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How the Archive.org Website Censors Free Speech About Drugs

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher





February 26, 2025



This was going to be an essay about my new plan to protest the Drug War by reviewing government-supplied propaganda on Archive.org. I was going to engage in a frenzy of reviewing because most of the site's drug-related content had yet to receive reviews, and so my own reviews would have pride of place as being first in line. But then something happened that changed my priorities completely. I had just finished my critique of a NIDA1 article entitled QQ1006. I had pointed out how NIDA was a propaganda arm of the U.S. government, and that it would always be so until it began to recognize both the glaringly obvious benefits of drug use and the glaringly obvious downsides of prohibition. This was going to be the opening salvo in my campaign of posting reviews against the hateful War on Drugs. The form was filled out and ready to go...

And then I clicked "submit."

Instead of receiving a confirmation message or a thank-you, I received instead the following chilling announcement:

"It looks like your review triggered our spam detector."


Yes, and it looked like their site had triggered my BS detector.

Suddenly, the big story of the day was not my decision to review articles on Archive.org: the big story was the fact that minority opinions about drugs are not welcome in the age of the Drug War and so are censored at will. They are subject to Kafkaesque veto thanks to code written by anonymous techies who have been brainwashed in grade-school about the evil of godsend medicines. Suddenly, the big story was censorship, the fact that the Drug War mindset had effectively outlawed free speech2. I had encountered such censorship before, back in 2020, when I had posted a drug-related question for Professor Patrick Grim and it was automatically deleted by algorithms used by the Wondrium company during a virtual discussion forum. (See my essay entitled I asked 100 American philosophers what they thought about the Drug War for more on that 2020 censorship.) I knew, moreover, that self-censorship was rampant in the age of the Drug War (see my essay entitled Self-Censorship in the Age of the Drug War, also written in 2020). But I had not been so suddenly censored in five years, and I was not prepared for it. It was like a smart slap in the face.

The censorship had at least one positive outcome, however. It reminded me how there are life-and-death issues at stake when it comes to the War on Drugs and that the topic represents more than just an opportunity for the philosophically minded to expose the puerile assumptions on which such a policy is based. The Drug War is having hateful anti-democratic consequences right here and now in the real world. I had a similar feeling last night in watching an old episode of Night Gallery set in a state penitentiary. As the camera panned by the barbed wire and tall cement walls, it reminded me that there are real victims of Drug War policy, hundreds of thousands of Americans who are caged as we speak for having used and/or dealt with substances that the government had no right to outlaw in the first place, least of all in a country founded on natural law, a doctrine which tells us, according to John Locke himself, that "the earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being3."


Review of


QQ1006, an article by NIDA


Archive.org refused to publish this review thanks to algorithms written by anonymous coders who value drug-war orthodoxy over free speech.


The government study of drugs is HUGELY biased. Their researchers ignore all the benefits of drugs as well as all the downsides of prohibition. Their only job is to demonize drug use by holding it to a safety standard that we apply to no other activity on planet Earth: not to free climbing, not to drag-racing, and certainly not to gun shooting or drinking alcohol. Speaking of alcohol, it kills 178,000 a year according to the CDC, and yet the government invites us to fear drugs like Ecstasy, which have killed no one. The only deaths related to Ecstasy are those caused by the Drug War, which refuses to educate about safe use and to regulate product.

Ecstasy brought UNPRECEDENTED peace, love and understanding to the dance floors of Britain in the 1990s, but Drug Warriors do not like peace, love and understanding. And so Drug Warriors cracked down on the use of Ecstasy, after which violence SKYROCKETED at rave concerts as dancers switched to the anger-facilitating drug called alcohol, and concert organizers had to bring in special forces troops to keep the peace. Special forces!

