^{Karl Marx wrote, “Religion is the opium of the masses.” It’s interesting how most civilised governments view the different kinds of opium we have in the world. The kind that comes from poppies and ends up as heroin is viewed as very bad. People can get addicted to it! It alters their personality. Under its influence its users are detached from reality. They are not able to make rational decisions that affect their lives. The response from most governments to this is…. ban it! Imprison people who use it or trade in it! Fight a “war” on drugs!}

<sup>How strange that the other kind of opium, the kind Karl Marx wrote about, is treated so differently. But don’t people get addicted to religion? Doesn’t religion alter their personalities? Doesn’t it detach its "users" from reality and prevent them from making rational decisions that affect their lives? SMART people are certain that religion does all of these things!

An important objective of SMART society is to persuade politicians to recognise the truth of the above. After that, the next step is to fight an effective war against the religious opium.</sup>

^{The current U.S. (and others) policy of prohibition against the poppy opium (drugs) is as ineffective as the prohibition policy against alcohol was in the 1920’s. Don’t politicians ever read and learn from history?!}

^{Whether we are fighting the religious or the poppy opium there is a much more effective weapon than prohibition. All we need do is look at the way we fight the drug nicotine. Perplexingly, the same U.S. and other governments recognise that trying to prohibit use of this dangerous drug would be a total waste of time. Instead they permit its use through the controlled sale of cigarettes. Then they tax cigarettes at punitive rates. Some of that revenue is used to educate people about the lies the tobacco industry propagates in its efforts to preserve legitimacy for itself in the minds of existing and potential smokers.}

^{So why not apply the same principle to the religious opium? Let’s tax religions at punitive rates (think of all that valuable real estate that churches occupy!) and then let's use some of that revenue to educate people about the lies that religions propagate in their efforts to preserve legitimacy for themselves in the minds of existing and potential believers!}

^{Organized religion and the tobacco industry are both evil institutions and both are in terminal decline. The real question is, in a civilised society, how quickly can we finish them off?!}

^{This issue is covered in more detail in Religion's Paradox and the members forum letter “Religion and tobacco”}