The rescue of the forbidden Sustainable Development Goal
“SDG 18 : Access to the Food of Life”

ENTHEOGENIC RESPONSE TO THE SUMMIT OF THE FUTURE
OUR PARTNERSHIP WITH MOTHER EARTH:
(unannotated version)

Because only division can impose death and destruction, the task is to weave ourselves into a community as humans, as brothers, as children who belong to the great mother, this planet Earth, that is, to organize ourselves because in the face of death we decide to live. 
(Statement of the 5th National Assembly for Water, Life and Territory. EZLN)

1. Introduction

The Summit of the Future and the forgotten invitation to the Guardians of the Food of Life.
The call by UN Secretary-General António Guterres for the Summit of the Future, scheduled for 20-23 September 2024, originated in Our Common Agenda, his report to the Member States outlining ideas on how to better respond to current and future challenges. The report calls for a renewal of trust and solidarity at all levels and invites a fundamental rethinking of our world order to deliver more fairly and effectively for everyone. No one is to be left behind.
UN Member States agreed that a summit focused on partnership would address peace, people, planet, and prosperity, as outlined in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Agenda2030, which was adopted in 2015. The attainment of these goals has been far from successful, and 2030 is approaching rapidly. Although a multitude of people and institutions have been invited to make their voices heard, we—the consumers of the Food of Life—are not included, like in 1961, in the discussions on the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. Our voices risk once again going unheard, and history may be in danger of repeating itself and produce another failure with horrific consequences, now admittedly even greater, as next to the human rights, health and justice issues, the mere survival of nature is at stake.

The 2015 statement of Health Poverty Action, endorsed by the International Drug Policy Consortium, remains valid: “Drug policy reform is a development issue: we cannot achieve the SDGs unless we end the war on drugs (WoD)”. As citizens of the world, entitled to our spiritual beliefs and to be heard, we wish to participate and contribute our knowledge to the end of the WoD and the future of our planet.

The Lie invites Evil
The 1961 Single Convention (1961SC) introduced in its Preamble a double-tongued narrative that expresses concern for the health and welfare of mankind while simultaneously warning that addiction to narcotic drugs constitutes a serious evil for individuals and poses significant social and economic dangers to society. This narrative equates narcotic drugs with evil, yet it also implicitly includes non-narcotic and non-addictive substances that the Preamble omits to mention but, as it appears after this welcoming ceremony of the preamble, the 1961SC has invited in through the back door. Once inside, the same punitive regime awaits all the guests, dispensed at the mercy of the Prohibition master.
Some of nature’s most remarkable medicines were immediately downgraded—rescheduled—because they do not conform to the morals of the presiding elites, or are poorly understood by modern medicine, or are produced in ancestral worlds beyond the reach of Western markets. All the benefits of these medicines seemingly fall outside the health concerns outlined in the Convention’s Preamble. Furthermore, all addictions stemming from the addictive drugs that replace these forbidden medicines may also go untreated due to their prohibition. In this way, nature’s homeostasis is denied to mankind.

2. The Propagation of the Lie through the Muzzling of the Spirit

Plants of the Gods, Food and Water of Life, Plant of Heartbeat and Fruit of Knowledge of Good and Evil, are some of the names of the substances venerated by the ancients, but which our society has branded as evil drugs. From the start of civilization in Sumer till the 1961 UN Single Convention, lies and terror have been employed again and again to control entheogenic substances and persecute its consumers. Even so, there are still pockets in remote jungle corners and in high and nearly inaccessible mountain retreats where at dawn the jubilant perennial cry: “I’ve got life!” can be heard.
And just the other day, in a circle of yage people a young woman told how the drink had changed her life. “No”, she retracted, “it gave me life.”

Soma and Truth in Vedic Poetry
To get an idea of the entrance of the Lie on the scene of history, we should step backwards for a moment to have a look at a sacred book of the second millennium BC Hindus, the Rig-Veda: “In Praise of Knowledge.” Its hymns tell a story, interspersed with joyful exclamations, about the drink that lifts up to reveal wisdom and truth, and give life.
That was a time that we can only dream about, a time when true and false, good and evil, were known instinctively, gifts of the Soma drink, deified for its “truthspeaking”:

And, by losing one’s fear of death in the realm of cosmic consciousness, one became immortal:

The soma drink defines the characters and the actions of the gods, and of the author who allows himself to become the master of the universe under the motto “Have I not drunk Soma?”

These expressions of immortality and sovereignty, of divine wisdom and knowledge of good and evil were perchance the reasons why in the next great Hindu theological text, the Bhagavad Ghita, the yoga art to escape the human condition was said by the god Krishna to be solely accessible to the Brahmin and the Warrior Classes. The masses of the people were never meant to escape their miserable situation in life, for ever never in an unending rebirth!
Soma had become a thing of the past, something that should be forgotten.

