Attention American Screenwriters: please stop spreading Drug War propaganda
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 27, 2022
The Drug War kills thousands of black Americans every year by incentivizing drug dealing and the creation of armed gangs, all so that America can outlaw plant medicines that grow at our very feet, some of which "drugs" have inspired entire religions. And yet if you search for the word "drugs" in American scripts for movies and TV, you will find virtually no positive references whatsoever. Every single character is in lockstep with the drug-war party line that tells us that psychoactive substances are pure evil -- unless, of course, they are created by Big Pharma .
Here are just a few such negative references from the over 4,000 hits that are returned when you search Scripts.com for the politically created category that we call "drugs":
"lowlife dope dealers" DIE HARD 2
typical example of how the Drug War Nazifies the English language
"you are a piece of dog turd" REPUBLIC OF DOYLE
Nazified Drug War reference to drug dealer
"If you ever use drugs, I'll kill you." JUNGLE FEVER
Yes, even the director of "Bamboozled" is bamboozled about drugs. He agrees with the Drug Warrior lie that there are psychoactive substances in nature that have no positive uses whatsoever, in any place, any time, any context. This superstitious way of thinking has forced me to go without godsend medicine my entire life. Thanks, Spike. Why do you want people to become drug-hating Christian Scientists, exactly? These things that you call "drugs" have inspired entire religions. Drugs like MDMA 1 can bring the whole world together regardless of ethnicity. Psychedelics can inspire a love for music. HG Wells and Jules Verne swore by coca wine to achieve the mental focus necessary to write their stories.
The conservatives are laughing as they rush to the polls to elect fascists, because they have bamboozled Spike Lee himself to sign off on the Drug War which brings death and incarceration 2 to inner city blacks. Throw away that "just say no" teddy bear with which you were bribed in childhood, Spike, and become truly woke.
(Look for yourself. Go to scripts.com, select "in scripts," and then enter "drugs" in the search form.)
Please remember, screenwriters: "drugs" is just a political term for psychoactive substances of which politicians disapprove. It's a highly hypocritical term, too, since it does not include tobacco and alcohol (which kill half a million Americans a year) nor does it include Big Pharma 34 meds (upon which 1 in 4 American women are addicted for life).
So the next time you write a TV episode or movie, please resist the knee-jerk temptation to echo the Drug War party line that Mother Nature's medicines are evil. By taking cheap shots at Mother Nature's psychoactive medicines, you support an anti-scientific Drug War that has turned inner cities into shooting galleries, caused civil wars overseas, empowered a self-styled "Drug War Hitler" in the Philippines, and disfranchised millions of minorities, removing them from the voting rolls and stealing elections for fascist politicians like Trump, who now want to execute the "drug dealers" that the Drug Warrior was previously happy just to marginalize. Think of the millions of depressed and anxious who must go without godsend medicines today because racist politicians have demonized Mother Nature's psychoactive godsends by dismissing them as "drugs."
Finally, think of the fate of America, for the Drug War is anti-American. To outlaw Mother Nature's bounty is a violation of the Natural Law upon which Jefferson founded our republic. That's why that garden-loving president was rolling in his grave when the DEA stomped onto Monticello 5 in 1987 and confiscated his poppy plants.
Author's Follow-up: September 29, 2023
I've since learned that the Nixon administration collaborated with Hollywood 6 to add "Drug War" messages to the plots of dozens of hit television series, including Room 222, The FBI, and Hawaii Five-O. (See Drug Warriors and Their Prey). The Clinton administration had the same comfy-cozy arrangement with TV producers. And if Nixon and Clinton were up to that, God only knows how many drug-war messages we've received from the big and small screens thanks to the Christian Science trifecta of Reagan and the two Bushes. No wonder we now have films like "Running with the Devil" in which DEA agents shoot suspects at point-blank range and torture other suspects by hanging them from meathooks in their speedos. It's the final solution, albeit so far on the small scale. That's how they get away with it, in part. It's the final solution on the installment plan, to make sure no one is finally moved to object. That's how DA's got away with the outrageous confiscation of an entire 200-acre estate for finding a marijuana joint somewhere on the premises (who cares where it came from). They kept the confiscations at a level where they could enrich themselves and their police departments while not awakening the ire of the drowsy bamboozled public. The public was primed to accept Gestapo tactics, as it were, on the installment plan.
The Drug War Ghouls get busy any time a well-known figure dies prematurely, especially when the figure in question is a rock star or actor. You can just hear them whispering childishly: "Aww! Were they on any drugs? Were they on any drugs?" The presumption behind such tittering is that drugs are evil and can only lead to death and destruction. Of course, those who hold this viewpoint always forget that the drug war does everything it can to make such outcomes of drug use a self-fulfilling prophecy by discouraging education about safe use and by ensuring corrupt and uncertain drug supply with their eternal kneejerk prohibition. This is all completely inexcusable. The drug warriors cause death. They are the villains. They are the criminals. Take the so-called opiate crisis. Young people were not dying en masse from opioids when such drugs were legal in the United States. It took prohibition to bring that about.
Chesterton might as well have been speaking about the word 'addiction' when he wrote the following: "It is useless to have exact figures if they are exact figures about an inexact phrase."
I know. I'm on SNRIs. But SSRIs and SNRIs are both made with materialist presumptions in mind: that the best way to change people is with a surgical strike at one-size-fits-all chemistry. That's the opposite of the shamanic holism that I favor.
I could tell my psychiatrist EXACTLY what would "cure" my depression, even without getting addicted, but everything involved is illegal. It has to be. Otherwise I would have no need of the psychiatrist.
It is consciousness which, via perception, shapes the universe into palpable forms. Otherwise it's just a chaos of particles. The very fact that you can refer to "the sun" shows that your senses have parsed the raw data into a specific meaning. "We" make this universe.
Google founders used to enthuse about the power of free speech, but Google is actively shutting down videos that tell us how to grow mushrooms -- MUSHROOMS, for God's sake. End the drug war and this hateful censorship of a free people.
Talking about being in denial: drug warriors blame all of the problems that they cause on "drugs" and then insist that the entire WORLD accept their jaundiced view of the natural bounty that God himself told us was good.
His answer to political opposition is: "Lock them up!" That's Nazi speak, not American democracy.
So much harm could be reduced by shunting people off onto safer alternative drugs -- but they're all outlawed! Reducing harm should ultimately mean ending this prohibition that denies us endless godsends, like the phenethylamines of Alexander Shulgin.
"I can take this drug that inspires me and makes me compassionate and teaches me to love nature in its byzantine complexity, or I can take Prozac which makes me unable to cry at my parents' funeral. Hmm. Which shall it be?" Only a mad person in a mad world would choose SSRIs.
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.
Chesterton might as well have been speaking about the word 'addiction' when he wrote the following: "It is useless to have exact figures if they are exact figures about an inexact phrase."
