Attention Teachers: Get your students talking honestly about drug prohibition
Start a lively discussion with these politically incorrect essays by one of the many victims of the War on Drugs
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
January 8, 2026
Welcome to abolishthedea.com, where students can read and discuss politically incorrect essays about drug prohibition from a guy with 'skin in the game,' a guy who has been turned into a ward of the healthcare state thanks to drug prohibition and shunted off onto a Big Pharma 'med' that is far harder to kick than heroin 123. This is not just another website about drug prohibition: this is a site where you're going to be introduced to ways of thinking about drug prohibition that you have never even thought of before, like the link between the psychiatric pill mill and drug prohibition, the link between the philosophy of materialism and drug prohibition, and the link between the rise of the healthcare state and drug prohibition -- even the link between the election of Donald Trump and drug prohibition. (Hint: the Drug War has succeeded as far as racists are concerned, because it has removed hundreds of thousands of minorities from the voting rolls, officially or otherwise, by charging them with the non-crime of selling the plants and fungi of Mother Nature after racists outlawed the same in violation of everything that America once stood for.)
In a hurry? Click here to see the lists of some useful essays for motivating a lively discussion!
Americans claim to hate drugs, and yet 1 in 4 American women are dependent on Big Pharma drugs for life, and we consider them to be good patients!
If you don't already see these links between drug prohibition and modern evils, you're not alone. Almost all Americans pretend that drug prohibition is a niche issue that only affects hippies and hedonists, when in reality it denies the depressed the right to heal and it causes kids in hospice to endure unnecessary pain4. Why? Because bureaucrats in Washington DC are monitoring our doctors for potential arrest should they prescribe in a way that does not conform with the puritan sensibilities of the west. The Drug War also outlaws academic freedom by denying us the right to follow up the studies of William James on other forms of consciousness5. Indeed, the Drug War Philosopher -- videlicet myself (one Brian Quass by name) -- is the only philosopher in the world who officially protested to the FDA about their plans to begin treating laughing gas as a drug6, which is to say their plans to make it harder than ever to use laughing gas safely -- even though the gas was already shamefully unavailable as a practical matter for the severely depressed whom it could have saved from suicide. Indeed, the downsides of drug prohibition are everywhere you look -- or they would be if prohibitionists had not convinced us from childhood that there are no good things about drug use and no bad things about prohibition.
Did I mention that drug prohibition has destroyed inner cities around the world by first introducing guns to the 'hood? This is really the perfect racist crime, because even the spokespeople for such communities refuse to draw the link between drug prohibition and gunfire. I know. I pester them on this topic frequently and they never so much as respond. But they're not alone in denial. Enemies of shock therapy refuse to notice the fact that shock therapy would not even be necessary if we were allowed to use psychoactive drugs for the benefit of humanity. Likewise, the many enemies of depression refuse to notice the fact that depression would not even be a "thing" in America had we followed Sigmund Freud's advice to have the depressed use cocaine78.
Here's hoping you have a Drug-War Free Valentine's Day!
It was not the depressed who hated the drug, it was their doctors, who had a vested interest in demonizing a panacea that could put them out of business. Doctors judged the drug based only on its statistically rare downsides, exactly as if they were to judge alcohol by studying alcoholics. Indeed, Wade Davis reported in Rolling Stone magazine last year that doctors were originally concerned because they had linked the drug with 400 cases of toxicity -- 4009. These doctors, of course, were statistically challenged when they demonized cocaine, for they failed to realize that it's a big world and people do die. Aspirin itself causes 3,000 deaths in the UK alone every year10! Alcohol causes 178,000 in America11. And yet 400 cases are a reason to throw hundreds of millions of the depressed under the bus?! Please. Let's have some perspective here!
But no, these doctors demonized the drug until it was easily outlawed by fearmonger politicians, thereby throwing MILLIONS of the depressed under the bus, like yours truly, who, as mentioned above was shunted off onto drugs that are far far harder to kick than heroin! Eh, thanks for nothin', doc! Indeed, no one in America seems to notice that the healthcare industry owes at least half of its very existence to the outlawing of just two time-honored godsends, namely coca and opium. Opium was considered a panacea in the past: a panacea. That was something that all the ancient physicians could agree on, including Galen, Avicenna, and Paracelsus.