The Downfall of Sumer
Against this Hindu backdrop we can better evaluate the Semite answer to the problem of control over the minds of an immortal and sovereign entheogen using populace.
A first thing to keep in mind is the treacherous 2000 BC overthrow of Ibbi-Sin, the last king of Sumer, by his trusted general Ishbi-Erra, the Amorite. Having gone up north from the capital city of Ur with a big part of the army and the funds from the state’s coffers to buy urgently needed grain, and entrenching himself in the city of Isin, Ishbi-Erra let invading armies from the east destroy Ur and its surrounding cities. After the king had been taken prisoner - never to be heard of again – Ishbi-Erra ousted the plunderers and proclaimed his own rulership.
To cover his deceit, he and his descendants would publish City Laments in which the heartless gods were made responsible for the end of the Sumerian kingdom and the destruction of its cities. Supreme divine ruler Enlil “in hate,” was said to have “ordered the utter destruction of Ur, that its people be killed they decreed its destiny.” The excuse for this betrayal was put into divine ruler Enlil’s mouth when he declared icily:

From alienating the people from their gods through deception, it was but a small step to deceive the people about the source of divine knowledge and truth. Even though truthfulness had always been proclaimed a sacred gift from the world of the spirit, in the words of the traders and their god Ea [Akkadian name for the Sumerian Enki], Deceit had suddenly been declared a divinely decreed attribute, a me. It is not openly stated in the texts that deceit had trumped truth, that had wisely never been declared. Instead, the issue was solved in a very simple way: by no longer mentioning truth. Whence in the pre-commercial, pre-civilized epoch truth had been the highest good, a gift from supreme god of heaven Anu, in the new world order the art of deception was glorified.

The Babylonian Empire
This change in ethics became unmistakably clear in the foundational myth of Adapa, the loyal servant of the god of commerce Ea, who told Adapa deceitfully not to accept the food and drink god of heaven Anu would offer him because he would surely die. When upon Adapa’s refusal of the food and water of life offered to him Anu asked him for the reason, Adapa replied with the pitiful excuse:

Adapa was refused life and chased away from heaven’s doors but, for his refusal to accept the food and water of life, the god of commerce’s scribe pronounced the obedient servant the wisest among men.

Without the illumination from Anu’s food and water of life, wisdom could deceitfully be proclaimed to come from the Deep, a pool under the temple of Ea. The story Inana and Enki [Ea] describes how goddess of love Inana got Enki drunk and made off with all the mes of civilization from his mythological home in the Deep. One of the mes was deception:                

Having planted deceit as an acceptable and divinely given ordinance, of the same order as kindness, deception had been divinely bequeathed and officially condoned, by the goddess of love Inanna in person.

Then, in the thirteenth century BC epic story of Gilgamesh, the scribe gave a distorted theological treatise in which the immortalized Utanapishtim (Akkadian for “he has found life”) told king Gilgamesh that immortality is not for humans. He had the boatman who brought the king to the shores of the immortal world banned forever, symbolically separating the hitherto connected worlds of the gods and the humans. To make sure that the message was properly understood, the scribe had the king lose the plant of heartbeat – of rejuvenation, and of life – as he traveled back to his city of Uruk. After arriving, Gilgamesh told the banished boatman to inspect the walls of the city and see if the Seven Sages did not lay its foundations!
With the closure of heaven, the walls of the city - a metaphor for the laws of the ruler - thus became the sole point of reference for the inhabitants of the civilized world. The truth from the divine source within had been effectively muzzled; from now on understanding was tied to the voice from the palace and its financial enablers. This alienation from the heart was the starting point of humanity’s alienation from the entire natural world.

It took till Nabonidus’ reign over Babylonia, in the middle of the 6th century BC, for Adapa’s wisdom to be publicly questioned, by the king himself, who probably had consumed food or water of life:

Ilte’ri, another name for the moon god Sin, was worshipped by Nabonidus and the cause for his discord with the priests of Marduk, patron deity of Babylon. It is rumored that these priests were helpful in the Persian king Cyrus’ defeat of Nabonidus, which not only brought Nabonidus down but the entire Babylonian empire as well.
The pool that for over a thousand years had been believed to be the source of wisdom had at last been shown to be an imaginary wishing well, only upheld by the piousness of its priests and the arms of the empire.

The Yahwist Terror
It was in the ensuing political and cultural void that the priests of god Yahweh, exiled in Babylonia, crafted their own religious dogmas, taking heed not to repeat the errors that had brought down the Babylonian birthplace of civilization.

