a philosophical review of the academic paper by Russell Newcombe
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
August 27, 2023
Note: My criticism regarding what I see as the insufficiency of Newcombe's argument for drug legalization 1 (beginning in paragraph six) is nothing personal. In fact, I know of no one in the Drug War debates who has addressed this issue entirely to my satisfaction. The very title of Newcombe's paper shows that he is one of the few who sees through the fog of Drug War propaganda.
Q1006 "Intoxiphobia" is a depressing read because it confirms how drug users have become the punching bag of modern societies, the one group toward whom intolerance and the denial of basic human rights is still considered acceptable around the globe. In England, drug users can be detained without charge for twice as long as murderers and rapists. In China, they are subject to mass incarceration 2 , police abuse and execution. In Thailand, the police "force false confessions from people detained for drug use." In Kazakhstan, the authorities beat drug users with fists and clubs. Meanwhile many countries (including the US) deny public housing to users, deny them welfare payments, and threaten to take their children from them. Through pre-employment drug testing 3 , they can even be denied the opportunity for gainful employment in their country of residence.
In 2008, Uruguay attempted to improve this bleak status quo at the 51st Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs. They made the apparently novel proposal that international drug control activities should henceforth be conducted in conformity with human rights law. (Gee, ya think?) Naturally, China and most other Asian countries demurred. That was perhaps to be expected from countries that have historically put little stock in the rights of the individual. But the United States also protested. The US delegates did not want their police forces to be hindered by respect for something so mundane as human rights.
One might have expected better from a country founded on Jeffersonian principles, but then our supposedly independent media has been cranking out Drug War agitprop for decades now. In "Running with the Devil," 2019, the DEA agent shoots an unarmed drug suspect in cold blood and at point-blank range. In "Crisis," also from 2019, a DEA agent plants evidence to cover up his girlfriend's vigilante murder of a drug suspect. And in "The Runner," 2021, a SWAT team riddles the chest of an unarmed black teenage drug suspect with bullets in an outrageously irresponsible sting operation on a high-school dance party, for which the white good guy, Detective Wall, nevertheless receives an award.
These movies are not mentioned in Russell Newcombe's paper: I cite them here to help account for America's reluctance to respect human rights while fighting the War on Drugs. For if the anti-democratic plots of these movies 45 say anything about the American mindset of our times, it's no wonder that our stateside bureaucrats are unwilling to fight fair in their unprecedented war on the psychoactive bounty of Mother Nature.
In short, it's open season on drug users around the world, and Newcombe's paper corroborates the fact.
Unfortunately, however, the author's defense of drug use is weak. He cites the utilitarian philosophy of John Stuart Mill in affirming our right to sovereignty over our own body, with the usual proviso that we hurt no one else with our actions. But drug use is far more than just a victimless crime. Drug use has inspired religions and philosophies around the world. The Vedic-Hindu religion was inspired by the consumption of the psychedelic Soma concoction; the Peruvian Indians considered the coca plant to be divine; the Maya used psychoactive mushrooms in religious rites. Many western greats considered the psychedelic-fueled Eleusinian mysteries6 to be the most enlightening experience of their life. William James' entire philosophy was inspired by the use of nitrous oxide.
Considering this backstory, the outlawing of drug use is not merely bad social policy: it is the outlawing of religion - indeed the outlawing of the religious impulse. The outlawing of drug use is also the outlawing of philosophy, insofar as it criminalizes the attainment of those altered states that American philosopher William James told us that we must investigate to understand reality. "No account of the universe in its totality," wrote James, "can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded." Yet disregard them we must if Drug Warriors have their way.
Speaking of religions, Newcombe also fails to recognize that the Drug War itself is a religion, namely, the religion of Christian Science. For there is no rational imperative that tells us to say no to drugs; it's certainly not an idea that would occur to anyone who had grown up in a rainforest. No, the idea that we should say no to drugs was first codified into a moral position by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Science religion. And so the Drug War is basically the enforcement of Christian Science as a world religion.
