Boing Boing welcomes Real Tested CBD as a sponsor.

Real Tested CBD shares the following essay by their co-founder, Richard Cowan.

It's Time for Silicon Valley To Finish Its Job of Disrupting the Racist Drug War

It Has Been Racist From The Beginning and Racism Cannot End Until It Does

By -- Richard Cowan

Mark Zuckerberg, the Icarus of the Internet, is debating his own employees about whether Facebook should be responsible for correcting the lies of certain high ranking politicians. The answer seems obvious, but are they really prepared to choose which lies require their personal attention?

Icarus was undone by trying to fly too high and to be above it all, but there is another Greek myth that is more "down to Earth" literally.

As I watch the seemingly inexhaustible torrent of prohibitionist propaganda, I am reminded of the Greek myth about Hercules and the stables of King Augeas.

The term “Augean stables” means a huge mess, because King Augeas had a vast number of cattle, which were herded into the stables every night, but no one cleaned up after them. (Governments always expect other people to do their dirty work.)

As a consequence, the stables overflowed with what the Greeks called “drug education.”

As in Hercules’ time, the government provides the fodder at one end, and the other end –the Greeks called it the “media” –  produced the inevitable product. It stank to high heaven, but it seemed impossible to do anything about it.

Most people said it was beneath their dignity even to think about it, although not thinking did not stop them from writing about it.

Read the rest

https://boingboing.net/2020/06/26/its-time-for-silicon-valley.html