He eloquently dismantles the 1980’s crack scare. It was a successor to previous racist lies that this or that evil drug made blacks insanely dangerous criminals. Today we laugh at the absurd tales in the movie Reefer Madness, but these mean-spirited tales led to a degree of police intervention that has no justification in a free society. At the height of the crack scare, Governor Mario Cuomo called for life sentences even for small amounts of crack worth $50 while Congressman Charles Rangel “advocated for the deployment of military personnel and equipment to rid cities of the drug.” These mythic drug scares are a reoccurring part of American life. They have no scientific basis and are dangerously totalitarian.

In the ensuing panic, Congress passed “legislation setting penalties that were literally one hundred times harsher for crack-trafficking than for powder cocaine–trafficking violations. From a pharmacological perspective, Professor Hart notes, crack is no more harmful than powder cocaine. “They are the same drug.”

The obvious and racist difference between powdered coke that is snorted and crack that is smoked is the color of the user’s skin. Decades later Congress stopped ignoring these criticisms, but even then they could not bring themselves to make the penalties for crack and cocaine equal. Congressional reform reduced the sentencing disparity, but still in the throes of the dangerous drug nonsense, the “reform” reduced the disparity to 18:1. Thank you, but no thanks.

Policy-based arguments seeking reform but which accept the idea that drugs are exceptionally dangerous easily leads to compromises that make the 18:1 seem like an acceptable improvement.

It is far better to insist that drug use is legal and allow adults to control their use. Drinks during alcohol prohibition were often laced with dangerous ingredients. Once drinking became legal, whiskey became safer. Making drug use legal would make drugs safer and improve education on the safe use of drugs. Drugs would have standardized ingredients and users would receive sound advice backed by medical research. Such a plan recognizes that adult drug users like Professor Hart will manage their use successfully and doctors, friends and family will help those whose use cause problems.

Drug users are often a picky lot. Those who like opium understand that methamphetamines have an entirely different effect. The users and their community can sort out these problems without having their privacy invaded by strangers and the law. Driving is legal but often dangerous, and in all probability some users will find ways to make drugs dangerous. But most users will choose safe habits. That is why Professor Hart entitles his book Drug Use for Grown-Ups. Freedom requires that we allow adults their right to pursue happiness and society will work with users to enhance pleasure rather than promote danger.

Freedom Democrats will not only fight for adults’ rights to use drugs, but they will stop racist police practices. The opposition to drug laws is another chapter in stopping the U.S.’s history of terrorism against blacks.

Professor Hart insists drug users unite and demand the simple truth that in the United States getting high and happy is a basic human right. The Declaration of Independence guarantees the fundamental right to pursue happiness.

The professor has shrewd observations to encourage drug users unity. For example, he warns that there is a negative side to “the current popular psychedelic movement.” He cautions that it is “dominated by people who justify their use of these drugs by couching it in medical or spiritual jargon.” Their careful arguments avoid “the stigma associated with using these substances, so long as the reason for use is not to get high.” But the professor prefers the libertarian attitudes like those of a psychedelic icon like Jerry Garcia. Garcia—it should be added, but the professor doesn’t mention—was a heroin user, even if the Grateful Dead’s devoted followers preferred LSD they knew that drug laws violated their rights.

Professor Hart calls for all drug users to come out of the closet. Getting high is an inalienable right protected by the Declaration of Independence. This freedom should become a cornerstone of the argument for drug legalization.

Launching Freedom Democrats requires the help of smart persons who will join an old man like me. I’m 82 and nearly blind and must find activists who want to help.

Organizing Freedom Democratic requires no special skills. The starting point are weekly parties that invite sex workers, porn watchers, drug users, and LGBTQ+, the “whatever” persons who share a common attitude. They want a new birth of freedom in the United States. The weekly parties will give people who share common views the opportunity to work together and become a political force.

Posted on by Nathan Riley

Don’t Stigmatize Drug Users

Creating a new politics of freedom doesn’t require constant hostility and opposition. In the case of marijuana, an object is to end stigmatization.

