The Drug War Philosopher is "not quite dead yet," at least as of July 3, 2024, but he recently decided to get a head start on his epitaph after reflecting on the transiency of human life. Hey, ya never know, right? Besides, he does not trust anyone else to write it. (Don't take that personally, though, he's not even sure that he trusts himself! He says he was keeping a close eye on himself as he wrote the following, determined to tell the bald truth without flattery or bias. What more can we ask?) He also felt that this exercise would serve as a memento mori of sorts to help him put hard times in perspective. Not that he's been suffering lately, of course, but we all know that old age is full of landmines and he wants to deny Fate the opportunity of saying, "Nyeh-nyeh, I told ya so!"
Epitaph: white copy
Brian Quass, the Drug War Philosopher, died yesterday at the probably ripe old age of _____, bless him. Between 2018 and his death, he wrote hundreds of insightful (if perhaps somewhat underappreciated) essays against the War on Drugs under the nom de plume of "the Drug War Philosopher" at abolishthedea.com1. In that role, he was the first to recognize the sinister symbiosis between the Drug War and the philosophy of materialism 2, thanks to which scientists dogmatically ignore all evidence of drug efficacy except that which can be discovered under a microscope3. He was also credited with unmasking the Christian Science bona fides of the Drug War4, which he characterized as a form of religious sharia insofar as it posits the ontological evil of drugs per se, while making a few glaringly hypocritical exceptions for a relative handful of psychoactive substances, of course, such as alcohol and so-called Big Pharma meds.
He was also one of the first Americans to reveal the dystopian nature of the psychiatric pill mill5, thanks to which 1 in 4 American women are dependent upon Big Pharma 67 antidepressants 8 for life9, a state of affairs which Brian was wont to refer to as "a real-life Stepford Wives."10 In a similar literary vain, he would draw analogies between the Drug War and the sci-fi classic "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury, in which the government burned books in order to enforce "right" thinking. Brian claimed that the Drug War was actually worse than this fictional dystopia, that it represented a kind of "Fahrenheit 452," in which the government burns plants instead of books, this time with the goal of controlling not simply WHAT you can think in this life, but also how and how much you can think11.
Brian also dropped a bombshell on modern psychology back in November of 2022 with his essay entitled "The Naive Psychology of the Drug War,"12 in which he accused the field of losing track of reality thanks to its slavish adherence to Drug War ideology, especially to the anti-scientific postulate that psychoactive drugs can have no positive uses whatsoever, no, not at any dose, in any situation, at any time. By thus kowtowing to Drug War orthodoxy, the field was forced to deny (or at least to ignore) the once-obvious psychological benefits of ecstasy and anticipation, thereby discounting the efficacy of all drugs except those that work behind the scenes, at the molecular level: in other words those very drugs upon which 1 in 4 American women are now dependent for life (despite the fact that few users think these latter drugs do more than make life bearable at best).
Brian showed us that once we acknowledge the psychological benefits of psychoactive drug use, it immediately follows that hundreds of drugs could function as antidepressants13, not by changing some underlying chemistry but by cheering up a user on a given schedule and giving them something to look forward to, thereby creating a virtuous circle of use. Brian took pains to explain (to the ever-worried Drug Warriors in his audience) that such use need not develop into addiction insofar as a wide variety of drugs could be used for this purpose in a free world, such that the user need not even know the precise name of the substance being employed at any time (assuming here that the drug is being supplied by an informed friend or counselor). Brian would then typically target any remaining doubters by observing that surely even addiction is better than suicide, especially since that addiction14 would be both rare and treatable in a world in which all medicines were free and in which we learned to use them wisely. Finally, Brian would typically end these admittedly informative harangues by asking the following question of his skeptics:
"Why is it my medical duty to take my 'meds' every day of my life while I can go to jail for smoking an opium 15 pipe at night?"
Brian has been accused by critics of discounting the racist origins of the Drug War, though in reality he has written extensively on that topic. (See "The Runner: Racist Drug War Agitprop"16, "COPS: TV show for racist Drug Warriors"17, "The Racist Drug War Killed Floyd George"18, and "Whiteout"19.) He believed, in fact, that the racist origins of the Drug War were beyond dispute, as are the often unacknowledged racist viewpoints that underlie the call for continued prohibition today. However, Brian was not, nor has ever claimed to be, an historian. His forte was in revealing how the Drug War, however created, was at odds with the American values of personal liberty and scientific freedom and that it fails the laugh test when considered philosophically, that is, in light of the dodgy but unspoken assumptions upon which it is defended as public policy.