NIDA is just a propaganda arm of the U.S. government -- and will remain so until it recognizes the glaringly obvious benefits of drugs -- as well as the glaringly obvious downsides of prohibition, thanks to which America's inner cities have been turned into shooting galleries and the rule of law is now a joke in much of Latin America. 60,000 Mexicans have been "disappeared" thanks to the Drug War over the last 20 years4, and yet NIDA 5 wants to outlaw a drug whose only crime is that it brought about unprecedented peace, love and understanding.

We don't need a National Institute on Drug Abuse. We need a National Institute on Drug USE -- an agency that recognizes the benefits of drugs and the downsides of prohibition.




Notes:

1: NIDA is the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Its bias is clear in its name. If it were an objective organization, it would be called the National Institute on Drug USE. (up)
2: Speak now or forever hold your peace about drug prohibition DWP (up)
3: Second Treatise of Government Locke, John, Project Gutenberg, 1689 (up)
4: Mexico's war on drugs: More than 60,000 people 'disappeared' 2020 (up)
5: How The NIDA Blocks Marijuana Research Over and Over Munroe, James, cannabis.net, 2016 (up)


Censorship




The Drug War is all about censorship. If you don't believe it, just ask yourself how many movies and magazine articles you've seen about the safe and wise use of opium, or of coca, or of MDMA, or of psychedelics. As Carl Hart reminds us, most people use these drugs wisely, but you will not see such use portrayed in movies or books. Instead, you will see books and movies in which drugs are personified as evil incarnate in the form of "Cocaine Bears" and "Meth Gators." This is because the drug-war propaganda of censorship has rendered Americans childish about drugs. The American government is all about keeping us infantile in this way. The government is engaged in a full-blown campaign of drug-related censorship, with the White House actually working with TV producers to spread the party line on drugs in TV shows. That is why we have a National Institute on Drug Abuse and not a National Institute on Drug Use.

Meanwhile, the government's FDA refuses to approve MDMA, a drug which has killed no one, properly speaking, and yet they approve Big Pharma drugs whose side effects as announced on prime-time television include death itself, this in a world in which liquor causes 178,000 deaths a year. This is the same FDA that approves brain-damaging shock therapy for the depressed while refusing to sign off on naturally occurring drugs that could make ECT unnecessary. This fact is obvious. Common sense itself screams out loudly and clearly that this is so. But scientists ignore common sense these days for two reasons: first, because of their fealty to the drug war ideology of substance demonization, and second because of their stubborn belief in the inhumane tenets of behaviorism, which tell us that user feelings and opinions do not matter when it comes to studying drug use, that all that counts is quantifiable data about brain chemistry and genetics.

By the way, if you want to be personally censored, just try publishing an article about safe and wise drug use online -- say, about the wise use of opium. Such accounts are simply not allowed by most publishers -- not because they are not true, but because they spread a message that is contrary to the drug-war ideology of substance demonization and so must be suppressed. I myself have been blocked numerous times from posting comments and publishing articles simply because I point out positive real uses of drugs -- safe and productive drug use that has actually taken place despite the fact that the government does everything it can to make drug use risky by refusing to regulate product and refusing to teach safe use. The Mad in America website solicits life stories from victims of the psychedelic pill mill, but they refuse to publish mine, despite the fact that I have used such drugs for 40 years now. The life story that I submitted to them contained neither lies nor proselytization, and yet the organization told me that it might be seen as medical advice. This is how publishers shut down free speech about drugs, by claiming that factually honest accounts about drug use constitute medical advice.

They will then tell us that we should see our doctors about such topics -- failing to realize that it was our doctors themselves who rendered us dependent on Big Pharma to begin with! Their drugs cause greater dependence than anything nature has to offer, and yet we are only allowed to discuss drugs with these folks whose entire careers depend on the psychiatric pill mill itself!

This is why I say that the drug war is a cancer on the body politic and must be eliminated if Americans want to restore democracy and make it last this time.

If we need to censor any speech, it should be the speech of drug warriors. They are the ones who advocate policies that have turned inner cities into shooting galleries around the world and resulted in the disappearance of 60,000 Mexican citizens in the last 20 years, while turning the rule of law into a joke in much of Latin America.