Thus, whereas in the epic of Gilgamesh the king is ordered to leave the world of the Immortals and lost the plant of heartbeat at the end of the story, the Bible of the Jews started with Yahweh’s prohibition of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This is the first commandment imprinted on Adam and Eve’s minds after which the scribe has them kicked out of paradise right away for disobeying Yahweh’s commandment.
In the Gilgamesh epic the plant was not forbidden and no law was given to make up for the lost wisdom of the heart. Contrary to the inconclusive ending of the Gilgamesh epic, the Bible gave a divine law - the Torah - to fill the gap left by the disappearance of the divine voice from the heart. Instead of Ea’s Deep, it was now said that “The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” And fear of their Lord became the driving force of the Jewish faith. The new law was forcibly instructed to the entire population and parents were admonished:

Long gone were the days of the happy truthspeaking Vedic poets and the erstwhile dancing Israelite prophets. A dark period ensued in Israel. Only one historian, describing the massacre of Maccabean rebels after the death of their leader Judas Maccabee in the middle of the second century BC, referred to it:

What the statement implies is that the distress caused by the cruelties of the Syrian oppressor against the Judean revolutionaries could only be compared to the distress caused by the corruption and cruelty of the priestly rulers at the time that the prophets were silenced in Israel.
Cruption and cruelty were the defining qualities of this period indeed. Jason became high priest instead of his brother Onias III by offering king Antiochus IV yearly taxes double the amount his brother Onias had given him. When three years later he sent a relative by the name of Menelaus with the yearly taxes to Antiochia, the king gave this Menelaus the high-priestship after he had offered to pay an even bigger yearly tribute than the one Jason had offered him. A year later, when Menelaus was accused by the erstwhile high-priest Onias III of illegitimately making presents of golden temple goblets to curry favor with the Syrian rulers, the usurper had the former high-priest killed. After ten years in the high-priestly position, years in which he made the Jerusalem populace suffer greatly, Menelaus was called to Antioch, where king Antiochus V ordered him to be thrown in a tower filled with ashes.  
The Maccabee rebellion highlights a spiritually trying time for the Israelite population. It is extremely unfortunate that instead of combatting the Zadokite monopolization of the divine voice, the Maccabean priests had identified with the Torah to the point of fighting that high-priestly class for its corruption and its inobservance of a law that had led to the corrupting conditions in the first place, based as it was on priestly hubris.

It is no surprise therefore that soon after taking the reigns of government the new rulers fell prey to the same lust for power and wealth that had led them to oust their Zadokite predecessors. Especially their most prominent king, Alexander Jannaeus [127-76 BC] was feared for his cruelty. During the Jewish civil war, while dining with his concubines, he watched eight hundred rebels being crucified as their wives and children were being killed in front of them.

The era of Life in the Embrace of the Other
As priests battled priests for control of the offices of state, the oppressed masses searched for spiritual liberation elsewhere. It is here that we must look for the source of a revolutionary movement to abandon the religion of Yahweh and other fearful and revengeful gods terrorizing the lives of the downtrodden. People became aware that their salvation would not come from the adoration of a fearsome and autocratic god, but from the love of the divine within. This is, from the worship of one’s personal god, the one revealed through the heart, only then to be understood and embraced by the mind. That personal god had nothing in common with the official, fearful gods adored all over the ancient world. That personal god could not be found in the skies and the temples, but in the abandonment of one’s own ego and the embrace of one’s neighbour. Here theology, the study of a god in the sky, became entheology, the study of the god within. The priestly god projected into the sky returned to the heart, the natural and living domain of the divine.
This is a change of perspective cannabis users also experience when leaving their egocentric mind behind and concentrate on their immediate surroundings. People are seen differently, no longer as the threatening other, but as company that can be trusted and enjoyably engaged in conversation. One’s own fears are shown to be creations of the mind, ridiculous constructions of a paranoid imagination, a bit stupid, ha-ha-ha. It reminds us of the ancient Scythians laughing for joy when taking their cannabis vapor bath.

