USA - Strategies for keeping ethnogens legal

[bcubed]

I was thinking about getting active in the fight to keep currently legal plants legal and fight to get those illegal made legal. Perhaps active at the University I attend. But the last thing I want to do is make things worse: "Do no harm," as the white coats say.

Here's what I've come up with:
1. For comparatively unknown plants (Kratom, and the less legal Mimosa hostillis-type preperations of DMT) better off not drawing attention to them to avoid the "What--it's legal? Well let's fix that!" attitude.
2. Salvia divinorum, however, is sufficiently well-known that drawing specific attention might be warranted (I'd really like feedback here before shooting my mouth off).
3. Don't mention San Pedro/Peruvian Torch at all, since these plants' ubiquity means that they'll most likely stay legal unless the DEA's nose is really rubbed in it.

Also, most of the most credible legalization orgs out there are organized around the cannabis fight (NORML, et al). The plant that's most "on the bubble" that I can see, though, is Salvia. As a Labor/IR major, I've learned the importance of organizing and strength in numbers, and would like to fight my fight as a part of a larger, more credible org. Is it possible for a Salvia push to be affiliated with one of the more-established cannabis orgs in much the same way that the UAW is affiliated with the AFL-CIO or the Teamsters with Change to Win?

Thanks for some logistical help...

[Mr. Giraffe]

I see this has been posted some time ago, so forgive me if your state has gone and banned Salvia D and this is all academic, but that was sort of going to be my point anyway. As regards the mindset of the powers that be, you put it well: "What--it's legal? Well let's fix that!"

See, it doesn't matter a jot what you do. That might seem depressing, but the 'drugs' issue is so deeply ingrained that once a drug comes to public attention, the media led response is to 'clamp down', stamp out, and so on. It has taken decades of toil, misery and struggle to bring the public around to the idea of legalising cannabis in the US; you won't be able to bring the same credibility to Salvia D in a small period of time.

Most people that have heard of Salvia D will know it as a 'bad' drug that caused somebody harm, so you'd need to reach all of those people with your message. Can you imagine telling your neighbour how great Salvia is - would they care? Nope. People don't care to hear good news, so basically, my friend, the only option is for you and me to (virtually) hold each other and rock back and forth gently whispering reassurances to each other while the inevitable unfolds: any drugs which attain popularity and which are not socially sanctioned will be banned.

I believe this will change, because it has to change, because we will collectively change our minds, but until then we're sort of pissing against the stream. We might occasionally land our piss successfully but there's a whole lotta stream coming at us for the moment.

Most importantly I suppose for anyone defending these entheogens is to continue to use these substances and to follow the mental paths they unlock. Don't try to change the world, change yourself and the world will change with you. Something like that.

[Shampoo]

While Giraffe has a valid point based on experience and the obvious direction of drug regulation, Becubed does not fight alone! There are so many ways to help fight the constriction of entheogenic progress, Bs Buisiness perspective, a historian, a musician, a scientist...etc. All these people and their perspectives can be applied and their expertise employed.
Support research! Wether financially, organizationally, or academically, research organizations like MAPS,NORML, information amalgamations like D-F or Erowid need all the steam they can hold to keep moving and making such great successes. Progress is constantly being made. It is when we decide to merely 'hold-on' and wait for political change that political change becomes a distant and eventually impossible goal that can only be changed by some universal influx. But as long as there is a federally approved MDMA treatment program, and a Psilocybin psychotherapy research facility, and as long as the occasional court case turns in the favor of the man with DMT over the two men with silly uniforms and badges, there is resistance and organization in place, and the shit-river let loose by Reagan runs slower, and the swimmers turn into boats that move even faster upstream until the stream is not a stream but rather The Man... But what does a man do when faced with a worthless sinkhole drug-war and a group of adequately educated, vivaciously impassioned, politically active psychonauts? he listens, because he is not in charge.