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Drug War Agitprop

a list of Movies that promote the pernicious ideology of substance demonization

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

December 9, 2023



For decades, screenwriters have gotten away scot-free with writing movies that promote pernicious Drug War propaganda, like the idea that it's okay to kill and disfigure folks who dare to sell medicines of which racist politicians disapprove, and that it's just fine to treat folks like dirt if and when they use such medicines -- even though, when it comes to Big Pharma drugs, we say that they have a duty to "take their meds."

Below is an ever-growing list of movies that promote this hateful ideology that is antithetical to democracy and to a peaceful life of co-existence with our neighbors. I have to create this page because groups like Common Sense refuse to flag movies for drug-war propaganda. To the contrary, they flag movies for containing even talk about drugs, as if viewers need to be warned that a movie would not pass muster with Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the drug-hating religion of Christian Science.

Groups that flag drug use in movies should also flag the use of aspirin -- since the word "drugs," when used rationally, entails all medications1. The fact that Common Sense does not flag "aspirin" shows that they're not really worried about drugs per se, but rather about psychoactive substances that can improve and expand mind and mentation. They're scared, in short, of precisely the kinds of medicines that tribal peoples have always used for spiritual and psychological reasons -- the same tribal peoples that we drug-hating westerns have decimated and cheated out of their land.

Not content to destroy them physically, we now use Drug War ideology to discredit and vilify their nature-friendly philosophy of life, which held the heretical view that the mind is a kingdom that can and should be expanded with the help of psychoactive medicine2.

Movies


that promote Drug War ideology



Four Good Days


Glenn Close plays a hypocritical and vengeful lush who seeks to get her heroin-using daughter to seek treatment -- in other words, to pay $3000 for a cot and a shot of Naltrexone. It, of course, never occurs to Glenn's character, Dev, to let her daughter use legally with regulated supply and to re-legalize the hundreds of alternatives that would help her get off of heroin if desired onto a less problematic substance -- all without the gnashing of teeth called for by puritan ideology.

I say Glenn is a "lush" because: no sooner does her daughter pluck her last nerve than Glenn is off to the refrigerator to throw back a liberal helping of house wine. I say Glenn is "vengeful" because she shouts "That guy should be shot!" when she sees a teenage "drug dealer" -- the same teenager whom prohibition has massively incentivized to sell drugs. One wonders if Glenn shouldn't be thrown on a cot and forced to go liquor free, after listening to the relevant moralistic lectures from her own daughter.


Do you know of a movie that promotes the hateful ideology of the Drug War. (I know, I know: you're spoiled for choice, right?) Please let me know and I'll add them to this list of shame. Email: quasss@quass.com subject: Drug War movies.


Mass Media and Drugs




Wonder how America got to the point where we let the Executive Branch arrest judges? Look no further than the Drug War, which, since the 1970s, has demonized Constitutional protections as impediments to justice. The media has played its role with movies like "Running with the DEA," "The Crisis" and "The Runner." In the first of these three, the DEA are the "good guys" for murdering a suspect in cold blood. In the second, the DEA plants evidence to cover up the murder of a drug suspect by an indignant mother. And in the third, a white detective stages a raid that kills a young Black teenager that said detective refers to as "a waste of space."

The Drug War is all about making us hate -- making us hate anybody except for the folks that brought about the violence and drug problems in the first place: the damned prohibitionists who, having failed to outlaw liquor, turned their scapegoating on every less dangerous substance in the world.

Meanwhile, the media have done all they can to support this Drug War by holding the use of outlawed substances to safety standards that are never applied to any other risky activity on earth, meanwhile ignoring the fact that prohibition encourages ignorance and leads to contaminated drug supply. Thousands of American young people die each month because of unregulated supply and ignorance, not from drugs themselves.

The media also supports the Drug War by failing to hold it accountable for all the problems that it causes. Just read any article on inner-city shootings -- today's journalists will trace the problem to a lack of jobs or to global warming, to anything but the Drug War which incentivized violence in the first place. As for violence overseas, we're told that it's caused by evil rotten drug cartels -- without any acknowledgement that it was American drug policy that created those cartels out of whole cloth, just as liquor prohibition created the Mafia here in the States.

