How racist politicians deprived the world of a panacea
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
September 5, 2025
In Ceremonial Chemistry, Thomas Szasz reminds us that:
"In Galenic practice the most useful medicine was a theriaca, or antidote, named Electuarium theriacale magnum, a compound composed of several ingredients, among them opium and wine.1"
In other words, for nearly 2,000 years, the Western world had made use of the poppy to relieve common ailments. Then along came sinophobic American politicians in the early 20th century, insisting that the drug would ensnare our dear white young people in the vice of "the Orient." Suddenly the world's universally recognized godsend medicine was illegal -- and medical professionals were waiting in the wings to take advantage of that fact, to acclaim themselves the white knights who were henceforth going to cure all the illnesses that we laypeople used to cure at home with a little laudanum. And so they demonized this time-honored panacea as having no positive uses whatsoever. Can you believe it? They told us that the one recognized panacea in the world has no uses whatsoever! It still amazes me that no one on the Drug War bandwagon -- which is to say all politicians -- have ever had any scruples about the endless stakeholders who go without godsend medicines thanks to their mischaracterization of opium.
All of our problems with opioids and opiates could have been avoided had the busybody Chicken Littles in America left well enough alone and let folks continue to smoke regulated opium peaceably in their own homes. Instead, we denied them their godsend right to self-medication 2 and what was the result? Determined users are now using opiates 50 times the strength of smoked opium -- opiates that are unregulated as to quantity and quality, with the result that we have daily deaths from unintentional overdoses.
This is how the Drug Warrior "solves" a problem, in the manner of the governess in Turn of the Screw by Henry James. In their attempts to protect white young people, they kill hundreds of thousands and turn cities into war zones and destroy the rule of law in Latin America, not to mention in the United States itself. Their Drug War has killed over a half a million since 1917 alone3. Someday, we need a reckoning that will hold these prohibitionists responsible for all these completely unnecessary deaths -- deaths that could have been prevented by a sane drug policy involving drug regulation to allow for the safest possible use.
This anti-Chinese movement, by the way, was led by Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor. Here is an extended quote from Szasz to illustrate the hateful bona fides of America's war on the panacea known as opium.
"Presaging by many decades the press-agentry of totalitarian propagandists, Gompers creates, out of his hate-filled fantasies, the image of the Chinese opium fiend— an image whose impact has possibly been even greater than the impact of the famous Nazi mendacities. According to Hill [labor activist Herbert Hill], 'Gompers conjures up a terrible picture of how the Chinese entice little white boys and girls into becoming ‘opium fiends.’ Condemned to spend their days in the back of laundry rooms, these tiny lost souls would yield up their virgin bodies to their maniacal yellow captors. ‘What other crimes were committed in those dark fetid places,' Gompers writes, ‘when these little innocent victims of the Chinamen’s viles were under the influence of the drug, are almost too horrible to imagine. . . . There are hundreds, aye, thousands, of our American girls and boys who have acquired this deathly habit and are doomed, hopelessly doomed, beyond the shadow of redemption.'4"
Hopelessly doomed? If anyone is hopelessly doomed today, it is the user of Effexor5 who wishes to foreswear the drug. In my experience, it is simply impossible to get off of this Big Pharma 67 antidepressant. The drug alters brain chemistry in such a way that there is "no going home again." Of course, the drug could clearly be "kicked" in a world in which we had a right to use all other time-honored medicines, including opium. In such a world, the user could obfuscate and transcend the downsides of Effexor withdrawal. But in the age of drug prohibition, this is as close to impossible as a drug could ever come to hopelessly dooming a user to eternal use. Meanwhile, as Jim Hogshire reports in "Opium for the Masses8," the physical side of unwanted opium dependency can be conquered in a week, with the help of drugs. Moreover, millions have used opium safely on a daily basis for entire long lifetimes. I am not advocating such use -- least of all in a world in which one can be arrested for taking care of their own mental health -- nor am I advocating the denunciation of such use -- but that does not mean that I will remain silent as we are gaslighted9 by our politicians and our materialist scientists into believing that a panacea has no positive uses whatsoever!
The reader need scarcely bother looking online for positive news about opium -- since drug-war propaganda has permeated the brains of almost all writers on this topic. For the other side of the story -- the non-hysterical side -- I recommend two books: first, Jim Hogshire's "Opium for the Masses10," and also "The Truth about Opium" by William H. Brereton11. This latter book contains a series of lectures given during the time when the Anti-Opium Society in Britain was disseminating a Big Lie about supposed opium-caused misery in China. Brereton explains how the anti-opium movement in Britain was founded on a big lie by an American missionary, who reported that two million Chinese had died from smoking opium, which was a complete fabrication. Of course, protestant missionaries had a vested interest in stopping the Chinese from using opium: they wanted the Chinamen to put down his pipe and pick up a Christian Bible instead. In light of these motives, the outlawing of opium in the west is a religious action: it makes drug-hating Christian Science the law of the land when it comes to psychoactive medicines.
Oregon has decided to go back to the braindead plan of treating substance use as a police matter. Might as well arrest people at home since America has already spread their drug-hating Christian Science religion all over the world.
Americans love to blame drugs for all their problems. Young people were not dying in the streets when opiates were legal. The prohibition mindset is the problem, not drugs.
The benefits of outlawed drugs read like the ultimate wish-list for psychiatrists. It's a shame that so many of them are still mounting a rear guard action to defend their psychiatric pill mill -- which demoralizes clients by turning them into lifetime patients.
MDMA legalization has suffered a setback by the FDA. These are the people who think Electro Shock Therapy is not used often enough! What sick priorities.
Drug warriors aren't just deciding for us about drugs. They're telling us that we no longer need Coleridge poems, Lovecraft stories, Robin Williams, Sherlock Holmes, or the soma-inspired Hindu religion.
Drug War censorship is supported by our "science" magazines, which pretend that outlawed drugs do not exist, and so write what amount to lies about the supposed intransigence of things like depression and anxiety.
Katie MacBride's one-sided attack on MAPS reminds me of why I got into an argument with Vincent Rado. Yes, psychedelic hype can go too far, but let's solve the huge problem first by ending the drug war!!!
People groan about "profiling," but why is profiling even a "thing"? There would be little or no profiling of blacks if the Drug War did not exist.
UNESCO celebrates the healing practices of the Kallawaya people of South America. What hypocrisy! UNESCO supports a drug war that makes some of those practices illegal!
They still don't seem to get it. The drug war is a whole wrong way of looking at the world. It tells us that substances can be judged "up" or "down," which is anti-scientific and blinds us to endless beneficial uses.
Oregon has decided to go back to the braindead plan of treating substance use as a police matter. Might as well arrest people at home since America has already spread their drug-hating Christian Science religion all over the world.