an open letter to Bennett Haeberle of NBC 5 Chicago
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 3, 2025
The media regularly puts on show trials for psychoactive substances, to suggest that they are a threat to American young people, with the implication being that said substances have no positive uses whatsoever and can only be used for a cheap thrill. Lies, lies, lies. The ultimate goal of such yellow journalism is to egg on the prohibitionists to crack down ever further on the few remaining freedoms that Americans still possess when it comes to drug use.
The poster child for such biased articles is the January 2025 hatchet piece on the NBC 5 website entitled "The loophole that allows an illegal, dangerous drug to be delivered to your door,1" an article in which the reporters completely ignore all glaringly obvious benefits of N2O, to say nothing of historical use of the drug and the fact that William James urged philosophers to inhale N2O in order to investigate the nature of ultimate reality.
All such hatchet jobs are based on two demonstrably false assumptions: 1) that there are no upsides to drug use, and 2) that there are no downsides to drug prohibition.
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Dear Bennett Haeberle,
Your article about Laughing Gas2 illustrates all that is wrong with our Drug War mentality. You consider only the worst possible uses of laughing gas 3 , never mentioning its obvious benefits. The gas has been used safely by a wide variety of people, from Humphry Davy to Robert Southey to Oliver Wendell Holmes. Davy saw great therapeutic potential in its ability to elate and inspire. William James told us that philosophers must study the states produced by such substances to learn about the nature of human consciousness and ultimate reality. And yet your article says nothing about common-sense therapy or the philosophy of William James. Nitrous oxide can inspire glimpses of heaven and yet you say nothing about its obvious potential role in preventing suicide. Instead, your article is written to make us fear the substance rather than to understand it.
Drug prohibition is the problem 4 , Bennett, not drugs. The problem is our failure to educate about substance use. We already live in a police state thanks to drug law: why is NBC 5 determined to make matters even worse?
Kids were not dying in the streets from opiates when opiates were legal in America. It took prohibition to accomplish that. When are prohibitionists going to start accepting their responsibility for the young people whom they have killed? How? By refusing to teach safe use, refusing to regulate product, and refusing to re-legalize a long list of opiate alternatives?
Laughing gas kits should be available for the severely depressed, just as epi pens are made available to those with severe depression. Instead, America would rather that the depressed commit suicide 5 than use drugs. America would prefer that the depressed undergo brain-damaging shock therapy than to use drugs.
Until the media stops putting on show trials for drugs -- and holding them to wildly different safety standards than those for Big Pharma 67 or alcohol -- then America will be living in the Dark Ages.
You guys are not saving anybody. You are causing suicides by demonizing all the substances that could be wisely used to make people want to live. Your reportage ultimately causes suicides by removing all inspiring drugs from the market and refusing to teach or regulate. The Hindu religion was created thanks to the use of a drug that inspired and elated. You guys are committed to demonizing all drugs that inspire and elate. It is not enough for you to merely outlaw use -- you insist on closing all the loopholes as well -- to make sure that use becomes as dangerous, unregulated and uninformed as possible. But like all Drug Warriors, you never take responsibility for all the suffering that you thereby bring about. You seem to feel that if you do not report on the downsides of prohibition, then those downsides do not exist.
I am a philosopher, and I protest on behalf of William James, whose proposed research you guys are helping to outlaw by your fear mongering about substance use.
Please stop putting substances on show trials for crimes that alcohol commits every day. Drugs can be used safely. Any drug can be rendered dangerous, however, when we place a premium on ignorance and prohibition.
Please stop demonizing substances based on the fact that they can be misused by Americans whom we refuse to educate about drugs.
Your MO is too predictable:
1) Find young people who have misused a drug thanks to our refusal to educate about safe use.
2) Pull at the heartstrings by writing about the poor little white kids who have been thrown into harm's way.
3) Write articles in an attempt to have all "loopholes" closed -- so that drug prohibition thrives and so our young people remain as ignorant as possible about safe drug use.
4) Then refuse to take responsibility for the downsides of the drug prohibition to which you have contributed: the outlawing of free research, the unnecessary suicides, the unnecessary drive-by shootings, the un-necessary electroshock therapy, the destruction of the rule of law in Latin America, and the mass incarceration 8 of minorities which has led to the election of tyrants and brought an end to democracy in America.
5) Above all, never mention the potential upsides of drug use or the many obvious downsides of drug prohibition.
Enough! Please, let's have no more show trials for psychoactive substances!
National Geo published an article entitled "Coca: a Blessing and a Curse." Coca was never a curse. Most people used it wisely, just as most people drink wisely. Doctors demonized it because it really worked and it could put them out of business. https://abolishthedea.com/sigmund_freuds_real_breakthrough_was_not_psychoanalysis.php
Uruguay wants to re-legalize psilocybin mushrooms -- but only for use in a psychiatrist's office. So let me get this straight: psychiatrists are the new privileged shaman? It's a mushroom, for God's sake. Just re-legalize the damn thing and stop treating us like children.
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.
Mariani Wine is the real McCoy, with Bolivian coca leaves (tho' not with cocaine, as Wikipedia says). I'll be writing more about my experience with it soon. I was impressed. It's the same drink "on which" HG Wells and Jules Verne wrote their stories.
Reagan paid a personal price for his idiocy however. He fell victim to memory loss from Alzheimer's, after making a career out of demonizing substances that can grow new neurons in the brain!
But that's the whole problem with Robert Whitaker's otherwise wonderful critique of Big Pharma. Like almost all non-fiction authors today, he reckons without the drug war, which gave Big Pharma a monopoly in the first place.
Problem 2,643 of the war on drugs:
It puts the government in charge of deciding what counts as a true religion.
What I want to know is, who sold Christopher Reeves that horse that he fell off of? Who was peddling that junk?!
Laughing gas is the substance that gave William James his philosophy of reality. He concluded from its use that what we perceive is just a fraction of reality writ large. Yet his alma mater (Harvard) does not even MENTION laughing gas in their bio of the man.
What are drug dealers doing, after all? They are merely selling substances that people want and have always had a right to, until racist politicians came along and decided government had the right to ration out pain relief and mystical experience.
National Geo published an article entitled "Coca: a Blessing and a Curse." Coca was never a curse. Most people used it wisely, just as most people drink wisely. Doctors demonized it because it really worked and it could put them out of business. https://abolishthedea.com/sigmund_freuds_real_breakthrough_was_not_psychoanalysis.php