How the Drug War Makes Americans Stupid
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
March 20, 2022
The Drug War makes otherwise great thinkers stupid because they take the idea of substance prohibition as a natural baseline when they write about subjects ranging from religion to euthanasia, from war to suicide.
Take suicide, for example. That topic cannot be meaningfully discussed without at least acknowledging that America has knowingly outlawed the use of naturally occurring substances which can make life feel worth living.
So just as there are two very different ways to talk about American economics -- one that takes into account the role of China and one that does not -- there are two very different ways to talk about a subject like suicide 1 -- one that takes into account the Drug War and one that does not.
Coca leaf could almost single-handedly end depression in America, but the know-nothing Drug Warrior conflates it with the alkaloid cocaine , which is a different drug altogether. (Even cocaine 2 3 could be used safely if we educated folks rather than terrifying them about psychoactive meds.) MDMA could make psychotherapy actually work!
Sadly, this is too great a truth for America to understand. I pray that the world will survive long enough for human beings to wrap their minds around the fact that the Drug War warps our ability to deal with and understand almost every button-pushing issue under the sun.
But the ideology of substance demonization has convinced the vast majority of smart and dumb alike that banned substances cannot be used for good reasons. That's a lie, of course, but also a self-fulfilling prophecy. We only look at the bad and analyze the bad and promote the bad -- and so we reap no benefits. But that's what the Drug War is all about: demonization and criminalization over education and a search for safe and psychosocially beneficial uses -- of the plant medicines that we have outlawed in violation of the natural law upon which Thomas Jefferson founded America (the same Jefferson whose estate at Monticello 4 was raided by the feds in 1987 during Reagan's unchallenged daylight coup against natural law).
Extra Credit
September 22, 2022
Browse through the titles of the non-fiction books you own and count how many authors have reckoned without the Drug War. Examples: a book about the problem of war and violence that fails to mention that America has outlawed all the medicines (like MDMA 5 , the coca leaf and psilocybin) that could convince folks to actually care about their neighbors; or a book about depression that fails to mention that we've outlawed all the medical godsends that could actually eliminate sadness without rendering millions chemically dependent on Big Pharma 6 meds; or a book about optimism that fails to mention how the use and anticipation of use of godsend meds can cheer folks up.
For American authors are in denial: they pretend that the Drug War does not exist. So, like the wolf of fable who couldn't reach the sour grapes, we diss what we are not allowed to access, pretending that it's not important in life. Guess it's just too hard for Americans to admit that they live in an age of censorship, in which the government is free to tell us what plant medicines we can use.
Notes:
1: Why Americans Prefer Suicide to Drug Use DWP (up)
2: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
3: “Freud on Cocaine : Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2023. Internet Archive. 2023. https://archive.org/details/freudoncocaine0000freu/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater. (up)
4: The Dark Side of the Monticello Foundation DWP (up)
5: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
6: LaMattina, John. n.d. “Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of the FDA’s Drug Division Budget?” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2022/09/22/why-is-biopharma-paying-75-of-the-fdas-drug-division-budget/. (up)
Ten Tweets
against the hateful war on US
The FDA tells us that MDMA is not safe. This is the same FDA that signs off on Big Pharma drugs whose advertised side effects include death itself.
Rick Strassman isn't sure that DMT should be legal. Really?! Does he not realize how dangerous it is to chemically extract DMT from plants? In the name of safety, prohibitionists have encouraged dangerous ignorance and turned local police into busybody Nazis.
The term "hard" is just our modern pejorative term for the kinds of drugs that doctors of yore used to call panaceas
The drug war is a meta-injustice. It does not just limit what you're allowed to think, it limits how and how much you are allowed to think.
My cousin says we should punish drug dealers. I say we should punish those politicians who created those drug dealers out of whole cloth by passing unprecedented laws against the use of Mother Nature's bounty.
Psychedelics and entheogens should be freely available to all dementia patients. These medicines can increase neuronal plasticity and even grow new neurons. Besides, they can inspire and elate -- or do we puritans feel that our loved ones have no right to peace of mind?
It's just plain totalitarian nonsense to outlaw mother nature and to outlaw moods and mental states thru drug law. These truths can't be said enough by us "little people" because the people in power are simply not saying them.
Q: Why are we never told about the potential benefits of drugs?
A: Follow the money.
Drug prohibition fails even on its own terms. Instead of protecting white American young people, it has exiled them to the city streets where they are sacrificed on the altar of the American religion of substance demonization.
Just saw a People's magazine article with the headline: "JUSTICE FOR MATTHEW PERRY."
If there was true justice, their editorial staff would be in jail for promoting user ignorance and a contaminated drug supply.
It's the prohibition, stupid!!!
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Copyright 2025, Brian Ballard Quass
Contact: quass@quass.com
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