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Harold & Kumar Support the Drug War

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

November 12, 2019



I've already found leisure to dilate on the anti-democratic impact of drug-war movies like 'Running with the Devil,' in which the DEA agent is the (ahem) 'hero' who combats those bad guy plant sellers by torturing them and shooting them in cold blood. Although this kind of movie deserves to be panned for its ideological toxicity, don't hold your breath waiting for movie critics to bash the movie on that score. And as far as parental watch dog groups are concerned, count on them to lambaste such pics for nudity, violence, and naughty words, but don't expect to hear a peep from them about the pro-fascist message of such DEA propaganda. Johnny must not swear, of course, but if he wants to torture and murder folks who traffic in Mother Nature's plants, more power to him.

But there is another genre of pictures that helps sell the pro-fascist Drug War sensibility to gullible Americans: namely, comedies such as 'Harold & Kumar go to White Castle,' in which illegal plant substances are uniquely associated with sexual abandon and blatant irresponsibility. Such films would be innocuous enough in a culture that spoke honestly about drugs -- that recognized both their benefits and ills -- but in our drug-war society, which dogmatically recognizes only the misuse of outlawed substances, such movies reinforce the Drug Warrior supposition that there is no sensible reason to use the plants that the government has chosen to criminalize. So as Neil Patrick Harris snorts cocaine off the tush of a pole dancer while driving Harold's car through off-road vegetation, one can just hear the 'lock-em-up' conservative in the audience saying to himself: 'You see? Aren't drugs just the worst thing in the world?!' And so we lie to ourselves to keep this Drug War myth going. We ignore responsible use of banished plants and erase such use from history.

Nowhere is this historical revisionism more striking than in the case of Freud's use of cocaine, because, properly considered, Freud's cocaine use calls into question most of modern psychiatry's pieties (such as 'no pain, no gain,' 'we must treat the REAL causes,' 'feel-good drugs are bad,' etc.) It begs the question: if Freud fought off fatigue and depression with cocaine, abjuring theoretical psychoanalysis for that purpose, and thereby amassing a prolific vocational output that led to an unprecedented degree of self-actualization in his life, why should the rest of us be forced by law to treat our similar problems with the latest popular theoretical therapy? Why can't we, too, avail ourselves of the real politik of plant-based therapy to attain self-fulfillment?

Of course, the modern psychiatrist will chide: 'But that's just treating the symptoms, that's not treating the REAL illness,' to which we say 'So what?' Despite materialist claims to the contrary, we do not know any one single cause for depression and fatigue, and indeed it is thanks to our determination to find this highly improbable El Dorado that we now have a nation of addicts, addicted to pills that claimed (falsely as it turns out) to correct a chemical imbalance peculiar to the depressed.

Besides, isn't the goal of psychiatry to grant the patient a life of self-actualization? In that case, cocaine worked a treat for Freud, not by giving him that self-fulfillment directly (not by targeting some supposititious self-fulfillment chemical!), but by arousing in him the psychophysical baseline condition that permitted him to succeed on his own. That was not a copout for Freud, but if we insist on calling it so, then God grant us all such a copout that leads to professional self-fulfillment in life.

Back to H&K:

A cop says: 'I just found enough dope in the car to put these skateboard punks in jail for the next couple of years.'

And the Drug Warrior in the audience cheers.

But think how costly this sense of satisfaction is : By putting away punks, we have denied godsend medicines to the elderly, the depressed, the victims of PTSD.

It's this focus on punishing (and/or protecting) punks through substance prohibition -- aided by Hollywood's selective depiction of drug use as exclusively hedonistic -- that denies the psychologically desperate the plant medicines that could make their lives livable, often enjoyable, again.

God grant Americans can someday be satisfied with punishing a punk's bad actions alone, not their mere possession of plants. That way, when we do punish them, we're not also punishing the psychologically needy as we do today, forcing them by law to eschew Mother Nature's therapies in favor of addictive Big Pharma pills that need to be taken every single day for life.

The protection and/or punishment of the punks of the world must stop taking precedence over the psychological needs and, indeed, rights of the vast majority of humanity, for we're not talking about privileges here: we're talking about the resurrection of the earthling's natural birthright to the plants and fungi that grow at their very feet.


Drug War Movies




Hollywood supports the War on Drugs by refusing to show wise use while always depicting drug use in the worst possible light. Like all media, they refuse to show beneficial use -- and if they're not depicting drugs as dangerous dead-ends, they're at least showing use to be frivolous and dangerous. The producers kowtow to Drug Warrior sensibilities.