Meanwhile, the media have a field day superstitiously blaming drugs. It used to be PCP, ICE, oxy, crack, and now it's Fentanyl... It's all part of the DEA's tried-and-true formula to stay relevant, as academic Philip Jenkins clearly demonstrates in "Synthetic Panics": Take a local drug problem and publicize it so that it goes national. Then work with a film crew at "48 Hours" to show that the drug in question threatens the white American middle class. Then go to Congress, hat in hand, and accept billions to 'solve' the latest drug problem.

And Americans fall for it every time. In fact, their gullibility seems to be increasing over time. They love to hate drugs, so much so that drugs have become the new horror trope. Recent movies have taken to personifying "evil" drugs in the forms of Crack Raccoons and Meth Gators. It's sad that America has become so superstitious and childish about drugs -- and the media can take much of the blame.

  • Attention American Screenwriters: please stop spreading Drug War propaganda
  • Colorado plane crash caused by milk!
  • Common Nonsense from Common Sense Media
  • Cop shows as Drug War propaganda
  • COPS PRESENTS the top 10 traffic stops of 2023
  • COPS: TV Show for Racist Drug Warriors
  • Drug War Agitprop
  • Drug War Hysteria and the Opioid Crisis
  • Drug War Murderers
  • Drug War Quotes in TV and Movies
  • Fabricate at Will: editors give journalists free rein to lie about psychedelics
  • Fentanyl does not kill! Prohibition does!
  • Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide
  • Glenn Close but no cigar
  • How National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of coca
  • How Scientific American reckons without the Drug War
  • How the Atlantic Supports the Drug War
  • How the Atlantic Supports the Drug War Part II
  • Jim Beam and Drugs
  • Matthew Perry and the Drug War Ghouls
  • More Weed Bashing at the Washington Post
  • Movie Warnings from Uncommon Sense
  • Open Letter to Lisa Ling
  • Open Letter to Variety Critic Owen Glieberman
  • Potty-Mouth Drug Warriors
  • Science News Continues to Ignore the Drug War
  • Science News magazine continues to pretend that there is no War on Drugs
  • Science News Unveils Shock Therapy II
  • Stigmatize THIS
  • The Award for most biased reporting on psychedelic drugs in an online newspaper goes to…
  • The Criminalization of Nitrous Oxide is No Laughing Matter
  • The Runner: Racist Drug War Agitprop
  • The Unpeople of Southeast Washington, D.C.
  • Time for News Outlets to stop promoting Drug War lies
  • Unscientific American: the hypocritical materialism of Elon Musk
  • Weed Bashing at WTOP.COM
  • Why CBS 19 should stop supporting the Drug War


    • Notes:

    1: Common Nonsense from Common Sense Media (up)
    2: Just Say Yes to Mother Nature's Pharmacy (up)







    Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    People magazine should be fighting for justice on behalf of the thousands of American young people who are dying on the streets because of the drug war.

    Imagine someone starting their book about antibiotics by saying that he's not trying to suggest that we actually use them. We should not have to apologize for being honest about drugs. If prohibitionists think that honesty is wrong, that's their problem.

    What prohibitionists forget is that every popular but dangerous activity, from horseback riding to drug use, will have its victims. You cannot save everybody, and when you try to do so by law, you kill far more than you save, meanwhile destroying democracy in the process.

    Many articles in science mags need this disclaimer: "Author has declined to consider the insights gained from drug-induced states on this topic out of fealty to Christian Science orthodoxy." They don't do this because they know readers already assume that drugs will be ignored.

    David Chalmers says almost everything in the world can be reductively explained. Maybe so. But science's mistake is to think that everything can therefore be reductively UNDERSTOOD. That kind of thinking blinds researchers to the positive effects of laughing gas and MDMA, etc.

    We need to push back against the very idea that the FDA is qualified to tell us what works when it comes to psychoactive medicines. Users know these things work. That's what counts. The rest is academic foot dragging.

    It's really an insurance concern, however, disguised as a concern for public health. Because of America's distrust of "drugs," a company will be put out of business if someone happens to die while using "drugs," even if the drug was not really responsible for the death.

    This pretend concern for the safety of young drug users is bizarre in a country that does not even criminalize bump stocks for automatic weapons.

    Drug prohibition represents the biggest power grab by government in human history. It is the state control of pain relief and mental states.

    Psychiatrists never acknowledge the biggest downside to modern antidepressants: the fact that they turn you into a patient for life. That's demoralizing, especially since the best drugs for depression are outlawed by the government.


    Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






    Stigmatize THIS
    Psychiatrists Tell Me That It's Wrong to Criticize Antidepressants


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