Brian's legacy includes the Partnership for a Death Free America, an agency that he founded in 2023 to lampoon the idea that drugs are too risky to be used sensibly by Americans20. This agency works to outlaw ALL risky human activities and in so doing demonstrates the sheer idiocy of outlawing drug use, which, as it turns out, is far less risky than many other activities that we allow and even "glorify" today as a society21, such as hang-gliding, free climbing, and free diving -- and this despite the fact that the Drug War does everything it can to make drug use dangerous, by denying safe supply and refusing to share the simple truth about drugs. Brian's Partnership, of course, is a satirical "take" on the Partnership for a Drug Free America, that politically inspired non-profit which sought to scare Americans in the 1980s by promoting the Big Lie that drugs fry the brain22, without, of course, specifying the names of the drugs nor under which conditions such alleged incineration was taking place. But then the Drug Warriors are never ones for detail: their goal is not to teach you anything about drugs but rather to make you feel a certain way about them, in short, to fear them, no questions asked. Of course, what REALLY fries the brain is electroshock therapy23, the depression "treatment" that is made necessary to this very day thanks to the Drug War and the fact that scaremongers have enticed politicians to outlaw all the godsend medicines that could have been used instead.
Brian was grateful to his dying day for the existence of at least a few online followers who actually seemed to understand what he was saying. Remarkably, though, Brian cherished no apparent malice whatsoever toward the seemingly endless list of movers-and-shakers in this world who ignored him entirely during his lifetime24. Indeed, some might say that they "cut him ruthlessly" -- it seems that once you've joined the club of movers and shakers, you don't want to let just anybody join in all your reindeer games. But Brian did not seem to care, although in November 2023, he did absent-mindedly suggest that he might well be considered the Ignaz Semmelweis2526 of our times (i.e., the modern Cassandra who tried in vain to convince a deaf and indignant audience that they had gotten ahold of the wrong side of the stick, to put it mildly). He apparently knew, however, that the truth was bound to prevail at long last, that he was indeed on the right side of history, and that it was always clear -- then as now -- that it was madness to outlaw Mother Nature in the first place and that by doing so we caused all the problems that we sought to solve... and then some.
Donations may be sent to the Drug Policy Alliance27.
Author's Follow-up: December 10, 2024
I wonder if one can have "End the Drug War" on their tomb, along with a little nearby kiosk containing material supporting that cause?
We should hold the DEA criminally responsible for withholding spirit-lifting drugs from the depressed. Responsible for what, you ask? For suicides and lobotomies, for starters.
The Drug War is based on two HUGE lies: 1) that prohibition has no downsides, & 2) that drug use has no upsides.
They drive to their drug tests in pickup trucks with license plates that read "Don't tread on me." Yeah, right. "Don't tread on me: Just tell me how and how much I'm allowed to think and feel in this life. And please let me know what plants I can access."
Until prohibition ends, rehab is all about enforcing a Christian Science attitude toward psychoactive medicines (with the occasional hypocritical exception of Big Pharma meds).
Drug Warriors rail against drugs as if they were one specific thing. They may as well rail against penicillin because cyanide can kill.
Don't the Oregon prohibitionists realize that all the thousands of deaths from opiates is so much blood on their hands?
Psychiatrists prescribe drugs that muck about with a patient's biochemical baseline, making them chemically dependent and turning them into patients for life.
No substance is bad in and of itself. Fentanyl has positive uses, at specific doses, for specific people, in specific situations. But the drug war votes substance up or down. That is hugely anti-scientific and it blocks human progress.
It's rich when Americans outlaw drugs and then insist that those drugs did not have much to offer in any case. It's like I took away your car and then told you that car ownership was overrated.
There are times when it is clearly WRONG to deny kids drugs (whatever the law may say). If your child is obsessed with school massacres, he or she is an excellent candidate for using empathogenic meds ASAP -- or do we prefer even school shootings to drug use???
We should hold the DEA criminally responsible for withholding spirit-lifting drugs from the depressed. Responsible for what, you ask? For suicides and lobotomies, for starters.