And yet our pharmacologically clueless politicians have decided that opium is evil in itself – and so they have promoted a prohibition policy that has shunted opium fans off onto far harder drugs, opiates that are not regulated as to dose or quality. And then, rather than taking responsibility for the murderous outcome of their policy, they have the callous gall to blame the downsides of prohibition on drugs themselves. If pushed to respond to the fiasco they have brought about, the typical unrepentant Drug Warrior will say something cruel and stupid such as the following: "Your rights end the moment you are dying in MY streets!" "Oh, fine," I reply. "You do realize, of course, that the young people are only dying in YOUR streets because you outlawed the peaceable smoking of opium at home!" Where does the Drug Warrior want these opiate fans to go: to Mars?
No wonder Drug Warriors trash plant medicine with the pejorative epithet of 'drugs' -- they don't want people realizing that they have lost the fundamental right to take care of their own health with the bounty of Mother Nature.
This prohibition is a lose-lose situation for the country. On the one hand, Americans have given up their right to take care of their own health as they see fit – which, as Thomas Szasz reminds us, is a fundamental freedom, more basic than the right to vote12 – and on the other hand, they have made drug use far more dangerous and incentivized the sale of far harder medicines than those that they were demonizing in the first place. (I say "medicines" rather than "drugs" on purpose, for even the hardest drug can be used wisely -- as Carl Hart reminds us in Drug Use for Grown-Ups13 -- but Americans would rather scapegoat drugs than teach safe use and regulate product.)
Meanwhile, prohibitionists continue to run roughshod over the healthcare rights of the entire world in the greatest case of mass denial in human history.
They have known since liquor prohibition that the prohibition of desired substances leads to gunfire in the streets and the sale of contaminated product (like the aptly named rotgut of the twenties14). They have known that! And yet here are the prohibitionists, a full century later, still holding drugs to be the root of all evil, to the point where they will actually travel overseas to physically eradicate the substances that they blame for all the social problems back here in the States.
Even a child could see through the embarrassing insanity of such a policy. When they fall off a bike, they don't expect their parents to outlaw bikes: they expect their parents to teach "safe use" of that bike! Imagine if their parent said instead: "Don't worry, honey. We are going to fight to outlaw bikes here in the States, and then we will travel overseas to take these deadly contraptions away from everybody ELSE in the world too -- for their own benefit, of course!" And why would we want to take a panacea away from anyone?
As Thomas Szasz wrote in Ceremonial Chemistry: the ritual persecution of drugs, addicts, and pushers:
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. 15
And yet opium is a drug that our pharmacologically clueless politicians have convinced us provides no benefits whatsoever! None. No wonder that Szasz drew the following conclusion about this sad state of affairs:
"We are repelled by the opium habit not because it is harmful, but the other way around: we regard it as harmful in order to maintain our justification for prohibiting it."
If you are one of the rare few in America who is ready to tackle these issues head-on rather than simply ignore them, then welcome. I hope you will use this site and the unique insights that it contains to stimulate an open discussion of the laughable "philosophy" underlying the hateful policy of drug prohibition.
Read and discuss these politically incorrect essays by a victim of drug prohibition.
All uplifting drugs are potential antidepressants. Science denies that fact by claiming that drug efficacy must be proven quantitatively. And so they ignore anecdote, history and psychological common sense.
We throw people out of jobs for using "drugs," we praise them for using "meds." The categories are imaginary, made up by politicians who want to demonize certain substances, but not cigs or beer.
I have dissed MindMed's new LSD "breakthrough drug" for philosophical reasons. But we can at least hope that the approval of such a "de-fanged" LSD will prove to be a step in the slow, zigzag path toward re-legalization.
Almost all addiction services assume that the goal should be to get off all drugs. That is not science, it is Christian Science.
Racist drug warriors make cities dangerous with drug prohibition -- then they use that danger as an excuse to send in the National Guard.
That's so "drug war" of Rick: If a psychoactive substance has a bad use at some dose, for somebody, then it must not be used at any dose by anybody. It's hard to imagine a less scientific proposition, or one more likely to lead to unnecessary suffering.
Daily opium use is no more outrageous than daily antidepressant use. In fact, it's less outrageous. It's a time-honored practice and can be stopped with a little effort and ingenuity, whereas it is almost impossible to get off some antidepressants because they alter brain chemistry.
Over 45% of traumatic brain injuries are caused by horseback riding (ABC News). Tell your representatives to outlaw horseback riding and make it a federal offence to teach a child how to ride! Brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.
Folks point to the seemingly endless drugs that can be synthesized today and say it's a reason for prohibition. To the contrary, it's the reason why prohibition is madness. It results in an endless game of militaristic whack-a-mole at the expense of democratic freedoms.
Someone tweeted that fears about a Christian Science theocracy are "baseless." Tell that to my uncle who was lobotomized because they outlawed meds that could cheer him up -- tell that to myself, a chronic depressive who could be cheered up in an instant with outlawed meds.
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