Ending The War On Drugs Would Get People Socialising Again

Everyone is lamenting the lack of sociability among young people in recent years. Even Boomer media like Fox News is asking whether the nightclub scene is dying out. The sociability crisis is being blamed for increasing rates of depression and for plummeting birthrates. No truly effective solutions have been offered yet, so this essay suggests a way to get the party (re)started.

This lack of socialising is not good for society. Socialising is how social bonds are created (hence the name), and these bonds are what prevents us from falling back into a dog-eat-dog pre-civilisational jungle. Successful societies, however large or small, are made up of people who are friends. Absent quality socialising, the stress of proximity makes people into enemies.

The problem is that the usual methods of socialising are either absent (as in third spaces) or no longer desired (as in churches or pubs). So many would-be socialisers have become discouraged from the lack of quality social options, leading them to sit at home on the Internet.

I am an early Millennial, which is not young, but it’s young enough to be tired of pisshead culture. It’s so boring. I’m tired of listening to sad old fools droning on about how great they used to be when they were young. I’m also tired of watching young people turn into chimpanzees, and the general narcissistic toddler vibe. I want a different buzz.

These are common sentiments among people younger than 50. We’re tired of alcohol. Moreover, we know how dangerous it is now. People today have access to research like that of Professor David Nutt, which suggests that alcohol actually does more harm than any other drug. People didn’t know that even 20 years ago.

Many young people know this now, though, which is why they’re increasingly choosing to sit at home, on weed, watching YouTube or Netflix, rather than going to pubs. The vast majority of those young people would rather socialise if they had a decent environment in which to do it, but they don’t. This is not an accidental tragedy, but an inevitable result of bad laws.

There’s one obvious solution: end the War on Drugs.

Already it’s very common among people younger than 50 to socialise on the basis of doing drugs other than alcohol. At the moment, the vast majority of this activity takes place in private, by necessity, owing to the law. An alternative to pubs could bring this activity into the sunlight and, with it, the people who are into those alternatives.

Here I’m not talking about places to do hard drugs, such as injection rooms. My approach is simple: anything recognised as a potential social substitute for alcohol, with a safer harm profile than alcohol, should be made readily available to reduce alcohol harms. This means that heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine would remain underground.

If there was a cannabis cafe in my city it would be ideal. I would love to be able to meet interesting travellers without the ever-present threat of violence that comes with pubs. Dutch-style cafes are all that anyone needs in this regard. Cafes in New Zealand could be even better than Dutch ones, because in New Zealand it’s easier to have a sunny courtyard.

MDMA lounges would also attract a younger crowd back into the cities. Like alcohol, MDMA is an entactogen that makes social interaction easier and more fun. But MDMA doesn’t make people violent or aggressive. As such, it could achieve many of the benefits of alcohol use without so many of the drawbacks. People already use MDMA regularly, so being able to access a safe and measured dose of it would improve life for many.

Of course, psychedelic dens would also exist if the War on Drugs ended. Imagine a place like a bar where one could melt into a sofa for a few hours, listening to Shpongle or Alan Watts drum ‘n’ bass remixes. Or not melt, but have great conversation with intelligent people. Somewhere like this could happily sell a basic solid dose of LSD, psilocybin or mescaline for $20-30 and then sell Vs or Red Bulls for $5-10.

The ideal outcome would be a range of venues that offered various combinations of psychoactive experiences, decor and music. All of these places would be safer than pubs, but all are impossible dreams as long as the War on Drugs continues.

The Boomers who oppose this need to get with modern science. Not modern morality (I’m not arguing that), but science. Whether the use of drugs other than alcohol is degenerate is not relevant, because modern science confirms that many of them are much less dangerous than alcohol. And because no-one – especially not me – is arguing for alcohol to become more restricted, the logic is that these safer alternatives to alcohol should be legalised.

The contention of this essay is that young people want to socialise just as much as young people in previous generations. They just no longer want to do alcohol, which is the only realistic choice in most cases. So they tend to stay at home. This is a great tragedy. The solution is ending the War on Drugs.

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‘California Sober’: Could It Catch On In New Zealand?