What am I advocating after all? Merely intellectual and spiritual freedom. Merely the end of censorship. Merely the renewed freedom of religion. Merely the return of freedom of speech. Merely the informed use of psychoactive drugs, especially entheogens like MDMA, to help bring people together in this age when hate has put our species on the brink of nuclear annihilation.

And yet I am beyond the pale? Say rather that the Drug War Industrial Complex is beyond the pale -- supported as it is by the same sort of short-sighted idiots who made the criminal decision in the 1950s to develop thermonuclear weapons, the same people who were to denounce the peace-loving 'flower children' of the next decade as Communist subversives.(Drug Warriors hated both "summers of love" -- the U.S. version in the 1960s and the U.K. version in the 1990s, and used drug hysteria to quash both and to turn the world into haters. After they cracked down on Ecstasy in the U.K., the dance floors erupted into such alcohol-fueled violence that event organizers had to hire special forces troops to keep the peace.)

Incidentally, anyone who doubts our society's willingness to suppress free speech need only look at the blacklisting of Americans by HUAC in the 1950s. It must be remembered that this persecution of dissenters was not based on the outing of any supposed criminal activities that they had committed but rather on their mere championing of ideas that were anathema to the powers-that-be. The government loves censorship and always has.

And the Internet Age has not changed anything. To the contrary, it has rendered censorship far more easy and efficient for cowardly publishers thanks to the use of algorithms written anonymously by philosophically challenged techies.

  • How the Archive.org Website Censors Free Speech About Drugs
  • How the Internet Archive Censors Free Speech about Drugs
  • THE ANTI DRUG WAR BLOG
  • Demonizing Human Transcendence
  • Even Howard Zinn Reckons without the Drug War
  • How the Archive.org Website Censors Free Speech About Drugs
  • How the Internet Archive Censors Free Speech about Drugs
  • Self-Censorship in the Age of the Drug War
  • When Drug Warriors cry 'Censorship!'





  • Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    My approach to withdrawal: incrementally reduce daily doses over 6 months, or even a year, meanwhile using all the legal entheogens and psychedelics that you can find in a way likely to boost your endurance and "sense of purpose" to make withdrawal successful.

    Drug warriors have taught us that honesty about drugs encourages drug use. Nonsense! That's just their way of suppressing free speech about drugs. Americans are not babies, they can handle the truth -- or if they cannot, they need education, not prohibition.

    "Now, now, Sherlock, that coca preparation is not helping you a jot. Why can't you get 'high on sunshine,' like good old Watson here?" To which Sherlock replies: "But my good fellow, then I would no longer BE Sherlock Holmes."

    Drug testing labs are the modern Inquisitors. We are not judged by the content of our character, but by the content of our digestive systems.

    Anyone who has read Pihkal by Alexander Shulgin knows that the drug warriors have it exactly backwards. Drugs are our friends. We need to find safe ways to use them to improve ourselves psychologically, spiritually and mentally.

    I should have added to that last post: "I in no way want to glorify or condone drug demonization."

    Freud had the right idea: He noticed that cocaine use actually ended depression in his patients. Unfortunately, he was ambitious and was more interested in making a name for himself than in pushing back against the statistically challenged fear mongering of prohibitionists.

    Most people think that drugs like cocaine, MDMA, LSD and amphetamines can only be used recreationally. WRONG ! This represents a very naive understanding of human psychology. We deny common sense in order to cater to the drug war orthodoxy that "drugs have no benefits."

    Drug War censorship is supported by our "science" magazines, which pretend that outlawed drugs do not exist, and so write what amount to lies about the supposed intransigence of things like depression and anxiety.

    The drug war has created a whole film genre with the same tired plots: drug-dealing scumbags and their dupes being put in their place by the white Anglo-Saxon establishment, which has nothing but contempt for altered states.


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






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    Copyright 2025, Brian Ballard Quass Contact: quass@quass.com


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