Instead of arguing on the back foot, so to speak, by assuring our opponents that our drug use is not going to hurt anybody (an assertion that the Drug Warrior is going to attempt to refute at any rate with the usual litany of highly tendentious arguments) we must insist on the right to drug use as a prerequisite for the very existence of religious and philosophical freedom. That statement, along with a reference to the aforementioned psychopharmacological history of the world, is all we should need as drug users to restore our humanity in the eyes of our opponents.
This is no time to be talking about John Stuart Mill and victimless crime. We need to come together as unapologetic drug users and start "outing" the Drug Warriors for their attack on religious and philosophical liberty. We need to point out, loudly and clearly, that the Drug War, with its seemingly endless menu of over-the-top punishments, is nothing less than the worldwide enforcement of what can justly be called a kind of Christian Science Sharia, a wholesale fanatical crackdown on those who would dare seek self-transcendence with the help of natural and nature-inspired substances.
Newcombe also is arguing on the back foot when he discusses harm reduction without also discussing benefit maximization. morphine 7 can inspire an almost surreal appreciation of the world. Psychedelics can help us deeply appreciate music. MDMA can help us love our fellow human being. Coca can inspire and revivify. Opium can facilitate creative dreaming in the properly predisposed mind. These godsends will be ours again once Drug Warriors stop holding psychoactive drugs to a standard to which we hold no other risky activity in the world. 37,000 Americans are killed every year in car accidents, and yet we never even THINK about outlawing cars. Instead, we teach safe driving while attempting to create cars and roads that conduce to safety. With drugs, on the other hand, we refuse to teach safety while pursuing a policy of prohibition which ensures that drug use will be as dangerous as possible.
Nor is it just drug users who suffer. When the chronically depressed patient has his or her brain damaged by shock therapy, it is prohibition that is to blame: for it was prohibition that outlawed all the obvious treatments that would have made shock therapy unnecessary: laughing gas 8 , MDMA 9 , coca, opium 10 , psychedelics, etc. etc. Talk about Christian Science fanaticism: the powers-that-be would rather fry the brain11 of the depressed than to let them use drugs. This reminds us that the endgame of pushback is not just achieving respect for drug users. The psychiatrists may respect the hell out of us, but prohibition is still going to force them to unnecessarily damage the brain of the chronically depressed - a crime for which prohibition has been getting off scot-free for decades now because no one seems to have noticed its culpability in this regard.
Take the Citizens Commission on Human Rights in the UK: despite their vehement opposition to shock therapy, they have made no connection between prohibition and this brain-damaging treatment. Either they are unaware of the potential enormous blessings of psychoactive substances that inspire (both the known drugs and the endless empathogens and entheogens that could be synthesized by the Andrew Shulgins of the world were they free to do so) or they have been programmed by Drug War propaganda to believe with Mary Baker Eddy that all drugs are bad, even the medicines that grow at our very feet and which God himself told us were good.
Speaking of which, there is another argument that drug users should be advancing before resorting to the tepid expedient of citing John Stuart Mill 12 on behalf of our trampled rights, and that is the fact that it is a clear violation of natural law to outlaw plants and fungus. As John Locke tells us in his Second Treatise on Government, "The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being." To men, that is, not to government. In other words, America, the country that started the worldwide Drug War, did so in violation of the natural law upon which it was founded. This is why Thomas Jefferson rolled over in his grave when the DEA confiscated his poppy plants in 1987.
And I'm just getting warmed up. Prohibition has also led to unprecedented self-censorship on the part of authors, especially in academia. Almost all academic papers about "drugs" have to do with abuse and misuse, not beneficial use. This is because tenure-seeking academicians know better than to write papers about good uses for the modern scapegoat called drugs. And did I mention that the Drug War handed the 2016 election to Donald Trump? Drug laws have jailed the natural opponents of prohibition, thereby depriving them of the right to vote, thus handing America's typically close elections to fascists and insurrectionists (with a little help from state redistricting plans specifically designed to suppress minority voting, of course).