Many lifestyle trends that originate in California then spread to the rest of the world. This is because California is where the Spear of Destiny is: the focal point of world cultural influence. The West Coast of America has more soft power than anywhere else on Earth. The latest trend that might spread from there to the rest of the world is called California Sober.

Many people say that life is best with no drugs at all. But for many others, this isn’t realistic. Billions of people feel the need to use chemical assistance to take the edge off the intensity of life on this planet. For those living outside the Abrahamic moral paradigm, using recreational drugs is no more immoral than seasoning one’s food.

The term ‘California Sober’ refers to a lifestyle in which one still uses drugs, but in such a manner that one does very little harm. In fact, one does roughly as little harm as a sober person. The main aspect of the lifestyle is to abstain from the typical drugs of destruction, in particular large amounts of alcohol. In this lifestyle, cannabis replaces alcohol as the go-to everyday social lubricant.

In contrast to the puritanical forms of sobriety so common to the West, in which all psychoactive substances are considered from the devil, California Sober usually involves indulgent cannabis use, with the occasional use of alcohol or psychedelics. Alcohol is still used, but sparingly, such as for celebrations. Psychedelics are also used sparingly, but more for spiritual or mental health reasons.

This arrangement is not merely a fashion. It reflects actual psychological and medical science. Professor David Nutt, perhaps the world’s foremost expert on relative drug harms, conducted a study that found alcohol to be the most harmful drug of all. Figure 3 in this paper (link goes to .pdf) suggests that alcohol is twice as harmful to other people as heroin, and about as harmful to the user as heroin, crack cocaine or methamphetamine.

According to Prof. Nutt’s research, cannabis is less harmful than tobacco, and much, much less harmful than alcohol. Magic mushrooms are considered by this research to be the least harmful of all those surveyed.

The logic of the California Sober lifestyle is to take this modern science into account when making recreational drug choices. As such, the use of alcohol is much less common in comparison to wider Western society. The use of cannabis and psychedelics, by contrast, is much more common.

The lifestyle hasn’t been designed by the dispassionate scientific analysis of a few elites, though. It is, for the most part, an organic development.

Many people have found that they like to use alcohol to take the edge off the stress of daily life, but they really don’t like the side-effects of alcohol: the sickness, the bloating, the hangovers, the mental dullness. For them, cannabis does the job of taking the edge off without the physical suffering.

For these people, replacing alcohol with cannabis seems like an obvious idea.

Some Kiwis, your author among them, have been living California Sober for a while already. I worked as a barman for several years to help pay for university, but by the time I graduated I had come to realise that cannabis was a better lifestyle choice than alcohol for many reasons. Foremost among these reasons: cannabis users seemed much less prone to violence and sluttery.

Using more cannabis, I found that I felt a lot better physically than I did using alcohol. So phasing out the alcohol seemed like a natural choice. Occasional psychedelic use, usually to mark a solstice or equinox, also seems like a natural choice. I believe that many people, if given the freedom to do so, would live a lifestyle similar to this.

The main difficulty with leading this lifestyle in New Zealand, of course, is the law.

Cannabis has been fully legal in California since 2016, the year 57% of Californians voted to legalise it at referendum. New Zealand, unfortunately, voted away our chance at cannabis freedom in 2020. As such, we are now eight years behind California, and counting. It’s not likely that the Sixth National Government will change the cannabis laws, and they might not lose power until 2029 (assuming they win three terms, as National governments tend to do). So New Zealand probably won’t get legal cannabis until 15 or 16 years after California.

Despite this, cannabis is easy to get in New Zealand – Kiwis are some of the world’s heaviest users of it. Thus it’s possible to live a California Sober lifestyle here, but not with the same level of acceptance as in North America. Moreover, medicinal cannabis is now very easy to access in New Zealand.

Most of the reasons that caused the California Sober lifestyle to become popular in North America also apply to New Zealand. We also have severe problems with physical, mental and social damage caused by alcohol, and would benefit from a shift to lower-harm substances. It may be that natural adoption of this lifestyle among Kiwis is what eventually forces a change to the cannabis laws.

