For decades, the anti-drug crowd has been hollering, “For God’s sake, don’t legalize marijuana. Don’t let the camel’s nose into the tent! The entire structure will come down.”

The anti-drug crowd isn’t right about much. They sure had it pegged about the “menace” of marijuana, though, because as things have turned out, it’s not just the cannabis camel’s nose that’s in the tent. It’s in there up to its hump, and it’s knocking s--t over and rooting for munchies:

Medical marijuana is currently legal in 37 states, three territories, and the District of Columbia.
Recreational marijuana is legal in 18 states.
In a recent poll, more people copped to ingesting pot than to smoking tobacco.
Federal legalization appears to be around the corner. (Hell, if Biden had the good sense to legalize pre-midterm elections, he'd add a solid three points to Democrats’ vote share. Dobbs and dope, there’s the ticket.)

And it’s not just the cannabis camel that’s inside the tent. The psychedelic peacock is settling in, too.

For a solid century, we’ve been locked in a culture war around drugs. Marijuana was stigmatized early in the 20th century for a witch’s brew of reasons: Commerce (making hemp illegal boosted the forest industry), puritanism (cannabis is pro-pleasure), and of course, that old standby — racism. (“Marijuana,” the Mexican menace! Reefer, the secret sauce behind risqué jazz and bug-eyed “colored” musicians!)

One good thing came out of all that insanity: Reefer Madness, a lunatic short movie depicting the perils of pot consumption and an abiding kitsch delight for stoners for going on a century now.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the anti-drug crowd turned their attention to psychedelics and demonized them, too. Serious research into LSD and other hallucinogens was driven underground or eliminated entirely.

This is finally starting to change. Drugs like psilocybin (a/k/a magic mushrooms) are being used with enormous effectiveness to help terminally ill people come to terms with their mortality. They’re also being used more broadly to treat depression. People who are depressed get trapped on a bad mental treadmill. Psychedelics like psilocybin and ketamine trip, so to speak, that circuit, making it possible to reset and start anew.

Psychedelics have other alleged benefits, too. “Microdosing” involves taking sub-perceptual doses of psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD. Reported benefits include higher productivity, more joy, less depression, and improved long-term cognitive health. While scientists appear to be split on whether the benefits are more than placebo, the anecdotal reports are almost uniformly positive, and some of the stories are eye-popping. For instance, when microdoses of magic mushrooms were given to professional football players who were showing early signs of CTE, the concussion-caused brain-plaque disease that causes emotional torment and early death (often by suicide), the symptoms disappeared.

Microdosing is huge in Silicon Valley and it’s being embraced in other creative communities as well. It’s one of our culture’s badly-kept secrets, an underground movement that’s surfacing rapidly — and peacocking its way into the cultural tent.

We even have a Netflix show (“How to Change Your Mind”) that sings the praises of LSD, psilocybin, Ecstasy, and mescaline. That tells you all you need to know about the extent to which psychedelics are going mainstream.

The swing of the cultural pendulum toward sensible research and exploration is a feel-good story that is bubbling along beneath the surface while the scary stuff — the threat to democracy, the rise of idiocracy, the existential threat of climate change — garners the headlines.

The political right has been doing its best to corner the market on freedom (or, depending on your point of view, “free-dumb”). However, when it comes to demon drugs — oops, I mean demonized drugs — the libertarian call to freedom makes perfect sense. There is no drug that can’t be abused. Used sensibly, though, psychedelics (and, I would argue, cannabis) can show the way to joy, equanimity, long-term health — and, dare I say it, wisdom.

Our cultural persona has two faces. One is premised on “thou shalt not” and is played out inside the moral corral of the church and the legal corral of the state. The other consists of everyday folks going “to hell with that” and leading the life that makes sense to them regardless of all that finger-waggling.

More and more, this includes THC, microdosing, and your occasional full-on trip.

The pendulum could swing back again, but it seems unlikely at this point.

The cannabis camel has done its job — the tent is teetering.

This is a victory for humanity.

Amidst the darkness, we have something to celebrate.

Carl Frankel is a writer and the Common Council representative for Ward 2. His most recent book is “Tennis as a Wisdom Practice: A Story About the Quest for Mastery.”