HUMANS USE DRUGS [CHEMICAL SUBSTANCES] TO ALTER CONSCIOUSNESS TO VARIOUS DEGREES. IN CRITICAL QUANTITY, SOME DRUGS CAN ALSO KILL.  

ALCOHOL IS THE DRUG OF CHOICE FOR MOST OF THE WESTERN WORLD... NICOTINE AND CAFFEINE ARE THE MOST USED DRUGS IN THE MUSLIM WORLD...

OTHER DRUGS INCLUDE COCAINE AND HEROIN. 

SOME OTHER CONSCIOUSNESS MODIFYING DRUGS ARE PRESCRIBED BY THE MEDICAL PROFESSION... THESE MOSTLY PHARMACEUTICAL DRUGS ARE REGIMENTED BY STRICT USAGE.

NOW COMES A CRITICAL QUESTION.... CAN A DRUNKER SAILOR VOTE IN AN ESSENTIAL POLITICAL CHOICE? THIS WAS ANSWERED A WHILE BACK... AT WHAT LEVEL OF ALTERED CONSCIOUSNESS ARE WE STYLISTICALLY RESPONSIBLE TO MAKE A PROPER CHOICE?

WE KNOW THAT A LEVEL OF 0.05 ALCOHOL IN THE BLOOD IS THE LEGAL LIMIT TO DRIVE A CAR... WHAT ABOUT MAKING A PROPER POLITICAL CHOICE?

Drugs negate human rights

Why drug distribution is inhumane

by Professor Jeanne Hersch

cc. At the Second International Symposium Against Drugs in Zofingen in April 1997, Geneva philosopher Professor Jeanne Hersch gave a remarkable opening speech on the topic of ‘Drug legalisation – a contradiction to human rights’. Her thoughts on what a human being is and what they should be highlight the inhumanity of drug legalisation and the distribution of narcotics. Drugs undermine the basic attribute that makes a person human: the ability to make free and responsible decisions as a human being. Drugs, even when administered by doctors, are contrary to humanity and human rights. The transcript of her unscripted lecture printed here has been authorised by Professor Hersch.

I may disappoint you, because I will not be able to tell you exactly what to do and what not to do. I will tell you one thing, just one. I don’t think I have ever tried to give a lecture in my life that deals with just one thing. I want to explain only one thing to you, but this one thing is not easy.
  It is simply this: I believe that there is no purely technical, external, legal solution to the drug problem. The discussion can swing one way or the other. But what must not be allowed to swing is the idea of what a human being is and what a human being should be.
  In empirical terms, I cannot argue with a doctor who proposes a solution with which I disagree. He tells me: “I am a doctor. This young person has come to me and needs help. And I have that help. For example, I have methadone or something else that would allow him – at least for a while – to continue working and living. I cannot refuse him that. That is why I am giving it to him.” Could I, out of my ignorance, dare to say, “You must not do that!”? I believe that many of our contemporaries find themselves in this situation.
  However, in response to what I cannot reject, I must not simply remain silent or deny the doctor’s reasoning. That is why I must appeal to your conscience in my speech:
  With humans, it is never the case that something existential, something that is crucial to life, can be solved by simple technology or a medical solution. The question is different: what is at stake in human terms? What is at stake for this young person as a human being, not as a donkey or a cow or any other animal, but as a human being?
  You have to get to the point where the person says: “I won’t do it, I won’t take it, whatever the consequences. It is against my human dignity, it is against my humanity, that someone wants to save me with a purely chemical means. I am not the kind of being that can be saved with a chemical agent. If it were purely physical, then perhaps it would be possible – but even then, it is not always the case.” Where the sick young person as such is at stake, their conscience, their freedom, no solution should be offered that might later undermine their humanity.
  The lack of strength in the fight against drugs in our country and in other countries is no coincidence. I believe the reason lies not only in the fact that many people profit from it in some way, which is indeed the case, but also in the fact that our sense of what is fundamentally human has been weakened. There are snakes in our society – drugs are one of them. They are very cunning, as snakes are. There are clever snakes that draw their strength from our weakness, that have a sense of what is crucial in humanity. And what is that? What is crucial in humanity is that human beings are free, that they decide what they do. Perhaps they do not decide, but they could decide. As a result, they are also responsible for how they decide.
  The ability to make decisions is the basis for the international community’s proclamation – at least in words – that human beings have rights. Why else would humans have special rights? Other animals also have everything we have, except for this ability to decide for themselves. These human rights have become so important in the contemporary view of humanity that they are considered more important than all laws; they have become the basis of all laws. The laws are there to support human rights. We Swiss actually have a duty to understand this better than others. That is why it is a pure perversion of thought to claim that it is a human right to be allowed to consume drugs or not to consume them. That is not true! Drugs negate human rights by denying that ultimately it is not a doctor who gives the permission, but the individual’s own conscience.
  Because human beings can make responsible decisions – and since they can, they should decide – they have a duty to be decisive beings. That is something we cannot get rid of. This connection has been valid since the day human beings were created.
  Of course, we can tell young people: “Go to the doctor. He will give you what you need.” But then everyone has to decide for themselves: “Do you want to take it or not? Do you want a chemical substance to decide what becomes of you? Can you accept something like that?
  When you are 14 or 15 years old, it is very difficult to accept that your parents decide what is good for you. And would you accept that a chemical substance decides what you will become later in life? Can you bow down to this drug? Can you accept, in the most fundamental sense, to cease being a human being?” That is what is at stake. That is the point where I would allow myself, even though I do not understand anything about it, to say to any doctor: “No, you do not decide here. Here, the free human being, the free responsible human being, decides.”
  This is not the person who is actually free, but the person who knows that he can become free and who does not have the right to renounce himself. I think that this feeling, this primal feeling, should be practised on a small scale, in kindergarten, in the children’s class: “You can decide. Do you want it to be this way or that way?” And gradually, the child will develop the ability to choose, to not accept anything else, that is, to be a democrat. To be a democrat, I believe, is nothing less than that.
  Anyone who fails to see – however difficult it may be – that it is your own responsibility to make yourself a free person has never educated anyone. Anyone who understands this also understands that this conviction is stronger than any knowledge, any authority, any sophistry. This is the only thing I wanted to say to you today.
  Before I came here, I read some explanations from doctors who think to give drugs to a patient in order to help, from people who naturally believe they are right.
  I found no trace of this understanding of human nature in them. It seems that in our society, people no longer think that the first priority is to save a human being. And that means saving a human being, not just any animal; it means not simply keeping them alive as if they were any other living creature. If we succeed in reviving this connection [between the human being and his capacity for rational, responsible decision-making, for making a free human being out of oneself] then no snake will be powerful anymore, and this will gradually disappear.
  In my opinion, an alarm bell is ringing. An alarm bell to remind us to stick to the essentials, to what makes us human. •

