The UN finally renounces its mad ambition to end all drug use
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
May 25, 2025
In 2022, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution about "addressing and countering the world drug problem through a comprehensive, integrated and balanced approach." It was unique because, for the first time, the UN drug policy failed to mention any plan to promote a drug-free world, a mad ambition if there ever was one, based as it is on a host of false assumptions, many of them racial and imperialist in nature. The voting on the reworded proposal was telling in two ways: first, because a large majority of countries, 124, approved it. And second, because the "no" votes - all nine of them - came from countries that have oppressive policies with regard to dissent in general. Leading the charge against the new wording, of course, was Russia, and we all know what a beacon of tolerance Putin is. Other predictable naysayers included Iran, Belarus, Turkey and Syria.1
The wonder is that the absurd ambition of making the world "drug free" was ever seriously contemplated in the first place. Just imagine the enormous police presence that would be required to ensure such a dystopia. Meanwhile, the government would be attempting to control the botanical world, with bulldozers and herbicides and biochemical interventions on an industrial scale. This attempt to render the world "drug free" has already led to the censorship of academia2. The world may not yet be drug free in actuality, but scholars of all kinds are already pretending that it is. Hence the complete absence of talk about mind-improving drugs in a wide variety of fields where the effects of drug-use have enormous implications, as, for instance, in the fight to end depression, or to prevent suicide. Almost all books about depression are nonsense today because they neglect to mention the glaringly obvious potential of psychoactive substances to cheer one up in real-time when used advisedly based on actual user reports.
Consider the following reports of beneficial drug use from "Pihkal3" and just imagine the common-sense therapeutic protocols that they suggest -- at least to a mind not prejudiced by the passion-scorning dictates of behaviorism4:
"It was a day to be connected in one way or another with music. I was reading
Bernstein's 'Joy of Music' and every phrase was audible to me."
"Poetry was an easy and natural thing. Both the reading of it and the writing of it."
"It was a glorious feeling, and beauty was everywhere enhanced. With eyes closed it felt marvelous, and it was appealing to pursue the inner experience."
"I acknowledged a rapture in the very act of breathing."
These are the kinds of drugs that we want to be free of, drugs that produce these liberating effects? What are we even THINKING of by attempting to rid the world of such godsends?
Nor is it just the field of psychology in which this censorship (and self-censorship) takes place when we fight against inanimate objects called drugs. Free philosophical inquiry is shut down as well. William James himself told philosophers to study the effects of psychoactive substances in order to learn about ultimate reality, and yet no one is picking up that gauntlet5. In fact, the online biography for the great psychologist at his alma mater, Harvard University, does not even mention his "call to arms" in connection with altered states6. And so, for philosophers, too, outlawed substances no longer exist. They hide them in plain sight by simply ignoring their existence. And yet the effects of mind-enhancing drugs have obvious importance in the study of the mind-body problem. Sadly, however, most scientists are materialists and so are comfortable with drug laws which effectively outlaw the mental states that suggest non-materialist solutions to the riddle of existence7.
Back to the nightmare of creating a drug-free world.
SWAT teams would be breaking down doors with greater frequency than they are already doing so today8. Even collateral victims would be excused by the government as being unfortunate but necessary victims in what, after all, was a war. Nixon knew what he was doing when he used the word "war." Only by turning his anti-drug campaign into a war could he justify the overthrow of constitutional norms in its name. This is how religious freedom and the 4th amendment have been rendered void in our courts: because Drug Warriors use the "war" metaphor to trump all constitutional safeguards and protections.
The goal of a "drug free" world will go down in history as the most ludicrous global ambition of all times - one that we will clearly see in retrospect to have been based on lies, ignorance, racism9, xenophobia, imperialism, militarism, and a totally childish view about human psychology. I am assuming, of course, that human progress is inevitable and that the truth will eventually "out" when it comes to drugs. I add this caveat because recent political developments have suggested to me that human beings may have met their match in the form of a perfect storm of propaganda, oligarchy and Big Tech, and that their very belief in the very existence of objective truth may now be disappearing in a new dark ages of partisan online echo chambers combined with a public commons that is increasingly policed by drug-phobic algorithms.
In "The Truth about Opium," published in 1882, Dr. J. L. W. Thudichum makes the following optimistic observation about the great untapped potential of opium smoking for therapeutic purposes in the West.
"The medical uses of opium have been so well known through all historical times that it is a matter for surprise to find that they are not better appreciated in the present day. In this, as in many other matters, we are in fact only gradually emerging from the condition of those dark times during which, amongst many good things, the knowledge of opium, for example, was lost."10
Sadly, Thudichum's view of human progress turned out to be wildly optimistic. Not only was the world NOT emerging from the dark times in the 19th century when it comes to opium use, it was actually chugging full speed ahead into a tunnel of willful ignorance and intolerance. Not only has America succeeded in outlawing opium use around the world in the last century and a half, it has outlawed almost ALL psychoactive substances, on the bizarre pretext that politicians should decide what medicines have positive uses for humanity, not doctors, not patients, and least of all the individuals who know best how they respond to such substances. And so our drug-related ignorance is now a matter of official public policy. Not only have we outlawed opium, but we have outlawed all other drugs that might turn out to have common sense benefits as well -- indeed, many that have been proven to have such benefits via anecdote, history and psychological common sense.