  • All these Sons
  • Attention American Screenwriters: please stop spreading Drug War propaganda
  • Cop shows as Drug War propaganda
  • COPS: TV Show for Racist Drug Warriors
  • Drug War Propaganda from Hollywood
  • Glenn Close but no cigar
  • Harold & Kumar Support the Drug War
  • How Variety and its film critics support Drug War fascism
  • Moonfall
  • Running with the DEA -- er, I mean the Devil
  • Running with the torture loving DEA
  • She Devils and Substance Prohibition
  • The Runner: Racist Drug War Agitprop
  • Why Hollywood Owes Richard Nixon an Oscar

  • Pharmacologically Savvy Empaths




    In an ideal world, we would replace psychiatrists with what I call pharmacologically savvy empaths, compassionate healers with a vast knowledge of psychoactive substances from around the world and the creativity to suggest a wide variety of protocols for their safe use as based on psychological common sense. By so doing, we would get rid of the whole concept of 'patients' and 'treat' everybody for the same thing: namely, a desire to improve one's mind and mood. But the first step toward this change will be to renounce the idea that materialist scientists are the experts when it comes to mind and mood medicine in the first place. This is a category error. The experts on mind and mood are real people with real emotion, not physical doctors whose materialist bona fides dogmatically require them to ignore all the benefits of drugs under the belief that efficacy is to be determined by looking under a microscope.

    This materialism blinds such doctors to common sense, so much so that it leads them to prefer the suicide of their patient to the use of feel-good medicines that could cheer that patient up in a trice. For the fact that a patient is happy means nothing to the materialist doctor: they want the patient to 'really' be happy -- which is just their way of saying that they want a "cure" that will work according to the behaviorist principles to which they are dedicated as modern-day materialists. Anybody could prescribe a drug that works, after all: only a big important doctor can prescribe something that works according to theory. Sure, the prescription has a worse track record then the real thing, but the doctor's primary job is to vindicate materialism, not to worry about the welfare of their patient. And so they place their hands to their ears as the voice of common sense cries out loudly and clearly: "You could cheer that patient up in a jiffy with a wide variety of medicines that you have chosen to demonize rather than to use in creative and safe ways for the benefit of humankind!" I am not saying that doctors are consciously aware of this evil --merely that they are complicit in it thanks to their blind allegiance to the inhumane doctrine of behaviorism.

    This is the sick reality of our current approach. And yet everybody holds this mad belief, this idea that medical doctors should treat mind and mood conditions.

    How do I know this?

    Consider the many organizations that are out to prevent suicide. If they understood the evil consequences of having medical doctors handle our mind and mood problems, they would immediately call for the re-legalization of drugs and for psychiatrists to morph into empathizing, drug-savvy shamans. Why? Because the existing paradigm causes totally unnecessary suicides: it makes doctors evil by dogmatically requiring them to withhold substances that would obviously cheer one up and even inspire one (see the uplifting and non-addictive meds created by Alexander Shulgin, for instance). The anti-suicide movement should be all about the sane use of drugs that elate. The fact that it is not speaks volumes about America's addiction to the hateful materialist mindset of behaviorism.

    More proof? What about the many groups that protest brain-damaging shock therapy? Good for them, right? but... why is shock therapy even necessary? Because we have outlawed all godsend medicines that could cheer up almost anybody "in a trice." And why do we do so? Because we actually prefer to damage the brain of the depressed rather than to have them use drugs. We prefer it! Is this not the most hateful of all possible fanaticisms: a belief about drugs that causes us to prefer suicide and brain damage to drug use? Is it really only myself who sees the madness here? Is there not one other philosopher on the planet who sees through the fog of Drug War propaganda to the true evil that it causes?

    This is totally unrecognized madness -- and it cries out for a complete change in America's attitude, not just toward drugs but toward our whole approach to mind and mood. We need to start learning from the compassionate holism of the shamanic world as manifested today in the cosmovision of the Andes. We need to start considering the human being as an unique individual and not as an interchangeable widget amenable to the one-size-fits-all cures of reductionism. The best way to fast-track such change is to implement the life-saving protocol of placing the above-mentioned pharmacologically savvy empaths in charge of mind and mood and putting the materialist scientists back where they belong: in jobs related to rocket chemistry and hadron colliders. We need to tell the Dr. Spocks of psychology that: "Thanks, but no thanks. We don't need your help when it comes to subjective matters, thank you very much indeed. Take your all-too-logical mind back to the physics lab where it belongs."