This movement is making telling progress: state after state and local governments are making marijuana legal. As is true of life: do something big and there must be problems.

But telling people that legal pot is especially strong and may not be fun is very different from saying pot is dangerous and shouldn’t be used. In fact, some doctors have a specialized knowledge and prescribe pot to alleviate unpleasant symptoms. Pot, for many people, relieves insomnia or negative feelings like anxiety.

Publications like Marijuana Moment that track news about pot regularly publicize studies that are balanced and even recommend pot. Ashley Bradford from Georgia Institute of Technology recently completed a study showing that “in states where both medical and recreational marijuana are legal, fewer patients are filling prescriptions for medications used to treat anxiety,” like antipsychotics, benzodiazepines, and antidepressants. They found “consistent evidence that increased marijuana access is associated with reductions in benzodiazepine prescription fills.”

In other words, powerful medications that have a potential for addiction are no longer used. Symptoms are treated by pot. Such research is spreading, and it is now commonplace to concede that marijuana has medical uses. Traditional researchers are still trying to tie marijuana use to bad outcomes, but research like that done by Ashley Bradford are finding positive outcomes.

It should come as no surprise that there are good and bad results. That is the way the real world works.

But getting researchers to look at the good as well as the bad is a continuing struggle.

Of course, users still enjoy getting high and find, for example, that pot enhances sex. Although I must admit I have seen no studies on pot and erectile dysfunction. I am quite confident that users can make up their own minds about these pleasures.

At 82, after 65 years of marijuana use, I got stoned over Christmas. It was a disaster. My sense of balance was challenged, and it took over a week for the ill effects to dissipate. Without any physical withdrawal, I concluded no more pot; I had reached a point where it harmed me rather than pleased me.

This is a world of difference from the harsh, even hostile, atmosphere that surrounded pot when I was young. Being mean was not even recognized. Frequently we were told that only dopes do dope. Telling a person that they are stupid undermines confidence and agency. It certainly doesn’t help a person gain control of their lives.

We are in a new era, where it is recognized that some people use it, others don’t, just as at the start of the century it finally became clear that some people are LGBTQ+ and others aren’t. What is important is doing no harm to users and treating marijuana users as sinners is harmful.

In fact, so preposterous were the arguments against marijuana that it became widely assumed that pot was natural and therefore even good for you. It is certainly true that some weed smokers saw their lives improve, but it is equally true that pot can provoke anxiety, vomiting. In other words, don’t turn a pleasure into a general rule for everyone.

The most dangerous drug is obviously alcohol, and we don’t tell everybody, “Drink.”

The big task facing us is helping people who use hard drugs like heroin and meth believe they can face problems however painful without using these drugs. It is equally important to recognize that somebody who gets high on a weekend night isn’t necessarily harmed. They should probably have access to pharmaceutically manufactured drugs where their potency and effects are carefully calculated. Once again, we face the rule that some people take drugs even when it causes them problems while others simply find it a moment of pleasure. In other words, society should give people the freedom to discover.

Freedom is about letting doctors and the public find a healthy path. One rule doesn’t fit everybody. In short, we must spread knowledge and avoid setting rules that harm people who are doing nothing wrong.

Posted on by Nathan Riley

Overdose Deaths Are Proof That the U.S. Fails To Provide Healthcare to Drug Users

With a drug overdose, a person gradually stops breathing and while it is not true for marijuana, opioid use can be dangerous.

Crossing the street is dangerous—vehicles kill. That is why we have traffic lights and look both ways before crossing. For the illegal drugs we also have “traffic lights:” Don’t do drugs alone. Be sure there is someone there who can help if the user becomes helpless and could die. Have naloxone nearby to interrupt an overdose.

In cities all over the world, drug users inject, inhale, and snort in facilities where a healthcare specialist is on duty and able to interrupt the overdose, or some other health crisis that threatens the user’s well-being.

But not in the United States.

Such facilities are rare and subject to legal sanction because U.S. law can’t distinguish between a crackhouse and a healthcare facility. It’s not just stupid; it’s cruel and all too often murderous.

