How the DEA takes our eyes off the prize by conflating coca with cocaine and opium with fentanyl
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
January 9, 2022
The coca leaf was used successfully for millennia by the Peruvian Indians to create universal harmony and group cohesion, long before the creation of cocaine in the late 19th century as an anesthetic for eye surgery. That's why the DEA never talks about outlawing coca, but rather about outlawing cocaine -- a drug which they can more plausibly associate with blacks and violence. Nor does the DEA want us to know about coca wine, which likewise was used uneventfully by such 19th-century luminaries as Jules Verne, HG Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Alexandre Dumas.
Opium had been used culturally and harmoniously by the Chinese for millennia (notwithstanding the hysterical reports of the Christian Anti-Opium Society of 19th-century England) long before British merchants sought to profit from this cultural preference. THE DEA strategy? Never talk about opium 1 -- talk about its synthesized rivals instead.
That's why the DEA's full-time job is to keep us frightened of the latest forms of crack cocaine and opioids -- anything to keep our minds off of the fact that the DEA has outlawed time-honored medicines and that the DEA has thereby turned Americans into flagrant imperialists, whose armies range around the globe, digging up harvests and spraying godsend medicine with weed killers that cause Parkinson's disease.
The DEA fails to notice (or to care) that they have thereby incentivized the use of all these more dangerous substances by banning all their less dangerous competition.
Author's Follow-up: January 9, 2023
Of course, even crack cocaine can be used non-addictively, but that's a factoid that the DEA will never bother to tell you.
Some fat cat should treat the entire Supreme Court to a vacation at San Jose del Pacifico in Mexico, where they can partake of the magic mushroom in a ceremony led by a Zapotec guide.
I have yet to find one psychiatrist who acknowledges the demoralizing power of being turned into a patient for life. They never list that as a potential downside of antidepressant use.
John Halpern wrote a book about opium, subtitled "the ancient flower that poisoned our world." What nonsense! Bad laws and ignorance poison our world, NOT FLOWERS!
Alcohol makes me sleepy. But NOT coca wine. The wine gives you an upbeat feeling of controlled energy, without the jitters of coffee and without the fury of steroids. It increases rather than dulls mental focus.
The DEA stomped onto Thomas Jefferson's estate in 1987 and confiscated the founding father's poppy plants in violation of everything he stood for, politically speaking. And the TJ Foundation helped them! They sold out Jefferson.
I knew all along that Measure 110 in Oregon was going to be blamed for the problems that the drug war causes. Drug warriors never take responsibility, despite all the blood that they have on their hands.
It's no wonder that folks blame drugs. Carl Hart is the first American scientist to openly say in a published book that even the so-called "hard" drugs can be used wisely. That's info that the drug warriors have always tried to keep from us.
Champions of indigenous medicines claim that their medicines are not "drugs." But they miss the bigger point: that there are NO drugs in the sense that drug warriors use that term. There are no drugs that have no positive uses whatsoever.
When is the Holocaust Museum going to recognize that the Drug War has Nazified American life? Probably, on the same day that the Jefferson Foundation finally admits to having sold out Jefferson by inviting the DEA onto his estate in 1987 to confiscate his poppy plants.
The drug war is a way for conservatives to keep America's eyes OFF the prize. The right-wing motto is, "Billions for law enforcement, but not one cent for social programs."
Of course, even crack cocaine can be used non-addictively, but that's a factoid that the DEA will never bother to tell you.
Some fat cat should treat the entire Supreme Court to a vacation at San Jose del Pacifico in Mexico, where they can partake of the magic mushroom in a ceremony led by a Zapotec guide.