The Far-Left has inherited the Drug prohibitionist mantle
The prohibitionist left is a strange emergent phenomenon in this era of drug policy reform.
The left has traditionally favored personal freedoms and liberties such as cognitive liberty, bodily and sexual autonomy, and diversity of cultural tradition among other tropes concerned with personal freedoms and liberties to be protected against state incursion.
Yet today many outspoken leftists have drifted drastically into a herd mentality of restricted bodily and mental autonomy under the guise of ethical concerns, safety, and ‘protecting the most vulnerable in society’ when it comes to the emergent regulation of psychedelics.
Before we go any further, I have self-identified and been identified by third parties (such as Facebook in their ad categorization tools) as being ‘extremely liberal’, having attended college in San Francisco and participating in just about any far leftist social activity one could think of - and despite not overtly changing my stance on any societal issues over the last two decades, last summer I was publicly compared to far-right media personalities by a cadre of outspoken leftists after I dared say they don’t speak for everyone they claim to speak for.
Just as psychedelics have emerged into widespread societal acceptance and united both sides of the political aisle, this growing cadre of outspoken leftists have taken up vaunted positions in the media landscape and led the charge to dismantle emerging regulation and social acceptance of psychedelics by citing ethical concerns and saber-rattling against the prospects of a post-prohibitionist society.
Framing drug policy reform as a moral concern co-opted by the profit-motivated far right at the expense of civil society has emboldened prohibitionists to mask their self-serving rhetoric in the purported pursuit of a free and fair society for all - except in the actuality of such a scenario, individuals and communities have the right to self-determination and self-experimentation, especially including the inalienable right to psychedelic experiences.
The push for ‘ethical clinical trials’ and airtight state regulation while casting aspersions upon unregulated use via long-form opinion pieces exposing the ‘dark underbelly of the psychedelic community’ are a particularly insidious form of virtue signaling.
Here are three pieces of recent ‘journalism’ that push a political agenda claiming to be rooted in leftist values while from my perspective reifying racist prohibitionist rhetoric:
The Horseshoe Theory of Psychedelics
How The American Right Learned to Love Psychedelics
Dispatch From Breaking Convention 2025
A common theme among these three articles, which are representative of the broader thematic arc unpacked in this piece here, is that they heavily skew towards a leftist perspective while glorifying the ‘safety net’ of drug prohibition currently in place. A common thesis between the three could read “Loving Government Protects Vulnerable Population From Potentially Disastrous Drug Use”.
The argument that the far right and their billionaire cronies are somehow corrupting psychedelics and foisting them upon an unwitting populace is laughable in the context of an internet and media ecosystem that has been captured, fragmented and weaponized against the average person.
Psychedelics offer a way out through a reverting to the power of individual liberty and community autonomy.
The longstanding argument against the political right is that they want to control people’s bodies - they’re coming for your right to an abortion, your traditions and personhood as an immigrant, and your freedom to think critically. Yet the prospect of psychedelics get a reverse treatment here, with the preposterous claim that the billionaires and the far right are here to force an ontologically disrupting, unproven therapy upon the most vulnerable in our society.
No one has anything to say about the extreme moral hazard and corrosive influence of a heavily manipulated, weaponized media and internet ecosystem upon the general public; that’s the little people’s burden to bear. However, when it comes to personal freedoms to explore consciousness and potentially develop immunity against herd mentality, that’s where we draw the line.
Prohibitionist thinking is rooted in racism and authoritarian systems of control. The push to continue criminalizing drugs and deny any emergent form of regulation is authoritarianism and draconianism by any other name. Whether it’s the left or the right pushing it, the Internet is identical.