New York City should have dozens of these programs. Almost every needle exchange program would like to become a healthcare facility where drug users ingest drugs while a healthcare specialist oversees, ready to protect the user if things go wrong. Even with severe limitation the two facilities in New York City have interrupted 1,000 overdoses.

Needle exchange programs set up to stop the spread of H.I.V. faced opposition. “This neighborhood already has too many programs.” Or providing sterile needles and stopping the spread of disease, “Encourages drug use. There is only one message, and that is ‘Just say no.’” Drug use is wrong, accepting the conclusion that illegal drugs must be demonized. Thanks to the public health community and ACT UP’s demonstrations that delivered pithy messages supporting them, needle exchange programs can be found in metropolitan areas all over the United States. Safer consumption facilities should also become widespread.

The neighborhoods survived needle exchange, and the lives of the general public stayed the same. By and large, only drug users and local officials paid attention to the programs. Adding Supervised Injection Facilities would also neighborhood health.

Drug users should have a place to inject drugs away from public view. Many members of the public are disgusted when users take their drugs on street corners or under bridges. A city with drug consumption rooms protects the neighborhood and the privacy of drug users.

The arguments in favor of safer injection facilities are overwhelming. All over Europe, cities have adopted these programs for decades. But not here. A federal judge in Philadelphia has actually found that U.S. law prohibits these programs. Laws intended to close drug dens also stopped health programs.

This situation is more than stupid. It’s deadly. In New York City, on the average, there are about eight deaths every day from overdoses. In 2014, the state comptroller’s researchers reported 2,300 deaths. In 2021, 5,841 New Yorkers died.

Unless something positive is done, 58,000 New Yorkers will die every ten years. The number of deaths in the United States is equally startling. In 2021, 106,719 died in the U.S. That’s a million deaths every ten years.

Nothing, it seems, will persuade U.S. officials to give drug users “traffic lights” to improve their safety. During this time, fentanyl use spread and increased the risk of an overdose.

Fentanyl is easier to smuggle because just a little bit provides a powerful high. If, as Freedom Democrats advocate, these drugs were manufactured by drug companies and prescribed by doctors, only rarely would the prescription authorize fentanyl. There would have been few, if any, overdose deaths from fentanyl-laced drugs.

But because the United States gives illegal operators a monopoly, they are able to add fentanyl. But facts are facts; in the United States people were using opioids when George Washington’s troops were fighting the British, when the Union was battling the Confederacy, and when the United States entered World War I. Opioid use has a long history and will not go away. Policy makers must recognize this reality.

Opioid use is here. And if Freedom Democrats get their way, it will be a safe drug to use. Obviously, some users will want the drug every day; that has always been true, but so what.

Anybody who knows drug users knows that there are depressed people who depend on it. Others want their high right after they’ve been released from prison, forcing them to go “cold turkey” didn’t stop the memories. Indeed, one group who suffer overdose deaths are recently released persons.

Some drug users live disorganized lives, but there are others who support positive change.

Recent news reports describe such a person. Cecilia Gentili founded Trans Equity Consulting, served as director of policy at GMHC, and was board co-chair of the New Pride Agenda. The details of her death are silent on whether she was by herself when the overdose occurred, or whether she was only an occasional user and unused to the potency of fentanyl-laced heroin.

She was in the news in late September 2024 because the two dealers who sold the drugs pleaded guilty in federal court. They face prison sentences well in excess of ten years, an outcome that would probably sadden Cecilia Gentili, who spent her life helping sex workers and transgender persons live with pride. She fought laws that punished persons for their life choices.

We don’t know anything about a person if all we know is that they get high. The U.S. hostility to drug use rests on witchcraft, not science. The United States attributes magic powers to drugs like opioids, but in fact some users have no problems with their drugs, while a smaller group experience fatal consequences.

Freedom Democrats, I believe, should recognize the dangers of many illegal drugs, like heroin and methamphetamine, but society should recognize, with medical care, these drugs are and can be used safely. It makes no more sense to interfere with the doctor patient relationship by prohibiting the medical profession from prescribing drugs that help a person get high than it does to interfere with the doctor-patient relationship surrounding pregnancy.

