Buzzby

Repeal All Drug Trafficking Laws
Adam Marantz | The Daily Targum | 10/6/2005

Apple pie. Baseball. The Fourth of July. Drug usage?

It may seem like an odd addendum to the list of American icons, but for Sheldon Norberg, author of "Confessions of a Dope Dealer," it's an appropriate one.

Norberg - who sold drugs from when he was in high school until age 30 - presented his lecture, "The Dynamics of American Drug Culture," at the Livingston Student Center on Tuesday.

"America is by far the world's largest consumer of licit and illicit drugs," Norberg said, who has a bachelor's degree in psycho-spiritual healing from San Francisco State University, and a master's in intuition medicine from the Academy of Intuitive Studies and Intuition Medicine in Mill Valley, Calif.

Norberg vilified the government's history of controlling the drug market, saying that banning drug-use only makes the black market industry more lucrative and its leaders more powerful.

"When the United States outlawed the use of heroin, the street price quadrupled overnight," Norberg said.

In addition to criticizing the government's stance on controlling the drug market, Norberg also denigrated its participation in Project MKULTRA, which studied the effectiveness of mind control from LSD during the Cold War.

"This project is the only documented death from LSD use," said Norberg, in reference to Frank Olson, a CIA employee working undercover who was administered the drug without his knowledge.

The National Institute of Drug Use calls LSD one of the strongest mood-changing drugs.

Norberg also challenged former President Richard Nixon and how he ignored the Shafer Commission's recommendation to legalize marijuana use, after the commission was appointed to study the effects of the drug and found no need to decriminalize the drug.

"Cannabis is the most versatile and valuable crop known to man," Norberg said. "It can be used for shelter, clothing and food. In fact, with its nutritional value, you can live on hemp seeds alone."

Overall, Norberg said he opposes any legislation that prohibits recreational use and infringes on the human right to freedom of thought.

"I think all drugs should be legal," Norberg said. "And unfortunately, the generation that I thought would resolve the public misconception of experimenting with drugs has suckered out for the money."

Although he discredits the government's sanctions on drugs, Norberg does not encourage their use.

"I don't have the same views as the government on this issue," Norberg said. "But it would be ridiculous for me to tell you to run out and try them."

He did, however, encourage the audience to educate themselves on drugs that they experiment with, advocating that they think more before trying drugs, and find out about each one's significant positive and negative side effects.

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