Anthony Gregory: "Drug War Hypocrisy"

Posted by Anthony Gregory at February 18, 2005 06:50 PM

For years, MDMA was used clinically for psychiatric treatment, marital counseling, helping people get over post-traumatic stress disorder, and dealing with addiction problems. The drug was invented in the early 20th century and accepted by many scientists as having some medical uses. Then the feds made it illegal, along with other empathogens and hallucinogens. After that ? surprise! ? it became wildly popular in colleges and dance clubs. For a few years, there was some hysteria over this "designer drug" ? which, like "assault weapon," means something the feds don't like ? and possession of it became punished through increasingly draconian means and unconstitutional mandatory minimum sentences. About five years ago, there were some proposals to make it illegal to have it in one's bloodstream, unusual even for the drug war, and the drug was seen as a menace that would justify banning speech about it. Censorship was in the original draft of Feinstein and Hatch's "Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act," later renamed the "Club-drug Anti-Proliferation Act," and once again renamed the warm and fuzzy "Children's Health and Safety Act."

Yes, MDMA (or "ecstacy") seems to cause long-term problems in large doses, but there's been junk science on the issue as well, including a doctored photo of a brain of a user that became famous. (BTW, I hope no one reads this as an endorsement of the drug.) But what of the original medical uses, before the feds turned it into a forbidden fruit? Is it really, like marijuana supposedly is, totally without any medicinal value? And if so, why is it now being administered to U.S. soldiers with shell shock from Afghanistan and Iraq "to help free them of flashbacks and recurring nightmares," in the precise way it was used clinically for years before it was made illegal? Of course, the state typically exempts itself from its own laws, and this is simply one more example. Either the drug has some medical benefits, in which case it does not belong under Schedule I, the most restricted federal category, even under current federal guidelines, or it doesn't have such benefits and the state is doping its troops up on something so awful that, we are told, the crusade against it legitimizes a federal war on the Bill of Rights.