The ecstatic experience is of course different for each person and can go from a benign retreat of the own ego all the way to the complete disappearance of one’s self-consciousness, like the self-emptying or kenosis ascribed to Jesus by later sources. In this state the fear of death disappears and the eternal life, that was denied Gilgamesh in Babylonian times, had again become a possible state of mind enabling people to carry on serenely and even happily in a threatening world.
This protest movement flourished all over the ancient near east and has survived in the teachings ascribed to the prophet of Nazareth. His message was meant to alleviate the anguish of the masses, here and now. His “Kingdom of God” pointed to the possibility given each human being to find happiness and peace by listening to the divine voice within. That’s why he could say that god’s kingdom had come near, that it actually was right here, waiting in the recreation of any person’s life into eternal life. As a vast movement of personal liberation swept the ancient world it was relentlessly opposed by the authorities of the day and its practitioners were mercilessly persecuted. Only in the fourth century AD, after Jesus had been declared a god, and was said to be waiting in heaven to judge the ones allowed eternal life, after death, could the message be accepted by the authorities, and Christianity turn into a respectable religion of state.

Eternal life – immortality - had become once more an unattainable state of mind, forcing the citizens of the western world to turn into the sheep of the shepherd of Rome. Since the 16th century protestant Reformation, new shepherdships have become available, although none of these are known to offer the spiritual liberation each living being yearns for.
Moreover, in response to the cultural and spiritual upheavals of the Renaissance, the Catholic Church initiated tribunals to stamp out heresy. Thus, the Inquisition was born which would burn the witches and their brew and brooms and terminate their transcendental sabbaths. Nature, where the Living Ones were said to reside, the realm where the spirit roams, had been closed off for spiritual adventures. The witches’ screams of anguish traumatized society and the fear of the Lord took hold of peoples’ minds. In Geneva, Protestant reformer John Calvin had a little girl punish, not for daring to sing happily, but for not singing one of his edifying songs, in church, on a Sunday morning of all things! Then, as the French historian Michelet sadly noted, “the singing stopped!” The spirit had been muzzled properly again.

But not everywhere, because beyond Europe’s borders, and especially in the Americas, the spirit still manifested in the jungles and on the mountains, on the desert plains and even in the barren Arctic. Through the use of the “Plants of the Gods,” as the indigenous peoples called them, or through body denying initiation techniques, as among the plains Indians and the Eskimos, the forebears and the gods within were summoned to provide understanding and spiritual well-being. It is from their interaction with - among others - ayahuasca, peyote and psilocybin mushrooms-using indigenous peoples that Europeans and Americans of European descent learned about the psychoactive properties of these substances and the spirituality they engender.
That process took time though since the rationalized alienated western mind had to battle against the frightening mind-effacing effects of the different substances. According to Rene Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am”, western man indeed is a mentalized being, taking a distance from the surrounding world to objectivate it and think about it before acting. On the other hand, and thanks to their entheogens, native peoples are able to enter into an emotional contact with their surroundings, a contact that will sweep their self-consciousness away to make room for the experience of total belonging. This is an experience western civilization has eschewed, at the cost of its complete alienation from nature.

The western mind's confrontation with the wisdom from the heart
Richard Evans Schultes, considered the father of modern ethnobotany, is the living example of western man’s inability to understand the spirituality of the bond between humans and nature.
Having classified thousands of Amazonian plants, Schultes was uncapable to distinguish between multiple varieties of ayahuasca – the vine of the soul – which the indigenous jungle dwellers were able to tell apart, “at once and frequently on sight and at a significant distance, without feeling, tasting, smelling, crushing, tearing or other physical manipulation". All that Schultes would affirm about the enhanced indigenous knowledge of ayahuasca was that it accounted for an ocular phenomenon. Even though Schultes drank the ayahuasca brew on multiple occasions, encumbered by his classifying mind he could see different colours and patterns but not the ‘the ocular phenomena’ his indigenous interlocutors would observe. Schultes was never able to solve the enigma at the basis of his perceptive limitations; only Terence McKenna has suggested that ayahuasca could unlock invisible parts of the electromagnetic spectrum normally hidden from human perception.

Schultes’ contemporary Weston La Barre, had less tolerance for the un-scientific admiration of what he must have missed out on:

Here La Barre says it all: the scientific mind cannot fall prey to subjective, “private, feeling or the semantic ineffable.” The own emotional trip, which is of the essence in all Peyote and other entheogenic cults, was not studied by LaBarre, objectivity didn’t allow it:

The ’Caucasoid Americans’ who through their experiments with peyote or mescaline had encountered undreamed of spiritual rejuvenation did not pass that test. They had dared to concoct a ‘bogus’ “Neo-American Church” as a vehicle to legally pursue their liberation from dogmatic religious institutions. These days, we consider their endeavors laudable, following a proven legal course of action to channel their spiritual quest into a socially acceptable organization. But La Barre, even though he claimed to have used peyote repeatedly during his years among the Oklahoma natives, never seemed to have experienced the opening of “the doors of perception.” Far from being a defender of entheogens and religious freedom, he showed himself to be a worthy heir to the Inquisition, shaming young people who’d had a peyote induced transcendental experience into refraining from joining a recently incorporated spiritual home. Mr. La Barre is an outstandingly sad example of the mind’s alienation from its foundation in the soul, and each person’s belonging to what Albert Hofmann had called “the universal, transpersonal consciousness,” and the Bwiti participants poetically call “one-heartedness – nlem mvore.”
If only La Barre could have participated in that self-transcending ritual, not as a scientist but as a full member of the community: he might have joined Hofmann and Huxley in trying to give voice to the ineffable.

