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Open Letter to Margo Margaritoff

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

July 13, 2023



The following letter is in response to the article entitled "A Disturbing Look Inside The Victorian Opium Dens That Launched The First Modern War On Drugs" by Marco Margaritoff on the All That's Interesting website, October 17, 2021. The article was disturbing for me, but not for the reason that Marco believed it would be.

Hey, Marco.

Just a reminder that opium has been used for millennia and that it's a violation of natural law to outlaw a plant. In fact, if you want a good idea for a story, you might want to cover the fact that Jefferson's estate at Monticello was raided by the DEA in 1987 so that agents could confiscate his poppy plants. That's an old story, of course, but the REAL story is that the Foundation refuses (to this day) to tell its visitors about the raid. Meanwhile, the Foundation is also playing ball with the DEA by removing hemp from Monticello. This is in violation of everything that the opium- and garden-loving Thomas Jefferson stood for: namely, natural law and the idea that some things were so basic -- like our right to Mother Nature -- that the government could not take them from us.

The only den of iniquity in 1914 was Congress, where they betrayed the founding principles of democracy by asserting government's right to give or withhold Mother Nature's bounty as it saw fit. Congress tried to cover its fears of the Asian menace with talk about public health -- but they created the health problems with prohibition. Now, instead of folks being able to freely choose a regulated product, we have kids dying every day from substances that are not regulated and about which kids know nothing thanks to America's strategy of fear over education.

Instead of writing stories that prop up this violation of natural law, why not write a story about BEER HALLS, and the drunk guys who leave them in cars to cause fatal accidents -- while they're on their way home to beat their wives?

Meanwhile, if you want to learn "the truth about opium," read the book of that name by William Brereton. You'll see how the opium panic was created by a religious organization that was the British Equivalent of the Anti-Saloon League -- based on lies and misperceptions of elite Brits who had never been to China -- and based on the interests of protestant missionaries, who preferred that the Chinese use the shabby western drug called alcohol.

Sincerely Yours,
Brian

PS I've done a little snooping myself. I wrote to David Blumenstock, Manager of Visitor Services at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. I complained that Monticello was "covering up" the DEA raid of 1987. He told me that he was sorry that I did not think the Foundation was covering the matter satisfactorily. I responded that, as far as I knew, they were not covering it at ALL and I asked him to correct me if I was wrong about that. That was two weeks ago now and I have yet to hear back.

This silence on the part of the Foundation was pointed out in the 2011 book "Opium for the Masses" by Jim Hogshire, a book that Michael Pollan has recently referenced in his work.


Author's Follow-up: July 13, 2023

The opium den did not launch the Drug War: Xenophobia launched the Drug War -- fear of minorities who did not "get off" on alcohol. These strange ways had to be suppressed in Christian America.

Author's Follow-up: December 20, 2023

Suppressed in Christian America, did I say? They had to be suppressed ALL AROUND THE WORLD as it turned out.


Opium




Young people were not dying in the streets when opiates were legal in the United States. It took drug laws to accomplish that. By outlawing opium and refusing to teach safe use, the Drug Warrior has subjected users to contaminated product of uncertain dosage, thereby causing thousands of unnecessary overdoses.

Currently, I myself am chemically dependent on a Big Pharma drug for depression, that I have to take every day of my life. There is no rational reason why I should not be able to smoke opium daily instead. It is only drug-war fearmongering that has demonized that choice -- for obvious racist, economic and political reasons.

You have been lied to your entire life about opium. In fact, the Drug War has done its best to excise the very word "opium" from the English vocabulary. That's why the Thomas Jefferson Foundation refuses to talk about the 1987 raid on Monticello in which Reagan's DEA confiscated Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants in violation of everything he stood for, politically speaking. It's just plain impolite to bring up that subject these days.

It's hard to learn the truth about opium because the few books on the subject demonize it rather than discuss it dispassionately. Take the book by John Halpern: "Opium: How an ancient flower shaped and poisoned our world." It's a typical Drug Warrior title. A flower did not poison our world, John: our world was poisoned by bad laws: laws that were inspired first and foremost by racism, followed closely by commercial interests, politics, misinformation and lies.

To learn something approaching to "the truth about Opium," read the book of that name by William Brereton, written to defend the time-honored panacea from the uninformed and libelous attacks of Christian missionaries.


  • In Defense of Opium
  • Medications for so-called 'opioid-use disorder' are legion
  • Open Letter to Margo Margaritoff
  • Opium for the Masses by Jim Hogshire
  • Re-Legalize Opium Now
  • Smart Uses for Opium and Coca
  • The Drug War Cure for Covid
  • The Drug-Hating Bias of Modern Science
  • The Kangaroo Courts of Modern Science
  • The REAL Lesson of the Opium Wars
  • The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton
  • Why doctors should prescribe opium for depression





    • Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    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!"

    A Pennsylvanian politician now wants the US Army to "fight fentanyl." The guy is anthropomorphizing a damn drug! No wonder pols don't want to spend money on education, because any educated country would laugh a superstitious guy like that right out of public office.

    If fearmongering drug warriors were right about the weakness of humankind, there would be no social drinkers, only drunkards.

    Prohibition is a crime against humanity. It forces us to use shock therapy on the severely depressed since we've outlawed all viable alternatives. It denies medicines that could combat Alzheimer's and/or render it psychologically bearable.

    Using the billions now spent on caging users, we could end the whole phenomena of both physical and psychological addiction by using "drugs to fight drugs." But drug warriors do not want to end addiction, they want to keep using it as an excuse to ban drugs.

    When psychiatrists write about heroin, they characterize dependency as enslavement. When they write about antidepressants, they characterize dependency as a medical duty.

    We know that anticipation and mental focus and relaxation have positive benefits -- but if these traits ae facilitated by "drugs," then we pretend that these same benefits somehow are no longer "real." This is a metaphysical bias, not a logical deduction.

    Getting off some drugs could actually be fun and instructive, by using a variety of other drugs to keep one's mind off the withdrawal process. But America believes that getting off a drug should be a big moral battle.

    Health is not a quality, it's a balance. To decide drug legality based on 'health' grounds thus opens a Pandora's box of different points of view.

    My consciousness, my choice.


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






    The American Gestapo
    In Defense of Opium


    Copyright 2025 abolishthedea.com, Brian Quass

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