Coffee is pretty much old hat anymore. Sure people like it, and drink it all the time, even though it is acidic and it's bad for you (thanks Ray Kurzwiel, you're the man). Coffee makes people more alert, induces mild eurphoria, and even tastes good sometimes. But the reality is, ( and I have this knowledge because I live on campus and I know what generally goes on here), college kids are taking smart drugs more and more all the time. The most well known example is adderall, which is a highly addictive and somewhat dangerous drug if not used with caution. Nonetheless we still gave it to our kids all the time. Not surpisingly they shared it with their friends. By the time these youngsters with presciptions to various stimulants like adderall that helped them focus in elementary and high school started entering college, everyone in this age bracket was and still are generally aware of the value of these chemicals as powerful study aids. However, adderall happens to have a high street value since it is similiar psychoactively to meth, one of the DEA's highest scheduled drugs (illegal as it gets). The response? Make getting a prescription to adderall incredibly hard to get. The effect? Now drug companies are making replacement drugs, i.e. the new genertion of smart drugs, that improve attention but without the nasty effects of adderall such as, increased circulartory activity and being extremely addictive.

The question is, as these new generation smart drugs start coming out into the market more and more, will people feel a need to even make them illegal? Will we eventually be able to get them without presciptions? Hear me out on this one. Smart drugs turn people into "Uber mensches." Taking smart drugs could mean the difference between winning or losing an election, meeting or missing the deadline for whatever business venture, or even between getting published and not published. As policy makers themselves have already started using smart drugs to give them the extra edge they need to get elected (I remember reading an article on it a few months back, but now I can't find it - will keep you updated), will they keep them relatively legal (low priority scheduling by the DEA) for the rest of us or even make them available OTC? Hopefully whatever decision our policy makers come to, they wil realize how misguided and hypocritcal America's drug policy is and has been over the past 100 years as they face this question.

For instance, why should smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee everyday be legal, two very addicting substances, but smoking marijuana is illegal even though it is much less addicting. Maybe in our policy makers incorrect viewpoint, they feel that smoking marijuana makes people lazy and therefore not good for the economy. At least this is the impression I get from their propaganda. At any rate it helps me explain in my own mind why cigarettes and coffee are legal and weed is not. Smart drugs definitely increase productivity, and they are toted to be nonaddicting unlike their early predecessors like adderall. So will this mean they will be kept legal, just because our leaders have especially good use for them, but keep weed illegal because that's the drug of choice for the lower and middle classes who need their weed taken from them and whipped into shape. That's exactly what it looks like to me now, even though marijuana is historically illegal for very different reasons. I think it has morphed into this view that marijuana makes people lazy, probably over the past 50 or so years since generally americans are all about progress, which I don't think is necessarily so bad. And now that our leaders are using smart drugs for their own sucess, but at the same time continue to keep weed illegal. If anything, I think it just shows how egocentric our leadership is, and that they care little to nothing about the culture of the people they are governing.

But so much for the War on drugs; that has also become old hat in the shawdows of the glory of the War on Terror. I pity the current political state of America. We used to be the light, now we are the darkness.