Anthropologist James W. Fernandez, while studying the iboga consuming Fang people in Africa, became himself aware of the conflicting demands made upon the scientist’s mind:

It is telling to hear Fernandez say that he was never inspired to take larger doses and go all the way to meeting his own dead forebears. That way accidentally is the peculiar attraction of the ritual and the meeting with the dead forebears is its goal.
Right from the start his fear of dying seems to have convinced the author that it would be better for him to annotate and not to participate in the ritual. He’s even providing valid arguments to cover his failure to inquire all the way, because he certainly would have had to forgo his “objective observation” post to receive “subjective revelations.” Because the Bwiti liturgy and cosmology lifted him already to a plane of intense emotional experience, he “felt no need for any narcotic excursions.” Besides his inconsistent use of the term narcotic for the experience of a unique and once-in-a-lifetime adventure, the excursion he referred to was meant to be the apotheosis of his years of living with the people in their village, dancing in their cult. Fernandez might have been a keen observer and a good narrator, but in the end, he didn’t know what he was talking about since he never entered on the way to the hill, there where his forebears might have taken him to meet the great gods, where his fear of death would have vanished in feelings of oceanic belonging. This is an experience western civilization has eschewed through deceit at the cost of its complete alienation from nature. This rational state of mind informs the reasoning behind the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and its Faustian goal to completely exterminate all entheogens.

3. The war against the Guardians of the Food of Life and Biodiversity by the 1961SC

Like Genesis, the first book of the Bible, the 1961 Single Convention (1961SC) states from the outset in its preamble that drug addiction is a serious evil for the individual and must be combated to prevent it. Almost hidden in the transitional articles at the end of the Convention, cannabis use, coca leaf chewing, and opium smoking are rather carelessly relegated to history, as these practices must cease within 25 years of the Convention's coming into force. The difference between the Bible and the Convention is that the former only expels the Jewish people from paradise, whereas the latter bans the Food of Life from the face of the Earth for all peoples. Zero tolerance was permitted in these days.

The 2024 meeting of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) produced a break with the past. An “alternative outcome document” crafted by Colombia advocated for a more humane approach of the international drug control system. Surprise! However, setbacks must be anticipated. Indeed, Prohibition, as recorded in the framework established by the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1961SC), resembles a dangerous invasive species, detrimental to our environment, after alterations to its consumption web, resulting in ecological, environmental, and economic harm.

The Securitization of an Invasive Species
On social media, our children—the generation of the future—witness daily how we violate our own rules on a global scale. We continue to kill people and destroy nature indiscriminately, an erosion of principles that signals the disintegration of the rules-based order and the onset of a new era, as warned by Agnès Callamard, the Secretary General of Amnesty International. The support of the United States and many Western countries for Israel in its conflict with Gaza, even as the carnage among innocent civilians unfolds, exemplifies a troubling selective application of universal protection rules. This disintegration began in earnest after 9/11 (2001), when the U.S. launched its “war on terror,” guided by the concept of securitization, which posits that anything is permissible in the pursuit of “terrorists.”

This concept of securitization was also applied to Prohibition. It began with the 1961 Single Convention, a speech act that framed drug use as evil—an existential threat to the United Nations, the very body that produced this act, called the Self. This framing justified extraordinary measures, often taken outside legal frameworks, against the Others—in this case, the users of forbidden substances. The defining feature of securitization is the acceptance by the Self. In the context of Prohibition, this meant acceptance by UN member states of the 1961 Single Convention.
Although the text of the Single Convention was not popular among many UN members, it benefited from a highly successful promotion campaign: after considerable arm-twisting and bullying, along with "mirrors and beads" for hesitant member countries, the vast majority of members endorsed the 1961 Single Convention. The prevailing attitude was one of disinterest, of national leaders looking the other way so as not to provoke American displeasure, even though the 1961SC violated the human rights of their own entheogens using people. This is how the Lie trumps Truth.

