>
> http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/oped/chi-0301200183jan20,1,
> 1869367.story
>
>
> A new opposition front in the drug war
>
> Criminalizing peaceful people who use psychoactive drugs to deepen
> their spiritual life is criminal itself, some groups are arguing
>
> Salim Muwakkil. Salim Muwakkil is a senior editor at In These Times
>
> January 20, 2003
>
> A new front has opened in opposition to the war on drugs--a religious
> front.
>
> Several newly formed groups are contesting our prohibitionist,
> anti-drug strategies because they restrict religious freedom and
> "cognitive liberty."
>
> Drugs alter consciousness and "the right to control one's own
> consciousness is the quintessence of freedom," reads part of a
> manifesto of the Journal of Cognitive Liberties. The journal is one of
> many projects of the four-year-old Center for Cognitive Liberty &
> Ethics, a California-based, non-profit group that promotes
> intellectual freedom. The group defines cognitive liberty as "the
> right of each individual to think independently and autonomously, to
> use the full spectrum of his or her mind and to engage in multiple
> modes of thoughts and alternative states of consciousness."
>
> The group is involved in several projects designed to raise issues of
> cognitive liberty in relation to the war on drugs. In the journal's
> Summer 2000 edition, center co-director Richard Glen Boire wrote "the
> so-called `war on drugs' is not a war on pills, powder, plants and
> potions, it is war on mental states--a war on consciousness itself--
> how much, what sort we are permitted to experience, and who gets to
> control it." Boire argued that much of the motivation for the war on
> drugs is an attack on "entheogenic" drugs (roughly, God evoking) that
> provoke "transcendent and beatific states of communication with the
> deity."
>
> With this point, Boire lends his argument to a growing movement of
> Americans devoted to the use of entheogens. One branch of this
> movement calls itself "neo-shamanistic" and seeks out shamanic
> inebriants that have been used for centuries. They cite examples like
> peyote cactus and psilocybin mushrooms among Native Americans,
> ibogaine among indigenous Africans, soma in India and ayahuasca in the
> Amazonian rain forest.
>
> Others are just spiritual seekers who argue that criminal sanctions on
> the use of these psychoactive sacraments restrict their religious
> freedom. Some make the argument that the state takes its cue from
> organized religions, which historically have demonized entheogens
> because they lessen the need for a clergy to connect God to humanity.
>
> Many of the substances they champion (psilocybin, peyote/mescaline,
> LSD, marijuana, etc.) are the same drugs that were called psychedelic
> during the 1960s. These substances are now called entheogenic to
> distance them from the hedonistic excesses of the '60s drug culture.
>
> Along with some newly discovered substances (salvia divinorium,
> phalaris grass, ibogaine, ayahuasca/yage, etc), some of which
> are still precariously legal, this fledgling movement is taking the
> spiritual high road in its opposition to the drug war.
>
> Another one of the groups leading the charge is the Council on
> Spiritual Practices. Founded by Robert Jesse, 43, a former vice
> president of Oracle, the group focuses on evoking "primary religious
> experiences," which they believe can be evoked by many practices,
> including fasting, meditation, prayer, yoga and ingesting entheogenic
> drugs.
>
> The group's signature text is "Psychoactive Sacramentals: Essays on
> Entheogens and Religion," which explores many facets of entheogenic
> use. The book is an account of a 1995 conference held at the Chicago
> Theological Seminary that was devoted to the subject of entheogens and
> religion.
>
> The council also has published Huston Smith's book, "Cleansing the
> Doors of Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants
> and Chemicals," a text that tackles the issue of drugs and
> spirituality in a series of wide-ranging essays.
>
> Smith, 83, is a religious scholar and author of many books, including
> "The World's Religions," the most widely used textbook on its subject
> for more than 30 years. He also has produced three series for public
> television: "The Religions of Man," "The Search for America" and (with
> Arthur Compton) "Science and Human Responsibility."
>
> In other words, Smith certainly is no fly-by-night bohemian just
> looking for a high. "I was extremely fortunate in having some
> entheogenic experiences, while the substances were not only legal, but
> respectable," Smith said, talking about his early experimentation with
> LSD, in a 2001 Salon magazine interview. "It seemed like only fair
> play that since I value those experiences immensely to do anything I
> could to enable a new generation to also have such experiences without
> the threat of going to jail."
>
> Criminalizing peaceful people who use psychoactive drugs to deepen
> their spiritual experience or widen their cognitive horizons is
> criminal itself, these groups argue.
>
> Their arguments are catching on.
>
> ----------
>
> E-mail: salim4x@aol.com
>
> Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune
>


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