https://www.zeit-fragen.ch/en/archives/2025/nr-26-9-dezember-2025/drogen-negieren-die-menschenrechte

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Jeanne Hersch was born in Geneva on 13 July 1910, the daughter of Polish-Jewish immigrants. After graduating from high school, she began studying literature, which she completed with studies in philosophy under Paul Häberlin and Karl Jaspers. From 1933 to 1956, she taught French and Latin, and later philosophy, at the Ecole Internationale in Geneva. From 1956 to 1977, she was professor of systematic philosophy at the University of Geneva. From 1966 to 1968, she was Director of the Philosophy Department at UNESCO in Paris and from 1970 to 1976 a member of the Executive Board of UNESCO and the Swiss UNESCO Commission. When Jeanne Hersch took up her post at UNESCO, the 20th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) was approaching. Her department was commissioned to compile a book on human rights to mark the occasion. Her appeal to 128 countries resulted in a huge number of documents dealing with the issue of human rights in very different ways. This gave rise to a comprehensive work entitled “Le droit d’être un homme”. “Every human being feels that there is something within them that deserves respect, that is valuable, that must not be destroyed. This feeling, this sense of dignity, is crucial to humanity, and we must try to understand its origin,” she wrote. It is therefore no coincidence that Jeanne Hersch engaged with Karl Jaspers in her works and focused primarily on the question of freedom and human rights. The insights she gained from this formed the basis of her stance on the issue of drugs and her decision to end her membership (1939–1992) with the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland when it advocated for the decriminalisation of drug use. She did not think much of philosophy in an ivory tower. Rather, her philosophical standpoint informed her position on contemporary issues, especially those concerning the existential freedom of the individual and the possibilities for living a dignified life. Jeanne Hersch received numerous awards for her valuable work and was honoured with honorary doctorates from the Faculty of Philosophy in Oldenburg (1993) and the Écoles polytechniques fédérales (EPF) in Lausanne (1998). She died on 5 June 2000 in Geneva after a long and committed life.

https://www.zeit-fragen.ch/en/archives/2025/nr-26-9-dezember-2025/drogen-negieren-die-menschenrechte

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Caffeine's pervasiveness is a cause for concern among some scientists and public health advocates, but that hasn't dampened its popularity. Sales of Red Bull and copycat energy drinks with names like Red Devil, Roaring Lion, RockStar, SoBe Adrenaline Rush, Go Fast, and Whoop Ass are booming. Meanwhile new coffee shops are opening so fast all over the world that even the most dedicated devotee of the triple-shot, no-foam, double-caramel, skinny macchiato can't keep track. Every working day, Starbucks opens four new outlets somewhere on the planet and hires 200 new employees. There's a joke in many cities that Starbucks is going to open a new store in the parking lot of the local Starbucks, but this is not true. Yet.

It was less than 200 years ago that people first figured out that the buzz they got from coffee and tea was the same buzz, produced by the same chemical agent. An alkaloid that occurs naturally in the leaves, seeds, and fruit of tea, coffee, cacao, kola trees, and more than 60 other plants, this ancient wonder drug had been prescribed for human use as far back as the sixth century B.C., when the great spiritual leader Lao-tzu is said to have recommended tea as an elixir for disciples of his new religion, Taoism.

But it wasn't until 1820, after coffee shops had proliferated in western Europe, that a new breed of scientist began to wonder what it was that made this drink so popular. The German chemist Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge first isolated the drug in the coffee bean. The newly discovered substance was dubbed "caffeine," meaning something found in coffee. Then, in 1838 chemists discerned that the effective ingredient in tea was the same substance as Runge's caffeine. Before the end of the century the same drug would be found in kola nuts and cacao.

It's hardly a coincidence that coffee and tea caught on in Europe just as the first factories were ushering in the industrial revolution. The widespread use of caffeinated drinks—replacing the ubiquitous beer—facilitated the great transformation of human economic endeavor from the farm to the factory. Boiling water to make coffee or tea helped decrease the incidence of disease among workers in crowded cities. And the caffeine in their systems kept them from falling asleep over the machinery. In a sense, caffeine is the drug that made the modern world possible. And the more modern our world gets, the more we seem to need it. Without that useful jolt of coffee—or Diet Coke or Red Bull—to get us out of bed and back to work, the 24-hour society of the developed world couldn't exist.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/caffeine-buzz

ONE CAN SEE THAT THE PHYSICALITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS CAN BE ALTERED BY SUBSTANCES...

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