Whether based on facts, such as the 2001 twin towers attack, or on falsehoods, like the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 1961 Single Convention's framing of drugs as evil, securitization often leads to illegitimate actions. These actions frequently result in disproportionate harm, and when based on lies, they entail a denial of the rule of law, as these exceptional measures break the law through force majeure. Consequently, the securitization of an issue undermines the principle of universality, which asserts that all individuals are equally endowed with human rights, regardless of who they are or where they live.
The 1961 Single Convention effectively divides the human universality into two: the self-proclaimed "Humanity" versus the evil “Others”. Universality has never been applied to Palestinians or to Others, consumers of mind-altering substances. Yet, Ms. Callamard cautions us not to be discouraged: “The fate of universality resides not in the hands of those who betray it. Rather, as a perennial ambitious project for humankind, its power rests, first and foremost, in its continual proclamation and in its persistent defense.”
The fate of the Guardians of the Food of Life indeed depends on their persistent defense of universality. If the UN genuinely wishes to make an honest effort to preserve humanity, nature, and its biodiversity, it can no longer deny nature its voice or continue its subordination. If the consumers of entheogens truly want nature’s voice to be heard, they must advocate for the end to the eradication of the Food of Life and the persecution of its Guardians.

Consequences of the reign of Evil
The 1961SC was a direct attack on the International Bill of Human Rights, still in the making at that time. It granted every government in the world the authority to discriminate against minorities based on their unwanted consumption preferences—whether such preferences were integral to the social fabric of their communities and protected as human rights or were imposed upon them due to their weak socio-economic positions and the vagaries of Prohibition. Entire communities including men, women, children, ancestors, gods and Mother Earth with centuries old religious and cultural traditions were forced to reset within a 25-year time-span to twentieth century North-American social norms.

New consumption habits were imposed on people under criminal market rules, which Prohibition transformed into addiction, maintained by greedy elites who claimed to wish to oust these lucrative habits while stigmatizing the users, always referred to as the “Others.” In our new world of universal freedom, it was not the Bill of Human Rights but the lawlessness of the 1961SC, dictated by the strongest, that would reign.

The invasive species had accomplished an outstanding feat: it had produced, under its acclaimed leadership, the two acts that assured the world, on the one hand, of the undreamed personal freedom enshrined in the UDHR, and on the other hand, of its authority to undermine this pillar of the world community through unlimited punitive sanctions against those who dared to challenge the limits of freedom established under the 1961SC. It appeared that almost all rights could be violated.
The 1961SC had crafted a secret peace understanding with the Bill of human rights through the international securitization of prohibited drugs. It could continue to punish freely without being hindered by any rights to health and happiness of the Others, as these were considered no more than accomplices of Evil.
As the Executive Director of the UN Drug Control Program asserted in 1998 during the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “we should not forget that the notion that drug use is a kind of human right is inherently immoral, as it suggests that human lives are not worth saving from the devastation of addiction.” Access to the doors of perception is the ultimate right to protect; prohibition has proven that the Food of Life is the best assurance against abuse and against the devastation of any addiction.
In 2008, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health Paul Hunt retorted that international drug control and human rights systems are two parallel universes. The 1961SC control mechanism and human rights ideals appear to be incompatible.

The universe of colonization, terrorization and the elephant in many rooms
The Bolivian reservation
“Concerned with the health and welfare of mankind,” the 1961 Single Convention and its U.S. patron took it upon themselves to mandate “the abolition of drug use that for centuries had been embedded in the social, cultural, and religious traditions of many non-Western states” and to enforce this on Mother Earth, governments, and citizens in a manner reminiscent of colonization: through terror. The abrupt termination of age-old social traditions and religious practices—following an outrageously brief transition period of 15 years for opium and 25 years for coca and cannabis—was met with complete incomprehension and total rejection by the affected indigenous peoples. In Bolivia, a country with an indigenous majority governed by criollos (of Spanish descent, born in Bolivia), the prohibition of traditional coca chewing among its indigenous population led to a radicalization of the indigenous people, spearheaded by coca farmer-leader Evo Morales Ayma. Under the motto “coca no es cocaína,” Morales led his people to an electoral victory in 2005 and ascended to the presidency in 2006.
Half a century after the adoption of the 1961SC and 6 six years after his ascension to the presidency Bolivia gained in 2012 the support of a qualified majority of 1961SC member states to rejoin the Convention it had left a year earlier with a reservation designed to align the country’s international obligations with its Constitution, which mandates upholding the coca leaf as part of Bolivia’s cultural patrimony. The reservation, in this case regarding the obligation to abolish traditional coca chewing among its indigenous population, was the first of its kind in the history of UN drug control treaties. In response, the United States, upset by this development, spearheaded an attempt whereby all G8 countries opposed what they perceived as an “undermining of the treaty’s integrity and its guiding principle of restricting drug trade and use solely to medical and scientific purposes.” The required minimum of one-third of the 184 members of the treaty to defeat the reservation however was not met, and the prohibitionist diehards lost the fight. Bolivia's victory marked a turning point—the beginning of decolonization from the constraints imposed by the 1961SC. Meanwhile, the war continued.