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How A Skilled Alchemist Would Use Cannabis

Now that cannabis is replacing alcohol among several demographics, many people are experimenting with how it is best used. Unfortunately, because of a century of prohibition, much of the common knowledge about how to best use cannabis has been lost. But it’s possible to reconstruct some of that lost knowledge, and in this essay I attempt to do so.

The best way, in my estimation, of asking how to best use cannabis is to ask: how would a skilled alchemist use it? This is to say: how would a master of the human psyche use it? Here we can learn from past masters.

Timothy Leary’s phrase “set and setting” is as relevant to cannabis use today as it was to psychedelic use 50 years ago, combining the mental and the physical considerations of psychonautics into one catchphrase.

The first part of this is the mindset, i.e. the mindset of the user. A skilled alchemist will make sure that they are in the right headspace before using cannabis. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to be happy. It means to be mentally prepared for a radical change in perceptions. Don’t use it while mentally preoccupied with something else.

Also, be positive. Don’t use it fearing instant schizophrenia forever – this is how people become paranoid. People use cannabis primarily to feel joy. That’s what it’s about. Cannabis is best used to bring colour and flavour to what would otherwise be greyness and dullness. Use it knowing that it has been used all over the world, for thousands of years, to bring happiness.

A great mindset is to use cannabis understanding it’s a medicine: partly a physiological one, partly a spiritual one. Therefore, focus on its healing aspects rather than potential destructive aspects. If you are already primed to relax because of a positive mindset, you are much more likely to have a good time than someone primed to anxiety.

The second part of Leary’s advice refers to the setting in which cannabis is used. This is primarily a matter of social environment and not physical.

Regarding the social environment, the most important thing is to not use it around dickheads. Cannabis will make you more sensitive to other people’s frequencies and vibrations, unlike alcohol, which makes you less sensitive. Therefore, on cannabis, it’s more important to be choosy about your companions. Don’t use it around anyone who is liable to send bad energy your way, because you will be extra sensitive to that energy.

Regarding the physical environment, the goal is to use it somewhere you won’t be disturbed. It’s best not to be in a crowded place where people will bump into you or trip over you. Possibly the best place to use cannabis is somewhere you can lie back and relax, but not fall asleep: a couch, a day bed, a bean bag etc. Possibly the worst is in public, at night, when drunks and law enforcement are everywhere.

Skilfully combining set and setting, the master alchemist can achieve several mental transformations using cannabis.

One of the most common is, as mentioned above, joy. Through using cannabis it’s possible to transmute all kinds of low-frequency (e.g. angry, sad, bored) emotional states into something higher, something appreciative. The power of cannabis to have this effect is well-known today: Kamala Harris said of it “It gives a lot of people joy, and we need more joy”.

A lesser-known transformation is increased creativity. As Bill Hicks liked to point out, an enormous proportion of the world’s creative output has been fuelled by drugs. Cannabis, in particular, is known for breaking the thought loops and preoccupations that hinder creative expression. The author of this article is, in fact, stoned right now!

Related to this is the use of cannabis as an aphrodisiac. Many of the common reasons for failure to perform sexually – excessive stress or tension, deficient desire – are psychosomatic in origin and can be alleviated with cannabis. It can also serve to empower the creativity that can transform mere sex-having into lovemaking. Magically speaking, it can help make the user more receptive to the casting of glamours, which intensifies the romantic experience.

The most incredible transformation achievable on cannabis, as well as the least understood, is enlightenment. Cannabis truly is a spiritual sacrament, and its use can lead to spiritual insights unattainable by Normies. Countless millions have, over the millennia, come to believe in reincarnation and karma thanks to spiritual receptivity granted by cannabis use.

The simple act of smoking some weed and staring at the Moon or the stars, and listening to the wind (or even the traffic), can be enough to transmute a lower frequency of consciousness into something touched by divinity.

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How Kieran McAnulty Could Become Prime Minister In 2026

The 2026 New Zealand General Election looks like it’s anyone’s game. Recent polling has suggested that Labour is only a few points behind National now, with the second-tier parties winning 35%+ of the vote collectively. A number of interests could potentially seize power after 2026. But some of them would need to make a move soon.

