Finally, a drug war opponent who checks all my boxes
an open letter to Julian Buchanan
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
February 28, 2024
The following correspondence is in response to Julian Buchanan's thoughtful message to me on Monday, February 26, 2024, on the Academia.edu website. Julian is a professor of social and culture studies at the Victoria University of Wellington. Our correspondence is in regard to Julian's 2018 post on WordPress entitled "Breaking Free From Prohibition: A Human Rights Approach to Successful Drug Reform."1
Hi, Julian.
Thanks for that. I have just read (or rather re-read) your excellent post entitled "Breaking Free From Prohibition: A Human Rights Approach to Successful Drug Reform," and I agree that we are, indeed, on the same page. Frankly, I seldom read something that I find as both new and useful when it comes to the Drug War (there is so much unacknowledged "group think" out there, even from those who seem to be on the "right" side of these issues), but your warnings about problematic regulation seem to qualify. State regulation, as you write, is not a panacea, since we first have to recognize that denying psychoactive substances to human beings in the first place is the real problem.
This kind of prohibition is particularly worrisome in light of the ethnobotanical research of folks like Richard Schultes, who tell us that all tribal people have used psychoactive drugs for personal and religious reasons2. The outlawing of such substances takes on imperial overtones in light of this fact. It's as if the western world was not satisfied with simply dispossessing these cultures of their lands, but we now want to eradicate the very nature-friendly ideology upon which their societies have thrived.
Another thing that strikes me in reading your article, which is something I have said many times myself though in different ways, is that the Drug Warrior never does a true cost/benefit analysis of legalization proposals (or rather of re-legalization proposals). They focus exclusively on the potential downsides of legalization for young suburban Americans while ignoring the potential downsides of criminalization for all sorts of other demographics, like pain patients, the depressed, or the philosopher looking to follow up the study of altered states that was pioneered by William James3 (not to mention the Blacks who will be killed in drive-by shootings and the Latin Americans who will become victims of civil wars, etc., and certainly not the poorly educated poor who will be lured into drug dealing, and thus into jail, with the financial incentives that prohibition creates for such illicit activities4).
And so I appreciate your acknowledgement that there are other stakeholders in the drugs debate besides "impressionable young people," because this is something that even legalization 5 proponents generally fail to address in public, as if they too believed that the debate is all about keeping suburban white people safe.
I believe that the whole idea that "something must be done" (outside of merely decriminalizing private drug use and drug production for personal purposes) is a result of Drug Warrior fearmongering via agencies like the DEA and NIDA, as described by Philip Jenkins in "Synthetic Panics."6 Of course, as a practical matter, the long-term answer will no doubt require some sort of benign government oversight, but this fact, as you suggest, should not stop us from doing the right thing in the here and now: namely ending substance prohibition.
I think, instead, that what needs to change is the world's mindset toward drugs. The world needs to simply "grow up" when it comes to psychoactive substances. We need to start thinking of psychoactive drug use in the same way that everyone now thinks of other potentially dangerous activities like horseback riding or driving a car: yes, they can be dangerous and even fatal, but we never consider outlawing these activities based on horror stories in the tabloid press7. Neither should a well-publicized drug overdose of a rock star lead us to outlaw drugs, let alone to deny the drug in question to anyone anywhere, at any dose, for any reason, ever. (This is the absurd logic of the Drug War: that a substance that has one bad use can never be used wisely anywhere ever.) This, I think, dovetails with your point that the problem is prohibition itself and that regulation schemes cannot help us if they are in denial about this fundamental fact.
We will also have to guard against a powerplay on the part of the healthcare industry to claim the right to decide for us if psychoactive substances are safe enough to be legal, since psychoactive drug use is all about attempts at personal improvement, self-transcendence and even religious experience, topics about which doctors qua doctors have no expertise whatsoever. All that they can tell us about psychoactive drugs is their potential physical actions at certain doses. So while they can define risks, they cannot themselves perform a risk/benefit analysis of psychoactive drug use given the highly personal psychological and sometimes spiritual nature of the benefits in question8.
I could go on and on, of course: that's why I have made this topic the focus of my retirement years, which, I believe, is another thing that we have in common.
Best of luck in your ongoing efforts.
Brian Quass
Abolishthedea.com
PS I also appreciate your reference to the medical benefits that we are forgoing in the name of prohibition. This is something that is rarely pointed out. I myself have come to the conclusion that we are living in a new Dark Ages thanks to prohibition, because science is currently blinded to all potential beneficial uses of outlawed psychoactive substances. Perhaps you are familiar with "The Book of the Damned" by Charles Hoyt9. He wrote in the early 1900s about how certain facts are "damned" (i.e. ignored) by science whose goal is to organize the world according to certain preconceptions. I believe Hoyt "didn't know from damnation," however, because since his time, we have damned all reports about positive effects of "drugs," and so dogmatically gone without an untold number of potential godsends, both psychological and physical.
PPS Sorry, but I can't resist one plug: I have launched a new radio station called Drug War Radio to combat Drug War ideology. I'm trying to mix good music with a great message! If you can think of those who might be interested, feel free to share a link.10
I'm still casting about for the best format, but I think it will be top-ranking alternative hits alternating with snippets of anti-drug-war chatter, quotes, parodies, etc. My real goal is to make prohibition literally laughable and to encourage others to do the same. We need plays and movies 1112 and books that highlight the absurdities to which Drug War ideology has led us: including that self-imposed ignorance about potential medical breakthroughs.
Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.
I don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.
Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the drug war ideology of substance demonization.
Imagine if we held sports to the same safety standard as drugs. There would be no sports at all. And yet even free climbing is legal. Why? Because with sports, we recognize the benefits and not just the downsides.
My consciousness, my choice.
Drug warriors have harnessed the perfect storm. Prohibition caters to the interests of law enforcement, psychotherapy, Big Pharma, demagogues, puritans, and materialist scientists, who believe that consciousness is no big "whoop" and that spiritual states are just flukes.
When Americans "obtain their majority" and wish to partake of drugs safely, they should be paired with older adults who have done just that. Instead, we introduce them to "drug abusers" in prerecorded morality plays to reinforce our biased notions that drug use is wrong.
"Just ONE HORSE took the life of my daughter." This message brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.
M. Pollan says "not so fast" when it comes to drug re-legalization. I say FAST? I've gone a whole lifetime w/o access to Mother Nature's plants. How can a botanist approve of that? Answer: By ignoring all legalization stakeholders except for the kids whom we refuse to educate.
The worst form of government is not communism, socialism or even unbridled capitalism. The worst form of government is a Christian Science Theocracy, in which the government controls how much you are allowed to think and feel in life.
ME: "What are you gonna give me for my depression, doc? MDMA? Laughing gas? Occasional opium smoking? Chewing of the coca leaf?" DOC: "No, I thought we'd fry your brain with shock therapy instead."
And so, by ignoring all "up" sides to drugs, the DEA points to potential addiction as a knock-down argument for their prohibition. This is the logic of children (and uneducated children at that). It is a cost-benefit analysis that ignores all benefits.
Pundits tell us that there are medical reasons not to "snort" cocaine. So what? There are medical reasons not to drive a car: you may have an accident. The question is: does cocaine use or car driving make sense in a given case! Details matter!
Imagine if we held sports to the same safety standard as drugs. There would be no sports at all. And yet even free climbing is legal. Why? Because with sports, we recognize the benefits and not just the downsides.
