Government admits spying on drug reformers - Up front: news and opinion from independent minds - Brief Article

Humanist, May-June, 2002 by Richard Glen Boire

According to a report by the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) issued in December 2001 and recently made available on the NDIC website, the U.S. government has been monitoring fifty-two websites in search of individuals and groups who use the Internet to "promote or facilitate the production, use, and sale, of MDMA [ecstasy], GHB [a so-called date-rape drug], and LSD [a hallucinogen]."

Entitled "Drugs and the Internet: An Overview of the Threat to America's Youth," the report acknowledges that a majority of the sites monitored (thirty-two) were "probably operated by drug legalization groups." Some of the sites monitored were maintained by what the report calls "drug-culture advocates," which it defines as individuals or groups "chiefly interested in expanding the size of the community to both legitimize their activity and increase pressure on lawmakers to change or abolish drug control laws." Also monitored were "advocates of an expanded freedom of expression," which the report defines as

   purveyors of information with yet another agenda. These individuals and
   groups publish information on the Internet to push the boundaries of
   self-expression and the First Amendment. The information they provide may
   induce minors and young adults to break drug laws or to become a danger to
   themselves or to others by abusing illegal drugs.

The fact that the majority of the sites monitored by the government likely advocate public policy positions opposed to the government's drug prohibition policy, raises the suspicion that the NDIC study might actually be an effort by the Department of Justice (of which the NDIC is a component) to silence drug reform advocates by making them fear criminal prosecution for information posted on their websites.

Drug reform organizations are comprised of growing numbers of people who have grown tired of a national drug policy that ignores science, violates human rights, and is bent on arresting hundreds of thousands of people each year whose only offense is altering their consciousness with drugs like marijuana or ecstasy rather than with state-approved drugs such as alcohol, nicotine, or Prozac.

Rather than pursue a "war on drugs" and send government agents out on reconnaissance missions to snoop on reform-oriented websites, the government should welcome and invite a dialogue with such groups aimed at creating a sustainable drug policy that is science-based and that respects human rights and human nature. The right of a person to liberty, autonomy, and privacy over his or her own intellect is situated at the core of what it means to be a free person in a democratic society.

As new drugs, technologies, and techniques are developed for augmenting, controlling, or surveilling the human mind--and new legislation is considered in order to regulate these drugs and other technologies--the U.S. government should resign from prohibition and censorship and explicitly recognize, as constitutionally protected, the right to cognitive liberty and autonomy.

Richard Glen Boire is codirector of the Alchemind Society (www.alchemind.org), an international group of people working in the public interest to foster the right of each individual to think independently.