Ebook: Flesh of the Gods: The Ritual Use of Hallucinogens

Any social phenomenon that achieves a certain
significance warrants systematic and dispassionate scientific inquiry, in the hope
that we may understand its norms or laws, if any, minimize its potential hazards
for individuals and society, and maximize its potential benefits. The use, or
abuse, of drugs is clearly such a phenomenon, and it is not too much to say
that especially now, in the midst of yet one more "War on Drugs," we need
far more and better information on which to base private attitudes and public
policies that can have the most profound consequences, not just for individuals
and the larger society, but those very Constitutional liberties that have made
us the envy of peoples all over the world. As someone said recently, what if
we wake up one morning and drugs are still with us but the Constitution is gone?
Estimates of people on illegal drugs in this country vary depending on the
way these things are counted, or the agenda of those who do the counting.
But there is no doubt that apart from alcohol or tobacco, which many people
still refuse to acknowledge as drugs,* millions of Americans employ some more
or less dangerous illegal substances on a regular basis, whether to escape from
unbearable economic, social and psychological conditions, the pressures of
competition and success, or lack thereof, or for less compelling reasons, but
in any event in disregard of legal or physical consequences.