"Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language."
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)
As an analytic philosopher of language, I have spent a long time thinking hard about the role language plays in how we think. The core insight of linguistic analysis is that our thinking is shaped to a large degree by the way we use language, and everything we do is based on how we think. That is why it is essential to reflect critically on our language, so we can reach clearer and deeper insights and act on them.
More than 25 years ago I began focusing on contemporary theories of consciousness, which led me to study the altered state of consciousness of the cannabis high in depth. The longer I researched it, the more obvious it became to me how strongly our thinking about cannabis has been distorted by deliberate manipulation, above all in the USA since the 1930s, and how the language handed down to us still "bewitches" the way we think and act today.
Why the way we talk about cannabis poisons the debate
The language and metaphors surrounding cannabis have deeply shaped how we see the plant. To this day they influence not only how we deal with THC cannabis, but also industrial hemp and the cannabidiol (CBD) extracted from it. Decades of state propaganda created a lasting stigma that branded hemp across the board as dangerous and undesirable. This negative connotation also found its way into strict rules for industrial hemp and CBD: industrial hemp was either banned outright or could only be grown later under extremely strict conditions, and many countries still have no clear and sensible rules for CBD products. (Fortunately, Switzerland already has clear rules for hemp and CBD products, and HEIMAT makes sure they are followed with strict quality and content checks.)
The stigma that language keeps alive around cannabis and hemp has been causing shame, misunderstanding, fear and reluctance in society for decades.
The power of metaphors
The linguist and cognitive scientist George Lakoff became known above all for his work on metaphor theory and political language. In his influential book "Metaphors We Live By" (1980, with Mark Johnson), he argues that metaphors shape our entire worldview. He has repeatedly stressed that right-wing think tanks in the USA in particular have deliberately used this fact in political debates: they structured those debates by introducing specific metaphors. He calls this process "framing".
Lakoff analyses, for example, the metaphor "tax relief", used by George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential campaign, as a classic case of political framing. According to Lakoff, the word "relief" (as in relief from pain) evokes a particular frame: the taxpayer is an innocent, suffering person, taxes are the cause of the suffering, like an injury or an illness, and there are heroes, the politicians, who fight to bring relief by cutting taxes. Anyone who argues against this "relief" automatically becomes the villain in the frame, the one who wants the suffering to continue.
Lakoff pointed out to the Democrats that they made a big mistake by adopting the term "tax relief" in the debate at all, because the metaphor behind it fundamentally contradicts their own worldview. From the Democrats' point of view, fair taxes with higher rates for the wealthy are not an "injury" at all, but a shared investment, for example in a good healthcare system, that everyone benefits from in the end.
There was no "War on Drugs"
The term "War on Drugs" was also coined by a US president, Richard Nixon in 1971, and used for political purposes. The media immediately picked up his martial metaphor and made it a permanent part of political and public debate, in the USA and internationally.
On closer inspection, however, the metaphor is fundamentally wrong: there never was a "war on drugs". Many substances we would call "drugs" were and are not fought against at all, such as alcohol, medicines like ibuprofen, or coffee. Nor is it a "war" (wars take place between opponents who are at least roughly matched), but relentless state repression of certain people, above all cannabis users, rather than of the substances themselves. The metaphor also implies that all "drugs" are a deadly threat to humans that has to be defeated. That is almost absurd once you look more closely at where the word comes from and what it means: it originally comes from the Dutch "droog" or the Middle Low German "dröge", meaning "dry". In medieval trade, the phrase "droge vaten" ("dry barrels") referred to containers for dry goods such as spices and dried medicinal herbs. In the USA there are still "drug stores" today, where you can buy all kinds of medicines.
The real motivation behind Nixon's so-called "war on drugs" was something else. Historical documents show that the "War on Drugs" under Nixon was deliberately launched to criminalise political opponents: the largely left-wing movement against the Vietnam War and Black communities. Nixon's adviser John Ehrlichman admitted in a 1994 interview: "We couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate them with drugs, we could disrupt those communities (...) Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
So in this sense there never was a "war on drugs". What we have experienced, and in part still see today, is worldwide, at times brutal, state-enforced repression that has caused suffering on an epic scale.
It is not only metaphors that shape our worldview
After long linguistic manipulation like this, the word "drug" is no longer a neutral umbrella term either, and scientifically it is not well defined anyway. It carries historically loaded associations of dangerous toxicity, high addictive potential and illegality. It therefore makes more sense to speak of "psychoactive substances" when we mean substances that noticeably affect our mental state, from coffee, sugar, alcohol and cannabis all the way to LSD.
It is not only questionable metaphors that pass on false ideas about psychoactive substances. Again and again the press reports that a rock star, for example, died from excessive use of "alcohol and drugs". If I tell my children from their earliest years that there are "elephants and animals" at the zoo, at some point they will see elephants as something special, not as animals. If I keep telling them about "alcohol and drugs", they will internalise that alcohol is not a drug: a kind of linguistic misconditioning.
Or take the notorious use of the word "Kiffer" (roughly "stoner") for cannabis users, even in the mainstream German-language press: the origin of the word actually points to a positive meaning, as it probably goes back to the Arabic كَيْفَ (kayf), meaning "well-being, good mood". Over decades of disparaging use, however, the term has become linked with laziness, lack of productivity, a scruffy appearance and the like. Studies show that stigmatising labels like this reinforce the image of cannabis users as a "problem group", even when their use is moderate.
Conclusion
If we want to move forward as a society, we need to reflect critically on the language we use about cannabis and other psychoactive substances. Our language about cannabis is poisoned: by metaphors, terms and expressions that stir up fear and block objective discussion. But as Lakoff stresses, new framings can create new realities. By choosing precise, destigmatising terms, we open up space for rational debate.
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