In fact, the number of deaths from illegal abortions plummeted once government allowed women to consult and work with doctors during the difficult decision about abortion. The same positive results would happen if society allowed doctors the freedom to work with patients who use drugs, leaving it up to the doctor whether the patient will have access to pharmaceutical drugs whose purity has been verified.

It is critical to end the stigma attached to drug use that often forces users to take their drugs secretly and alone. There is no more chance of the United States becoming a nation of drugs users than lifting the stigma attached to homosexuality made everyone gay.

In fact, working with public health specialists it is possible to control drug use and prevent dangerous outcomes. Sixty years ago, on a hot summer day millions of Americans drank beer to quench their thirst. Today they drink water. That is a positive public health result, achieved with a minimum of criminal sanctions. Making drug use a crime causes deadly results. It’s time for us to welcome drug users into society rather than punish them for their habit. The law also ruins the lives of drug sellers with long prison sentences. The only reason they have a market is because the law makes drugs illegal. If drugs were legal, doctors and patients could make their problems manageable.

 Overdoses are proof that society is failing to provide healthcare.

Posted on by Nathan Riley

Fentanyl Doesn’t Kill, Bad Laws Do

Fentanyl keeps cropping up on the edge of the presidential election campaigns. Some Republicans claim Biden’s permissiveness has flooded the nation by allowing immigrants to bring this deadly drug across our borders.

This is nonsense peppered with half-truths. Each year over a hundred thousand drug users die an accidental death from a drug overdose. A major cause of these fatal events is tied to fentanyl. One reason people keep using it is that they don’t drop dead after getting high. This is always true. The deadly drugs that newscasters and politicians use to justify authoritarian laws kill some people while others survive.

The law and law enforcement give users a small choice of drugs. Then, in an extraordinarily vicious act of social ostracism, the drug users get damned for using the drugs. They are dangerous because they are potent, in other words, a little bit goes a long way. When trying to avoid the cops, a drug that gets many people high but is easily hidden becomes advantageous. This is the exact opposite of what doctors and public health officials would want from a drug.  The notion that illegal immigrants supply U.S. drug users would be silly if people weren’t dying. There are thousands and thousands of people who don’t want to get high from alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine and therefore are pushed into the illegal market. Americans were using opium during our revolution. And guess what? They are still using it.

Fentanyl is an extremely potent form of opium that is manufactured, whereas opium and heroin are plant based. As the newspapers have reported, the fentanyl epidemic started when the United States cut off legal supplies of oxycontin.

Drug companies and pharmacies, responding to new laws, vastly reduced the supply of this relatively safe pharmaceutical painkiller. These companies are law abiding, and when the law restricts supply they comply. Their business is legal, and they want to keep it that way.

It will come as no surprise to students of U.S. drug enforcement that no provision was made for the thousands who made oxy part of their lives. Some bit the bullet, obeyed the law, and stopped using. Others, as always happens, went to the illegal market. Evading the law makes potent drugs like fentanyl a good idea.

The notion that illegal immigrants victimized innocent Americans by supplying them with fentanyl is absurd. Drug users were looking for an alternative to oxy. Fentanyl could be purchased by mail from China. Drug syndicates in Latin America avoiding U.S. law enforcement by smuggling fentanyl into the United States. Immigrants crossing the border are no significant suppliers.

Congress and state legislators could have simply accepted the fact that some users didn’t feel able to give up oxy. It would take longer but would put fewer people in jail and drastically reduce the number of overdose deaths if the law showed some patience and worked with users, even those who kept using oxy.

It requires no special act of genius. This is what we do with people who want to give up drinking or become dangerous when they drink. The problems are similar. Drunk driving laws give law enforcement an entry point without authorizing the harsh and intrusive drug laws.

Drinking is controlled. Younger people have developed the habit of drinking water. At parties, they and their friends who do drink can hang out together without a problem. The same thing can happen with drugs that we label dangerous. What makes them dangerous is the bad laws governing their use. The control is exercised voluntarily, which is the way it should be in a democracy that is governed by the consent of the governed.