  • All these Sons
  • Attention American Screenwriters: please stop spreading Drug War propaganda
  • Cop shows as Drug War propaganda
  • COPS: TV Show for Racist Drug Warriors
  • Drug War Propaganda from Hollywood
  • Glenn Close but no cigar
  • Harold & Kumar Support the Drug War
  • How Variety and its film critics support Drug War fascism
  • Moonfall
  • Running with the DEA -- er, I mean the Devil
  • Running with the torture loving DEA
  • She Devils and Substance Prohibition
  • The Runner: Racist Drug War Agitprop
  • Why Hollywood Owes Richard Nixon an Oscar
  • Addicted to Addiction
  • Addicted to Ignorance
  • Addiction
  • After the Drug War
  • After the Drug War part 2
  • Another Cry in the Wilderness
  • Assisted Suicide and the War on Drugs
  • Beta Blockers and the Materialist Tyranny of the War on Drugs
  • Brahms is NOT the best antidepressant
  • Case Studies in Wise Drug Use
  • Common Sense Drug Withdrawal
  • Declaration of Independence from the War on Drugs
  • Drug Use as Self-Medication
  • Drugs are not the enemy, hatred is the enemy
  • Ego Transcendence Made Easy
  • Elderly Victims of Drug War Ideology
  • Four reasons why Addiction is a political term
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the Drug War
  • Goodbye Patient, Hello Client
  • Harold & Kumar Support the Drug War
  • Heroin versus Alcohol
  • How Cocaine could have helped me
  • How drug prohibition destroys the lives of the depressed
  • How Drug Prohibition Leads to Excessive Drinking and Smoking
  • How Psychiatry and the Drug War turned me into an eternal patient
  • How the Drug War Blinds us to Godsend Medicine
  • How the Drug War is a War on Creativity
  • How the Drug War Killed Amy Winehouse
  • How The Drug War Killed Andy Gibb
  • How the Drug War Punishes the Elderly
  • How the Myth of Mental Illness supports the War on Drugs
  • How to Unite Drug War Opponents of all Ethnicities
  • Hypocritical America Embraces Drug War Fascism
  • In Praise of Doctor Feelgood
  • In Praise of Drug Dealers
  • In Praise of Thomas Szasz
  • Let's Hear It For Psychoactive Therapy
  • Medications for so-called 'opioid-use disorder' are legion
  • Notes about the Madness of Drug Prohibition
  • Open Letter to Dr. Carl L. Hart
  • Open Letter to Erowid
  • Open Letter to Gabrielle Glaser
  • Open Letter to Lisa Ling
  • Pihkal 2.0
  • Replacing 12-Step Programs with Shamanic Healing
  • Replacing Psychiatry with Pharmacologically Savvy Shamanism
  • Science is not free in the age of the Drug War
  • Shannon Information and Magic Mushrooms
  • Someone you love is suffering unnecessarily because of the War on Drugs
  • Thank God for Erowid
  • Thank God for Soul Quest
  • THE ANTI DRUG WAR BLOG
  • The Drug War and Armageddon
  • The Great Philosophical Problem of Our Time
  • The Mother of all Western Biases
  • The Muddled Metaphysics of the Drug War
  • The Myth of the Addictive Personality
  • The New Age of Pharmacological Serfdom
  • The Origins of Modern Psychiatry
  • The Philosophical Idiocy of the Drug War
  • The real reason for depression in America
  • Using Opium to Fight Depression
  • What Jim Hogshire Got Wrong about Drugs
  • Why America's Mental Healthcare System is Insane
  • Why Americans Prefer Suicide to Drug Use
  • Why Louis Theroux is Clueless about Addiction and Alcoholism
  • Why Scientists Should Not Judge Drugs





  • Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    Until prohibition ends, rehab is all about enforcing a Christian Science attitude toward psychoactive medicines (with the occasional hypocritical exception of Big Pharma meds).

    His answer to political opposition is: "Lock them up!" That's Nazi speak, not American democracy.

    Q: Where can you find almost-verbatim copies of the descriptions of religious experiences described by William James? A: In descriptions of user reports of "trips" on drugs ranging from coca to opium, from MDMA to laughing gas.

    My depression would disappear overnight if religiously intolerant America would just allow me to live as freely as Benjamin Franklin.

    To say that taking SSRIs daily is better than using opium daily is a value judgement, not a scientific one.

    Now the US is bashing the Honduran president for working with "drug cartels." Why don't we just be honest and say why we're REALLY upset with the guy? Drugs is just the excuse, as always, now what's the real reason? Stop using the drug war to disguise American foreign policy.

    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.

    Most enemies of inner-city gun violence refuse to protest against the drug prohibition which caused the violence in the first place.

    In fact, that's what we need when we finally return to legalization: educational documentaries showing how folks manage to safely incorporate today's hated substances into their life and lifestyle.

    I hope that scientists will eventually find the prohibition gene so that we can eradicate this superstitious way of thinking from humankind. "Ug! Drugs bad! Drugs not good for anyone, anywhere, at any dose, for any reason, ever! Ug!"


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






    Plants Divine, All Plants Excelling
    How Variety and its film critics support drug war fascism


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