And so we are still living in the dark ages when it comes to drugs, and the darkness is more profound than ever. We can only hope that the UN's abandonment of their mad goal of creating a drug-free world is at least a small sign that Homo sapiens are once again at least groping around for light in their condition of self-imposed darkness.
AFTERWORD
Whenever the UN thinks of drug problems, they think of misuse and abuse of drugs - you know, the very things that drug prohibition helps bring about by refusing to teach safe use, refusing to regulate product as to quantity and quality, and refusing to re-legalize an ever-growing list of drug choices, thereby freeing the user from the temptation to become unwillingly dependent on any one medicine. There are a wide variety of other drug problems, however, of which the international organization has no clue whatsoever: like the problems caused by a LACK of drugs. Drug prohibition denies us the drugs that inspire and elate, which naturally leads to unnecessary suicides. For the same reason, drug prohibition leads to the unnecessary use of brain-damaging shock therapy. Drug prohibition also prevents us from recovering from addiction by outlawing the endless medicines that could help us through the rough patches of withdrawal and so prevent relapses.
The mass unavailability of beneficial drugs is by far a bigger "drug problem" these days than the misuse of demonized substances, which latter downside is caused, in any case, by drug prohibition itself.
The goal of a drug-free world is crazy because "drugs" do not exist, not in the pejorative sense that the word is used these days by Drug Warriors, namely, as substances that have no positive uses for anyone, anywhere, when used at any dose, for any reason. For politicians to claim in advance that certain drugs have no positive uses - and then to outlaw the very research that could prove them wrong about this - is the height of tyrannical absurdity. And yet the goal of a "drug-free" world is all about enforcing this willful ignorance with respect to drugs through imperialist and racist drug laws - laws that deny the human being sovereignty over their own mental and emotional states and even deny us access to Mother Nature, under the absurd belief that the goddess is a drug kingpin rather than a public benefactor -- as if the Drug Warrior were contradicting God himself in Genesis when he proclaimed that his creation was good.
But I will leave the final word on this topic to Allen Ginsberg, as quoted by editor Oliver Harris, in "The Yage Letters Redux":
"A materialist consciousness is attempting to preserve itself from dissolution by restriction and persecution of experience of the transcendental. One day perhaps the earth will be dominated by the illusion of separate consciousness, the bureaucrats having triumphed in seizing control of all roads of communication with the divine and restricting traffic. But sleep and death cannot evade the great dream of being and the victory of the bureaucrats of illusion is only an illusion of their separate world of consciousness."11
That's the problem with prohibition. It is not ultimately a health question but a question about priorities and sensibilities -- and those topics are open to lively debate and should not be the province of science, especially when natural law itself says mother nature is ours.
FDA drug approval is a farce when it comes to psychoactive medicine. The FDA ignores all the obvious benefits and pretends that to prove efficacy, they need "scientific" evidence. That's scientism, not science.
Did the Vedic People have a substance disorder because they wanted to drink enough soma to see religious realities?
I should have added to that last post: "I in no way want to glorify or condone drug demonization."
Malcolm X sensed an important truth about drugs: the fact that it was always a self-interested category error for Americans to place medical doctors in charge of mind and mood medicine.
Harm Reduction is not enough. We need Benefit Production as well. The autistic should be able to use compassion-enhancing drugs; dementia patients should be able to use the many drugs that improve and speed up mental processes.
I think many scientists are so used to ignoring "drugs" that they don't even realize they're doing it. Yet almost all books about consciousness and depression (etc.) are nonsense these days because they ignore what drugs could tell us about those topics.
"Dope Sick"? "Prohibition Sick" is more like it. The very term "dope" connotes imperialism, racism and xenophobia, given that all tribal cultures have used "drugs" for various purposes. "Dope? Junk?" It's hard to imagine a more intolerant, dismissive and judgmental terminology.
One merely has to look at any issue of Psychology Today to see articles in which the author reckons without the Drug War, in which they pretend that banned substances do not exist and so fail to incorporate any topic-related insights that might otherwise come from user reports.
In "How to Change Your Mind," Michael Pollan says psychedelic legalization would endanger young people. What? Prohibition forces users to decide for themselves which mushrooms are toxic, or to risk buying contaminated product. And that's safe, Michael?
That's the problem with prohibition. It is not ultimately a health question but a question about priorities and sensibilities -- and those topics are open to lively debate and should not be the province of science, especially when natural law itself says mother nature is ours.