The Terrorizing President
Accustomed to historic prohibition regimes that derived their substance-outlawing authority from divine orders bestowed upon high priests and kings, no accountability was ever demanded from these deities of the rulers. However, since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) enshrined the freedom of religion, religion itself was excluded as a possible source for outlawing outside its own realm of sovereignty; it necessitated that the UN ground its drug policies in concrete goals. Consequently, in the absence of any evaluative experience—even with regard to evil—prohibition was met from the outset with surprisingly positive indicators, evidenced by a remarkable increase in abuse, addiction, overdose and crime.

The international response, including from the UN, was at par: "zero tolerance" was the motto since the end of the twentieth century and punishment was gradually increased. In at least 33 countries and territories the death penalty for drug offences was prescribed. Worldwide, the congregation of the consumers of the Food of Life was stigmatized, left to its own on a global blacklist of Others, people who have to be ready to expect the unexpected. It was said that all the disasters produced by Prohibition were unintended even when they were not unexpected! A gotspe! If the negative policy outcome that may be expected is not prevented, it is meant to happen.
A similar view was expressed by the Global Commission on Drug Policy when president Trump presented a revamped U.S. war on drugs at the opening of the 73rd United Nations General Assembly in 2018: “Attempts to eradicate drug supply and use through prohibition-based repressive measures against people who use drugs have proved expensive and counterproductive for more than 50 years. The U.S. government, which tried and abandoned alcohol prohibition, and now faces an unprecedented opioid crisis, should know better than anyone.” Billed as a “Global Call to Action on the World Drug Problem”, not quite everyone signed on to this US initiative. Those who did were hard-line prohibition countries, including Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia, genocidal partners like Myanmar and the Philippines or those who agreed on this return to the failed policies of the past after some US realpolitik.
“We see it as a health thing,” a Dutch official explaining their country’s decision to forgo Trump’s meeting said, “in our country we try to prevent it, and we don’t believe in the way it’s being proposed by this text. We don’t want to criminalize it.”
The same day this Global Call was launched the Global Commission presented its report “Regulation: The Responsible Control of Drugs”, outlining regulation as a responsible means of controlling narcotics. The Global Commission commented that Trumps Global Call to action “signals the continuation of inefficient, costly and harmful policies.”

The War on Drugs thus morphed into a genocide, as to be expected. The collateral damage resulting from this failed international securitization program, which wasted millions of lives, is unprecedented in public health history as it is entirely of intentional human making. It permeates all domains of societal interaction and damages the very interests that the UN seeks to protect at this summit: the survival of the rule of law, which safeguards human rights and ultimately guarantees the summit's goal of leaving no one behind in a sustainable environment—including Mother Earth, our only assurance for survival on our planet.

US president Trump had been eager to claim from the start of his election his prohibitionist “universe” belonging and when Philippine president Duterte called in December 2016 to congratulate him with his election, Trump spontaneously wished him success with his controversial drug control performance, which had left 4,800 people dead since Duterte’s own election in July of that same year. Duterte said Mr. Trump endorsed his brutal antidrug campaign, telling him that the Philippines was conducting it “the right way.”
In April 2017, president Trump followed-up by telling Duterte that “he was doing an unbelievable job on the drug problem” in the Philippines, where he had sanctioned the extrajudicial killing of suspects.

Next, the two leaders had a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the 31st Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Manila in November 2017. Duterte had said the week before the meeting that he would tell Trump to “lay off” if he talked about human rights and Harry Roque, the president’s spokesperson confirmed that human rights were not discussed, although Duterte had explained his anti-drugs campaign to Trump, who nodded and “seemed to be in agreement”

However, the April 2018 US Country Report on Human Rights for the Philippines held that “Extrajudicial killings have been the chief human rights concern in the country for many years and, after a sharp rise with the onset of the anti-drug campaign in 2016, they continued in 2017.” Harry Roque commented that the Presidential Palace preferred to stick with the statement of President Donald Trump that President Duterte is doing a good job in handling the country’s illegal drugs problem. “I personally heard the discussion between President Trump and President Duterte when they were here in the Philippines during the ASEAN Summit, and I think I heard words coming from President Trump praising President Duterte including the war on drugs. If I am not mistaken, President Trump said he (Duterte) knows what he’s doing in the Philippines,” Roque said. “So, I do not know how to reconcile the State Department report with the actual statement of the President. But for now, we’re going with the statement of President Trump that we all heard from the mouth of President Trump,” he added.

