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RonnySimulacrum

EGA Press Release: Re-opening a National Debate on Prohibition.

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EGA issued a press release this week in response to the Australia21 report into Illicit Drug Policy. EGA support the A21 report and re-opening a national debate on prohibition and the role of ‘drugs’ in society. Read the press release below;

http://www.entheo.ne...ia21_5_5_12.pdf

collective communal energy at work we feel ;-)

Edited by RonnySimulacrum
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You guys rule.

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Very well worded Ronny. Seems you also (intentionally? Or is our collective consciousness lending a hand?) selected the most appropriate time of the day to make your post :)

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I'm going to sound like a real stick in the mud here, but I just have to say it.

I have a real problem with concept of of regulation, to my way of thinking it could decriminalise entheogens in one context but at the same time make them illegal in another.

If we take the alcohol & tobacco style of regulation we have a situation where the "products" which lets face it that's what they become when they are legal to consume and own but to be able to do any distilling or tobacco growing on anything but a very small scale is still considered an illegal act and liable to prosecution from the DPP and the tax department.

If we decriminalise entheogens could we be setting up system where multinationals and complicit governments control all most every aspect of the culture & and could the involvement of those types of entities even destroy the culture and just commoditise it ?

I believe regulation and education are paramount in the safety of almost any substance even simple things like refined sugar can be dangerous, but could regulation be classed as controlled by big business big pharma ?

I really didn't want to make this post but I can see some possible pitfalls with regulation. Was the paragraph about regulation included to soften the blow and add a sense of respectability to the statement or is a meet you half way type of concept ?

I realise that it will have to be a bargaining process with both sides having to concede some ground before this sort of thing becomes possible and to be honest I have nothing better to offer, I just have some concerns about the whole regulation concept.

I also realise regulation could well be inevitable, but I'd hope there will be some sort of concessions given in a similar vein to home brew etc

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Good post SallyD, regulation would have to be well discussed and deliberation before it could be implemented. And yes there are issues with all models, but the current one is really not working as we all know.

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Very well worded Ronny. Seems you also (intentionally? Or is our collective consciousness lending a hand?) selected the most appropriate time of the day to make your post :)

 

hehe 4:20 me likey the syncronicity :wink:

Australia21 has nothing do do with the infamous Agenda21 does it?

“When wars end honourably, they end with treaties,” says Jonathan Carmichael. “We suggest the global war on drugs

should end with a treaty based on entheogens. Plant-based drugs cause minimal harm, have guided humanity for

millennia and offer significant benefits on many fronts. Surely it is time to reconsider Australian drug laws.”

Well Said!!!

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Awesome little article. It would be good to see a public debate like there was on Q&A the other day regarding climate change but I won't be holding my breath. Also SallyD I think you bring up a great point. It really illustrates the point to me that it is corporate interests and not health interests behind drug laws since it would be MUCH healthier to smoke homegrown tobacco than one aced with toxic chemicals causing it to stay lit, not to mention the fact they are laced with chemicals meant to make them even more addictive. Seems to me if it were drug laws were in health interests corporate tobacco would be illegal..

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Illegal entheogenic use has made a huge impact on our society, and continues to do so. It shines a light on just how ridiculous the laws are, not just regarding plant substances but many other areas too, including the economy. It shakes the culture (any culture) to it's foundations, unless those foundations are very, very secure, and ours are not.

Legalizing entheogens may just commodify them, but I think they are too strong for commodification, my concern would be to religionise them I think religion has very little to do with the wonders that we experience, when experienced properly.

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what is an entheogen to some are drugs to others.. this is the case in both senses this can taken, from a legal, and personal perspective

is marijuana an entheogen? from my experience i know it is a drug of abuse for some, and regardless of people's experience or ability to quote articles, it is habit forming, and can be an extremely destructive influence. But imo it is possible to have entheogenic experiences through its ingestion.. As much as I respect the passion of people working for this, One massive issue which is neglected, and this includes RonnySimulacrum's link, is that in terms of spiritual growth, the perspective which people bring to using these plants is more important than the effects produced by the plants themselves. spiritually i feel i have learned as much for example from playing didj or doing a philosophy degree as i have from psychedelics, not because any of these things provide privileged access to truth, but because it's what i love.. i just love tripping :lol: (i've always found it difficult to think about how this isnt the case for everyone, but the same words could be spoken by a rally car driver to me for eg)

