an open letter to UNODC, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
August 29, 2024
There are no drugs of abuse. There are bad laws and social policies (like a refusal to educate) that make drugs dangerous.
Thousands of young people were not dying in the streets when opium was legal in America. They're dying in the streets now from opiates because prohibition limits their ability to find safe drugs with known dosages, while promoting fear instead of knowledge.
These deaths were all preventable -- and they were all caused by DRUG WARRIORS!
End the Drug War: get out of the business of ruining people's lives because they are trying to use time-honored medicines!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Start educating, stop arresting!
Start regulating, rather than demanding that everyone in the world stop using indigenous godsends!!! DRUG WARRIORS are as biased and insane as Francisco Pizarro when it comes to drug policy. They are in complete denial: they blame all the downsides of prohibition on "drugs" themselves.
No wonder. They don't want to accept the sad truth: that THEY are responsible for the thousands of deaths of young people on American streets.
Ten Tweets
against the hateful war on US
William James claimed that his constitution prevented him from having mystical experiences. The fact is that no one is prevented from having mystical experiences provided that they are willing to use psychoactive substances wisely to attain that end.
Prohibitionists have blood on their hands. People do not naturally die in the tens of thousands from opioid use, notwithstanding the lies of 19th-century missionaries in China. It takes bad drug policy to accomplish that.
"Drugs" is imperialist terminology. In the smug self-righteousness of those who use it, I hear Columbus's disdain for the shroom use of the Taino people and the Spanish disdain for the coca use of the Peruvian Indians.
The Drug War is the ultimate example of strategic fearmongering by self-interested politicians.
And where did politicians get the idea that irresponsible white American young people are the only stakeholders when it comes to the question of re-legalizing drugs??? There are hundreds of millions of other stakeholders: philosophers, pain patients, the depressed.
Until prohibition ends, rehab is all about enforcing a Christian Science attitude toward psychoactive medicines (with the occasional hypocritical exception of Big Pharma meds).
The DEA is gaslighting Americans, telling them that drugs with obvious benefits have no benefits whatsoever. Scientists collude in this lie thanks to their adherence to the emotion-scorning principles of behaviorism.
"The Harrison [Narcotics] Act made the drug peddler, and the drug peddler makes drug addicts.” --Robert A. Schless, 1925.
The UK just legalized assisted dying. This means that you can use drugs to kill a person, but you still can't use drugs to make that person want to live.
Big pharma drugs are designed to be hard to get off. Doctors write glowingly of "beta blockers" for anxiety, for instance, but ignore that fact that such drugs are hard -- and even dangerous -- to get off. We have outlawed all sorts of less dependence-causing alternatives.
William James claimed that his constitution prevented him from having mystical experiences. The fact is that no one is prevented from having mystical experiences provided that they are willing to use psychoactive substances wisely to attain that end.