Once the November 2017 meeting was over, contradicting declarations from the press officers of the two presidents had been released. They confirmed that Mr. Trump wanted to be seen as having brought up the human rights question without having condoned with so many words the Duterte Extrajudicial Mass Killing-policy (EMK) and that Duterte wanted to project himself as the one who defended during 90% of the talks this policy without Mr. Trump objecting on the basis of violation of human rights.

Because it was up to Mr. Trump to show that the previous two incitements were not his last word on the subject, he lost all credibility when his press officer's claim, that he had discussed human rights with Duterte, was not repeated by her after it had been rejected by Duterte’s press officer. As a result, for all most another half year the world and in particular the potential victims involved, were not to know what had been discussed. The lack of coordination would however result in the April 23, 2018 final lapsus of Harry Roque, whereby the full endorsement of Mr. Trump with the Philippines EMK during the November 2017 meeting in Manilla, was as yet revealed.

Shortly afterwards, president Duterte repeated his offer that his country was willing to host a “world summit to tackle how nations can protect human rights”. He may have felt certified by the World Powers in his claim to respect for his “exemplary” defense of human rights.

The elephant in many rooms: the global system of criminalised drug prohibition
The International Coalition on Drug Policy Reform and Environmental Justice is sounding the alarm about the global system of criminalized drug prohibition undermining climate action. In the ground-breaking report “Revealing the missing link to Climate Justice: Drug Policy” it brings together evidence revealing how the war on drugs is undermining climate action as this war is being overtaken by the criminalized drug prohibition:

“In the face of “extraordinary and stubbornly persistent” rates of tropical forest loss the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has called for urgent action to protect and restore forests by strengthening their governance and management. Action is needed now – and policy makers, environmental ministries, NGOs and civil society groups around the world are dedicated to implementing “urgent governance responses” to protect the planet’s largest carbon sinks, mitigate climate change, and head off climate catastrophe. But their efforts will fail as long as those committed to environmental protection neglect to recognise, and grapple with, the elephant in the room. That elephant is the global system of criminalised drug prohibition, popularly known as the ‘war on drugs.’ It is increasingly being recognised that criminal actors are financing land grabs, deforestation, timber and wildlife trafficking and socially and ecologically devastating mining. And that authorities at all levels are often rubber-stamping and profiting from those illegal activities. However, this recognition stops short of naming the driver of these criminal activities. Prohibition: the international drug policy regime – primarily devised and championed by countries of the Global North and maintained by the United Nations – has created an unregulated and immensely powerful shadow economy”.

In Amsterdam in January 2024, a diverse coalition of administrators, policymakers, scientists and civil society representatives, gathered to debate ways to create a more humane drug policy. Recognizing the failures and human rights violations caused by punitive drug enforcement, they pledged in the “Amsterdam Manifesto dealing with Drugs” to adopt health-focused policies that emphasize harm reduction, decriminalization and the regulation of drug markets. Policies aimed not only at safeguarding public health and human dignity, but also at fostering social justice.

The causes of injustice are deeply rooted in the global system and they are complex, but the fact that they are human-made gives us hope, because it means that we can change them if we can put people before profit, if we give people the space to lean back and break free from the grip of their environment and immerse themselves in the totality of creation, the total belonging, the joy of encountering the whole world.

Let’s give climate a chance, let’s give the future a chance and let’s give humanity the freedom it aspires to become the responsible actor of everybody’s inclusion.

4. Conclusions

1. Thanks to the persistence of prohibition, the War on Drugs is still raging at an alarming rate; we must switch from a model that is based on the prohibition of mind-altering substances to a system that values the availability of all the world's medical resources for all the people that need them.

2. The reality of the resilient demand for mind-altering substances must be the basis of a rational discussion on the responsible regulation of the world medicines markets.

3. To this end, all partners in the necessary multilateral process of change should be willing to recognize and respect the contribution of entheogens to the maintenance of biodiversity, including the respect for human and post-human rights
4. As the defense of the spiritual dimension that the Earth provides to humanity completely lacks in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, a final “SDG 18: The Protection of the Food of Life” has to be added to the Agenda 2030.

5. As the United Nations stand at the center of the multilateral task of weaving humanity together in a community of shared ideals and common belonging, the UN Organization should take the lead in the promotion of the SDG 18.
                                                                                                                              

September 2024, The DPI team.

Drugs Peace Institute  – Foundation, Chamber of Commerce Utrecht, The Netherlands, KvK 41213130 www.drugspeaceinstitute.org