Photo: Casey Hardison, entheogenic activist (Erowid, Brighton Argus)
Readers of Pale Green Vortex will already be familiar with Casey Hardison, sentenced in 2005 to twenty years in jail for producing psychedelic-type substances at his home in leafy Sussex, southern England. On September 22nd this year, Casey received a letter. I paraphrase freely, but this is the gist: 'Mr Hardison. We are finding your persistent correspondence with us on the subject of the legal status of various drugs increasingly tiresome and irritating. We are unable to stop you in your tracks rationally, as the logic of your position is irrefutable. Therefore, we have no option but to simply issue an order to shut you up. Yours, etc.'
Yes, folks, this is what those great western values of freedom of speech and democracy have come to after all these years: we don't like what you have to say, so shut up! It's as simple as that. During the course of the past seven years, Casey has consistently stood up for truth, honesty, liberty, and equality. At his trial, he did not do as criminals are expected to do - bow their head in shame, mumble something about seeing the error of their ways, and hope for a lighter sentence. Instead, he asserted his right to freedom of consciousness - cognitive liberty -, and argued that the 'War on Drugs' is in fact a War on Consciousness. As evidenced in the Operation Julie trial 25 years beforehand, such unrepentant behaviour is guaranteed to antagonise the powers-that-be, and result in a suitably harsh sentencing from an affronted man in a wig.
Instead of shutting up and lying down on his prison bed, Casey has devoted his time and considerable energy to delving into UK drug laws in great detail. The fine print of his investigations can be found through either the freecasey link on Pale Green Vortex or the Drug Equality Alliance website. I suggest that anybody concerned about freedom and discrimination in modern western society should take some time to look carefully at this information. But in summary Casey has argued that, on the basis of scientific evidence of their relative potential for harm, the socially and culturally acceptable drugs alcohol and tobacco are currently under-regulated, while various other substances, such as ecstasy and LSD, are over-regulated. The current scheduling of drugs does not mirror their relative dangers in the slightest. This is not personal opinion, but fact - see the work spearheaded by Professor Nutt for starters - and is not what you would expect if the purpose of law was to protect the individual from the effects of dangerous substances.
Furthermore, Casey has suggested that alcohol and tobacco, being drugs with a certain potential for harm, should logically be placed alongside other drugs under the strictures of the Misuse of Drugs Act, 1971. The special status that they enjoy is based on cultural factors - even the government has admitted as much -, and in effect discriminates against those who may which by personal preference to use other drugs instead which are no more harmful. This does not mean that alcohol and tobacco should be prohibited: this act simply provides the framework for regulation in one form or another of a variety of substances. Casey's argument has been wilfully misrepresented, however, and on September 22nd an 'Extended Civil Restraining Order' was duly placed on this individual who dares to repeatedly point out that the emperor wears no clothes. By the time the Order expires, Casey will most likely have been conveniently deported to the USA after completing his jail sentence.
As the 1960s and early 1970s, years that shaped much current UK drug policy, fade into distant memory, ignorance can no longer be held up as an excuse for the continuing disconnection between the legal situation and reality. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that another agenda is at work. The Casey Hardison fiasco is further evidence that the prime purpose of law in modern 'democratic society' is not, as might be supposed, to protect the rights and freedoms of the individual, and to ensure fairness. A main function of law, in fact, appears to be to protect and perpetuate a particular version of reality. It also serves to advance the interests of the few at the expense of the many - but this is simply one aspect of that particular version of reality. There is no other possible conclusion that can be drawn from a close examination of the facts that we are confronted with, and it is vital to grasp this realisation if we wish to understand much of what happens in the world today.
A hallmark of the 'reality' that we are fed as the one and only reality is its strongly hierarchical configuration. The greatest enemy of the pyramid-of-power dominator culture spawned by this version of reality is anything that reveals other, wider realities, with their other, more positive attendant realms of consciousness. Dominator culture is terrified by the stance of Casey Hardison like it is terrified of nothing else; widespread access to other realities and forms of consciousness will be its undoing, and it will do anything within its power to suppress this knowledge. And while access to other realities can be afforded by a variety of means, the quickest and most reliable is with the assistance of psychedelic-type, or entheogenic, plants or substances. Not everyone is comfortable with this notion, but ask any Andean or Amazonian shaman. And on the subject of one of Casey's products, Andy Roberts summarises neatly in 'Albion Dreaming': 'At its most potent, LSD gives the user no option but to examine and challenge all accepted notions of perception, thought, identity, culture and the nature of reality. The danger to the Establishment must be that if enough people used LSD there might ....... be a revolution that could threaten how life in Britain is lived.' (Chapter Thirteen, 'Revolution in the head'). Just so, Andy, just so. And we wouldn't want that, would we?
Producers of psychedelic-type substances generally get a bum deal - particularly if they are caught. No mention in the New Years' honours lists for their excellent products or services to humankind. Andy Roberts bemoans the lack of public protest when the Operation Julie defendants were tried and sent to jail, but I wonder what the point would have been: I can't see how it would have helped the chemists in any way. Manufacturers (or alchemists, depending on your take on reality) such as Casey Hardison and some of the Operation Julie defendants were primarily motivated by idealism, but this was outside the frame of reference of Judge Niblett's consciousness in the Hardison case, when he could only envisage greed and profit as motives. He could only envisage greed and profit because they are the currency of his version of reality! The truth is that thousands, if not millions, of people have had their lives quietly enriched and enhanced as a result of the substances that came out of a farmhouse in rural 1970s Wales and a room in rural Sussex. The acid chemists have helped improve countless more people's lives, opened more eyes, than have all our politicians and High Court judges put together.
When Al-Megrahi of Lockerbie notoriety was returned to Libya by the Scottish Misgovernment, he was accorded a hero's welcome on his coming home. Will a true man of courage and unflagging positivity receive a similar reception when deported to his native US soil? Probably not. But Casey certainly should be.....
