Posted on by Nathan Riley

So What?

There is nothing as unconvincing, as unbelievable as the assumption that a drug user, a sex worker, a gambler, or a drinker is a bad guy who lies or steals. In truth, you know nothing about a person when you learn they take drugs or do sex for money.

These falsehoods are pure prejudice. It is unreasonable and contrary to fact to assume you know something about a person’s character when you find out that they performed certain acts. Such conclusions are specious. After World War II, it became impossible to believe that a black or brown person was a thief or a liar, even though such views were common. These were prejudices, and thousands of soldiers, factory workers building airplanes and tanks during World War II demonstrated that skin color told us nothing about a person’s character. What we learned is that assuming the worst produced false conclusions.

Before drawing a conclusion about a person’s character, the courts, the employers, and the neighbors had to know the facts. Opinion leaders in the United States worked hard to bring this truth to the public. Stars like Jackie Robinson were “most valuable players;” the dignified opera singer Marian Anderson made whites look foolish when they tried to stop her from singing at the Daughters of American Revolution Constitution Hall. Then the decisive change: desegregation of the schools.

Clearly, the recognition of black and brown achievements didn’t end prejudice or stop nasty people from hostile acts, but anyone found to be a racist or making false accusations faced public shame. Many did not give up their prejudices, but they now put their good name at risk. For example, a woman in New York City falsely threatened a black man with a false accusation of rape and then lost her job.

At one time, the black man faced arrest and trial for a similarly flimsy accusation.

It is the contention of this writer that just because you learn someone traded their body for money, gambled, watched porn, or drinks every night, you know nothing about their character. In big cities, the stories are legion about women who trick with men and use the money to pay their rent and care for their children. Carl Hart, a Columbia University professor, insists his habitual use of heroin has not stopped him from meeting his professional responsibilities and social obligations. Anyone who knows drug users realizes many are plumbers, bankers, and lawyers who work every day and enjoy the respect of their peers. Hart, who has spent a lifetime studying drug use, insists that 70% of users of illegal drugs are fully functional.

Prejudice in the form of irrational laws and legal surveillance pose a far greater risk to these people than the drugs they consumed or the persons they tricked with. Gamblers in recent decades have found relief from laws making their activities illegal. It became obvious that “Johnny’s father” or a baseball fan are not criminals just because they liked to bet. The reason for these legal changes is significant. Gamblers were people everybody knew. They didn’t live secret lives and efforts to claim their activities were immoral became preposterous.

Queers faced similar damnation, especially in the dark years after World War II. The federal government fired them on the false grounds that they were security risks. After his dismissal, Frank Kameny, an astronomer, went to court, and found friends to picket against this clear violation of his rights. Homosexuals were common in every large city and have been throughout history. Despite the disparaging attitudes, only rarely were people alarmed by what they considered a common vice. When the Stonewall Riots demonstrated the homosexuals’ anger at the legal hostility imposed on them; city after city created safe spaces for this new political force.

A New York court stopped police entrapment by reaching the obvious conclusion that the undercover officer was not surprised or harmed when a gay man invited them back to their home. The sage judges remarked, “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.” With this homespun wisdom, the court deprived the police of their chief weapon for entrapping gay men. A few years later, the state’s highest court resolved the issue with the declaration that men had the right to love men and women the right to love women. Same-sex sex became legal in New York, and a few years later the Supreme Court made that the law of the land.

Clients and sex workers and consumers of drugs should pay attention to this history lesson. They are good people and there is no reason to be scared of their habits. In fact, use the word “sex surrogate” and sex workers become angels of mercy and admired. We forget that often clients are people too old, too fat, too callous, or ashamed of their sexual peculiarities to go out on dates. The sex worker is a performer, satisfying the fantasies of their customers. There is nothing remotely criminal about these practices.

Freedom Democrats are dedicated to making the public aware that fear rather than reason, prejudice rather than a willingness to say “so what?” about how other people live their lives is the major obstacle to reform. If legal, sex workers can live lives of respectability, drug users will have access to drugs manufactured with their safety in mind. Doctors can treat patients without the interference of foolish laws.

Freedom Democrats will unite in the common purpose of defying moral rigidity, which thinks it can make a hard-and-fast rule that taking drugs, selling sex, or watching porn is a moral failing. Freedom Democrats will give despised groups their full legal rights in a free country.

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.