By publicizing such inconvenient home truths (of which the above are still just a subset), we can put the Drug Warriors on the defensive and, I trust, win over those of our opponents who have denied our humanity in the past because of the tepid nature of the arguments that we had been advancing. We are not calling for the right to "go to the devil in our own way," as some libertarians would have it; we are calling for the end of a century-old drug policy that outlaws free thought and blinds us to the godsends of Mother Nature.
We have nothing to apologize for. It is, in fact, the Drug Warriors who owe us an apology. You know, something short and sweet, like: "Sorry for censoring science, guys, and for riding roughshod over your religious liberty. Oh, and please forgive me for facilitating the election of Donald Trump in 2016 by sidelining millions of his opponents."
Author's Follow-up: August 27, 2023
Descendants of the South American Inca have been treated with double inhumanity by Drug Warriors: the western powers not only outlawed the coca medicine whose daily use helped define their society and culture, but they then arrested descendants who dared to deal in or use that substance.
Here's another knockdown argument against prohibition, one that's never mentioned, as far as I can tell: The Drug War tells us that substances can be judged up or down, as good or bad. That is clearly anti-scientific. All substances, even cyanide, have uses at some dose, in some circumstance, for some reason. It's only because we say otherwise that we are now denying morphine 13 to cancer patients who are languishing painfully on their deathbeds. We do not need to end prohibition for the benefit of hedonists: we need to end it for the benefit of science and for those who suffer when the realm of science is invaded by fearmongering politicians.
Saying things like "Fentanyl kills!" makes just as much sense as saying "Fire bad!"
The drug war is the ultimate case of fearmongering. And yet academics and historians fail to recognize it as such. They will protest eloquently against the outrages of the witch hunts of yore, but they are blind to the witch hunts of the present. What is a drug dealer but a modern service magician, someone who sells psychoactive medicine designed to effect personal ends for the user? They are simply providing an alternative to materialistic medicine, which ignores common sense and so ignores the glaringly obvious value of such substances.
The drug war tells us that certain drugs have no potential uses and then turns that into a self-fulfilling prophecy by outlawing these drugs. This is insanely anti-scientific and anti-progress. We should never give up on looking for positive uses for ANY substance.
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.
I can't imagine Allen Ginsberg writing "Howl!" while under the influence of mood-damping drugs like Inderal and Prozac -- but then maybe that's the point: the powers-that-be do not want poets writing poems like "Howl!"
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!!!
If any master's candidates are looking for a thesis topic, consider the following: "The Drug War versus Religion: how the policy of substance prohibition outlaws the attainment of spiritual states described by William James in 'The Varieties of Religious Experience.'"
In the board game "Sky Team," you collect "coffees" to improve your flying skills. Funny how the use of any other brain-focusing "drug" in real life is considered to be an obvious sign of impairment.
The line drawn between recreational and medical use is wishful thinking on the part of drug warriors. Recreation, according to Webster's, is "refreshment or diversion," and both have positive knock-on effects in the lives of real people.
I have yet to find one psychiatrist who acknowledges the demoralizing power of being turned into a patient for life. They never list that as a potential downside of antidepressant use.
America is insane: it makes liquor officially legal and then outlaws all the drugs that could help prevent and cure alcoholism.
The problem for alcoholics is that alcohol decreases rationality in proportion as it provides the desired self-transcendence. Outlawed drugs can provide self-transcendence with INCREASED rationality and be far more likely to keep the problem drinker off booze than abstinence.
Descendants of the South American Inca have been treated with double inhumanity by Drug Warriors: the western powers not only outlawed the coca medicine whose daily use helped define their society and culture, but they then arrested descendants who dared to deal in or use that substance.
The drug war tells us that certain drugs have no potential uses and then turns that into a self-fulfilling prophecy by outlawing these drugs. This is insanely anti-scientific and anti-progress. We should never give up on looking for positive uses for ANY substance.