How drug warriors have destroyed America's faith in the power of education
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
August 15, 2025
The War on Drugs has destroyed America's faith in the power of education. In fact, it has made us think of education as WRONG in and of itself, at least when it comes to drugs! This fact alone should make freedom-loving Americans renounce prohibition on principle, as an affront to the core ideas upon which democracy is based: first and foremost, the idea that education is actually a GOOD thing.
Florida state Senator Paula Hawkins is the poster child for this new self-imposed Dark Ages in America. Paula is (or rather was) the Nancy Reagan crony who stood up in her state legislature in the middle of the drug-hating 1980s and waved a copy of Andrew Weil's classic book in the air, "From Chocolate to morphine 1 : Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs.2" Hawkins was incensed that Weil's book dared to tell the honest facts about drugs and drug use from a viewpoint other than that of a fearmongering prohibitionist 3. She wanted to have the book banned from school libraries and even sought to have Andrew Weil himself silenced. Fortunately, these attempts on her part ultimately backfired in at least two enormous ways: first by giving the book much-needed publicity among the general public, and second by drawing the world's attention to the disturbing fact that drug prohibition implies (and even ultimately requires) the outlawing of free speech -- and of factual education itself4.
THE NEW RIP VAN WINKLE
The materialists of the western world are like Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle when it comes to drugs. They are just now awakening from an intoxiphobic slumber that has lasted millennia. It never even occurred to us during this dogmatic downtime of ours that we should actively seek out and use psychoactive medicines for the psychosocial benefit of humankind. We are just now, in the 21st century after Christ, beginning to realize what the indigenous peoples of the world have known all along: that the world is full of psychoactive substances with obvious beneficial effects: substances found in lichen, fungi, animals, trees, flowers -- yea, even in our own so-called "sober" biochemistry. Unfortunately, our response to this newly discovered truth about the world, that it is a world full of drugs, has been the response of a frightened ostrich. We have refused to accept the world as it is and have used censorship and fearmongering to remake the world in accordance with our jaundiced perception of it. Rather than acknowledging the fact that nature is full of potential godsend medicines, we have the hubris to travel the globe to physically destroy such substances, so great is our pathological desire to re-create the world so that it accords with our drug-hating prejudices.
CONCLUSION
Seen in this light, we should not be surprised at the attempts of Drug Warriors to deny the benefits of education itself. Education is anathema to those who wish to rewrite history in accordance with western prejudices. What Hawkins and company insist upon is indoctrination about drugs, not education.
Most enemies of inner-city gun violence refuse to protest against the drug prohibition which caused the violence in the first place.
This is why it's wrong to dismiss drugs as "good" or "bad." There are endless potential positive uses to psychoactive drugs. That's all that we should ask of them.
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.
I thought mycology clubs across the US would be protesting drug laws that make mushroom collecting illegal for psychoactive species. But in reality, almost no club even mentions such species. No wonder prohibition is going strong.
My consciousness, my choice.
Alcohol is a drug in liquid form. If drug warriors want to punish people who use drugs, they should start punishing themselves.
I could tell my psychiatrist EXACTLY what would "cure" my depression, even without getting addicted, but everything involved is illegal. It has to be. Otherwise I would have no need of the psychiatrist.
The FDA is not qualified to tell us whether holistic medicines work. They hold such drugs to materialist standards and that's pharmacological colonialism.
We should no more arrest drug users than we arrest people for climbing sheer rock faces or for driving a car.
Psychiatrists prescribe drugs that muck about with a patient's biochemical baseline, making them chemically dependent and turning them into patients for life.
The materialists of the western world are like Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle when it comes to drugs. They are just now awakening from an intoxiphobic slumber that has lasted millennia. It never even occurred to us during this dogmatic downtime of ours that we should actively seek out and use psychoactive medicines for the psychosocial benefit of humankind. We are just now, in the 21st century after Christ, beginning to realize what the indigenous peoples of the world have known all along: that the world is full of psychoactive substances with obvious beneficial effects: substances found in lichen, fungi, animals, trees, flowers -- yea, even in our own so-called "sober" biochemistry. Unfortunately, our response to this newly discovered truth about the world, that it is a world full of drugs, has been the response of a frightened ostrich. We have refused to accept the world as it is and have used censorship and fearmongering to remake the world in accordance with our jaundiced perception of it. Rather than acknowledging the fact that nature is full of potential godsend medicines, we have the hubris to travel the globe to physically destroy such substances, so great is our pathological desire to re-create the world so that it accords with our drug-hating prejudices.
Most enemies of inner-city gun violence refuse to protest against the drug prohibition which caused the violence in the first place.