so many of the pushes toward legalization espouse their therapeutic application, but speaking personally my desire to take them isn't an extension of pathology, it's a desire to explore. i think if they are legalized there is a risk that they will be normalised, and that, as would be the opposite of the case in whitewind's post, capitalism would not become amenable to the psychedelic experience, there's a possibility that the psychedelic experience would be forced to become amenable to a 'consensus reality perspective.. if you think a 'divine merging with the cosmic mind' would override this possibility, take psychedelics with an unstable person, if only as a breaching experiment, and you'll see that perspective really is everything..one thing i love about tripping is that it's completely alien to anything 'normal or formulaic..to me the main problem of this issue is to do with the impossibility of generalization, what to one person is a means of exploring the human condition is to another a launch pad to destruction.. it's maybe pessimistic but i don't think legalization or 'religionisation would fix this..

i can of coarse give no answers atm, only my thoughts :wink:

but i really like to hear people's perspective on this, the question for my honors thesis semester after next will be whether altered states afford a privileged perspective for personal growth, something that tbh i don't have an answer to at the moment, and i've taken a a lot of drugs.. so any continued thoughts appreciated :)

Edited by bulls on parade
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I would like to remind everyone that it isn't often our practice to conform to laws we believe are morally wrong. ;)

So to suggest that this would happen automatically when the laws are changed to give us some partial freedom; is perhaps not totally true or inevitable.

But I think that this makes it even more important, that we don't agree to a treaty in which we falsely agree to terms we still deem morally wrong, as this renewed agreement could increase the number of prosecutions and make them more prevalent.

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I believe that there should not be any laws or regulations about plants and what people chose to do with them. That might sound very simplistic and utopic or even short sighted. But one should really ask why in the first place all these plants have been declared illegal. Since, to my knowlegde, very little studies have been done to prove the social and health (or any sort of )consequences many of these substances may have, one way or another, I can't see how or why these should be banned. They are considered like manufactured products for which we can decide to put them on the market or not, should they comply with our standards or not. Plants are there, for everyone to enjoy. So if one wants to interact with Nature through its plants, well then it is beyond any human law.

There is a lot of confusion between the substances/plants and what people use them for and how they use them. What society should worry about is its citizens behaviour and should punish the negative actions resulting from the use of a substance. Very much like you can't ban photography because people use it for bad purposes such as child pornography, well you can't ban a plant because someone is using it the wrong way and therfore causes harm to someone else or society in general.

I almost think that the EGA is not going far enough. As it is mentioned in the press release, it is a matter of human rights whereas it is seen as a recreational issue by the general public.

At least the world is showing the signs of a global movement going against the war against any sort of psychoactive material. And even main stream papers talk about the failure of the war on drugs. That's one big step forward at last.

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Very strong and sophisticated discussion, please keep it coming. bulls on parade

Your honors thesis sound very interesting and i hope to get more information on it as it develops.

Edited by RonnySimulacrum
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Bulls maybe you should make a topic for some kind of data collection for your honors thesis. I'd be happy to tell you what sort of benefits I've personally had or would it be better that I PM you?

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Excellent stuff Ronny, once again we are indebted to EGA, keep up the good fight!

As much as I appreciate the efforts & discussion here I can't help but feel people are still avoiding the real issue.

The crux of this issue is not about wether they are entheogenic or have possible benefits or harms to the individual or wether they are even drugs, I don't feel the issue is even about drugs or plants. At its core the issue is about freedom of choice & wether people should have the right to choose what they do with their bodies (& gardens) as long as that choice does not impact significantly on others.

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..Shamanistic i don't think anyone will mind if you want to post insights here :)

one thing about philosophy is so much of it's focus is on things that elude empirical investigation.. data collection may not be an ideal method..

Something that opened my eyes at EGA was that like so many other things this has to be approached from a multidisciplinary perspective, chemicle, biological, psychological, sociological, legal, political, historical, artistic, philosophical etc.

one frustrating thing is that by outlawing these things, they've identified a very different, mostly unconnected, dispersed group of people that all need change, but that don't necessarily want anything to do with a 'movement. many people it relates to value their anonymity.. yet in the way Australian politics is structured a movement may be the only hope for success..or stockpiling weapons and heading to the hills to ferment a revolution

nah probly the other way..

really we need guerrilla scientists and phd's..or a wikileaks style centre for the accumulation of peer reviewed entheogen knowledge would be cool..

..

Edited by bulls on parade
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