It’s very hard for a previously deposed Prime Minister to become the Prime Minister again. A previously deposed Prime Minister has the taint of failure about them – people are afraid to back them openly incase of another failure. Therefore, current Labour Leader Chris Hipkins is a losing proposition. This is over and above the fact that Hipkins is about as personally appealing as leftover fish and chips.

The question is not who might replace him. That’s obviously Kieran McAnulty. Kiwis don’t want nice anymore, because we had that with Jacinda Ardern and we all saw how utterly ineffective it was. Smiles don’t build houses. We want a strongman who will get something done.

McAnulty has enjoyed a lot of publicity recently, and the public seem to appreciate his no-nonsense aggression. The stars seems to be aligning for him to take over from the ineffective Hipkins, sooner rather than later. The question is under which platform McAnulty would run under in the 2026 election if he is to beat Chris Luxon (who will presumably run for National as incumbent).

This article makes a few suggestions.

If we look at overseas trends, we can see what’s coming New Zealand’s way in 5-10 years’ time. This has long been the case technologically and culturally, and it’s true politically as well. In other Western countries, two major trends are obvious.

The first is the increase of anti-immigration sentiments. Morgoth wrote on Substack this month that “There’s been a noticeable hardening in rhetoric regarding mass immigration in Britain recently.” This was proven to be a Europe-wide phenomenon in the European Parliament elections a few days later, when nationalist parties surged ahead in comparison to the previous election.

It’s becoming obvious to all Westerners now that the story our rulers sold us – of the cheap labour imports being people just like us who would turn out the same if we spent money on their education and welfare – was a total lie. Although some immigrants make a positive contribition, the vast majority of them are lower IQ than the average white person, and thereby cause similar levels of social carnage as low-IQ whites.

Because New Zealand has run a relatively intelligent points-based immigration system, instead of a brainless refugee resettlement-based one, New Zealanders don’t have the same disdain for immigration that Europeans do – yet. But it’s coming. The Sixth Labour Government doubled the refugee quota, bringing in twice as many Muslims and Africans as before. These Muslims and Africans have, predictably, set about committing the enormous numbers of violent, sexual, and property crimes that they’re infamous for everywhere else. As such, anti-immigration sentiments are rising sharply in New Zealand.

British nationalist Nigel Farage has declared the upcoming British general election an “immigration election”. Farage’s Reform UK party has polled as high as 17% in recent days. If McAnulty was willing to tap into similar nationalist sentiments in New Zealand, he could position himself and Labour to benefit from the coming surge.

The second obvious trend is cannabis law reform. In America by 2022, the number of people who used cannabis daily had increased 15 times since 1992. Now more Americans use cannabis daily or near-daily than use alcohol. This is a cultural change like the transition from newspapers to the Internet. It is seismic.

It’s not just cannabis use that is rising, but also support for cannabis use. Germany legalised cannabis this year, as did Luxembourg the year previous. Slovenia just voted for legal cannabis in a referendum a few days ago. Some 70% of American adults now support legal cannabis, with elderly Christians the last major holdouts. The War on Cannabis is being won by cannabis.

Some argue that Labour cannot run on this because of the failed cannabis referendum in 2020. But Arizona had a cannabis referendum in 2016 that failed with only 48.7% of the vote, and that was followed by another referendum in 2020 that passed with around 60%. Sentiments are shifting so fast in favour of cannabis that, if there was another cannabis referendum in New Zealand today, it might pass with 60% as well.

The statistics from 2020 showed that the majority of pro-cannabis supporters were young and well-educated – precisely the sort of person that New Zealand needs to appeal to in order to maintain economic viability into the future. Cannabis law reform is an open goal. If McAnulty wants to kick it into the net, he needs to campaign in 2026 to legalise cannabis.

If McAnulty would lead Labour into the 2026 General Election on a nationalistic, pro-cannabis ticket – along with all of the usual concerns that Labour stands for – he would ride two extremely powerful waves of popular support currently sweeping the West. This would be Labour’s best chance of making the Sixth National Government a one-term affair.

For more of VJM’s ideas, see his work on other platforms!
For even more of VJM’s ideas, buy one of his books!

If you enjoyed reading this piece, buy a compilation of our best pieces from previous years!

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