If history teaches us anything, it’s that bad ideas have a long shelf life. Cannabis prohibition wasn’t born from concern for kids or public health — it was built on industry and money. In 1917, George W. Schlichten’s decorticator made hemp cheaper and easier to process than the leading raw materials of the day. It should’ve been a breakthrough. Instead, its threat to powerful paper and timber empires ignited a smear campaign that rewrote history — and lit the fuse for the battles we’re still fighting today.
By the 1930s, Harry Anslinger had recast cannabis as “marijuana,” stoking fear and racism to sell a lie. Poor communities and minorities paid the highest price as the War on Drugs kept that fear alive for generations — while the industries poised to profit never missed a beat. Was Anslinger working for them? We’ll never know, but every move he made fell in perfect step with their interests.
Today, alcohol and pharmaceutical lobbyists push the same agenda, intent on protecting their market share. The faces are different, but the playbook hasn’t changed. Cannabis — now facing the looming threat of THC caps across the country, a fresh coat of paint on the same old prohibitionist thinking — remains shackled by decades of fear and politics. Now psychedelic medicines like ketamine are stepping into that same spotlight, fighting their own battles for legitimacy, access, and understanding.
Ketamine clinics are emerging across Utah — offering hope for depression and trauma where traditional medicine has fallen short. People ask us all the time what it’s really like, so we set out to find out. This fall, our own gonzo journalist, Benjamin Adams, stepped inside Swahn Balanced Ketamine Clinic. Hunter S. Thompson would’ve been proud.
Benjamin’s journey isn’t about chasing a psychedelic high or drifting off to Jefferson Airplane — it’s about what comes after. It’s about breaking free from the chains of habit and stepping out of the loop that traditional pharmaceuticals are happy to keep you in. We’ve learned that ketamine isn’t a bandage — it’s a catalyst, a true beginning that makes space for lasting change in mental health. It’s the recovery process, the days and weeks when the medicine fades but the healing deepens. And as Utah wrestles with THC caps and the ghosts of prohibition, his story is a reminder that progress can be slowed, but never stopped.
Welcome to the Fall issue. Let’s keep climbing into a future we deserve — one shaped by progress and fairness, not dictated by the powerful few. And maybe, just maybe, if those guarding the gates of the past took a ketamine journey, they’d finally grasp the freedom they’ve spent decades denying others.
