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Science News magazine continues to pretend that there is no war on drugs

an open letter to freelance writer Cassandra Willyard, author of 'A next-gen pain drug shows promise, but chronic sufferers need more options'

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher





September 5, 2024



With respect, Cassandra, your article1 about next-gen pain medicines ignores the 6,400-pound gorilla in the room: namely, the fact that the Drug War has outlawed almost any form of treating pain. Opium, for starters, is illegal, as are a host of other medicines that could treat pain by helping one ignore it or think about it in a new way (like psilocybin and huachuma cactus).

But like almost all Science News writers, you reckon without the Drug War2, pretending that you are writing from a natural baseline, when, in fact, drugs like opium have been considered panaceas throughout history, with the exception of the last century or so, when America began demonizing effective medicines for political reasons. Being prohibited from using Mother Nature is not something that is common sense -- unless maybe one is a drug-hating Christian Scientist. The fact that naturally occurring drugs like opium are illegal should be part and parcel of any truly scientific piece about pain relief.

For as author Jim Hogshire wrote:

"The poppy's central and indispensable position in our civilization makes access to it important, and thus forbidding public access to the poppy is staggeringly cruel."3


To remain silent on this topic merely serves to normalize the anti-scientific Drug War, which falsely tells us that...

a substance that can be misused by one person at one dose must not be used by any person at any dose.

Chronic sufferers need more options, Cassandra? THEN WHY DON'T WE RE-LEGALIZE MOTHER NATURE!!!

Mass Media and Drugs




Wonder how America got to the point where we let the Executive Branch arrest judges? Look no further than the Drug War, which, since the 1970s, has demonized Constitutional protections as impediments to justice. The media has played its role with movies like "Running with the DEA," "The Crisis" and "The Runner." In the first of these three, the DEA are the "good guys" for murdering a suspect in cold blood. In the second, the DEA plants evidence to cover up the murder of a drug suspect by an indignant mother. And in the third, a white detective stages a raid that kills a young Black teenager that said detective refers to as "a waste of space."

The Drug War is all about making us hate -- making us hate anybody except for the folks that brought about the violence and drug problems in the first place: the damned prohibitionists who, having failed to outlaw liquor, turned their scapegoating on every less dangerous substance in the world.

Meanwhile, the media have done all they can to support this Drug War by holding the use of outlawed substances to safety standards that are never applied to any other risky activity on earth, meanwhile ignoring the fact that prohibition encourages ignorance and leads to contaminated drug supply. Thousands of American young people die each month because of unregulated supply and ignorance, not from drugs themselves.

The media also supports the Drug War by failing to hold it accountable for all the problems that it causes. Just read any article on inner-city shootings -- today's journalists will trace the problem to a lack of jobs or to global warming, to anything but the Drug War which incentivized violence in the first place. As for violence overseas, we're told that it's caused by evil rotten drug cartels -- without any acknowledgement that it was American drug policy that created those cartels out of whole cloth, just as liquor prohibition created the Mafia here in the States.

Meanwhile, the media have a field day superstitiously blaming drugs. It used to be PCP, ICE, oxy, crack, and now it's Fentanyl... It's all part of the DEA's tried-and-true formula to stay relevant, as academic Philip Jenkins clearly demonstrates in "Synthetic Panics": Take a local drug problem and publicize it so that it goes national. Then work with a film crew at "48 Hours" to show that the drug in question threatens the white American middle class. Then go to Congress, hat in hand, and accept billions to 'solve' the latest drug problem.

And Americans fall for it every time. In fact, their gullibility seems to be increasing over time. They love to hate drugs, so much so that drugs have become the new horror trope. Recent movies have taken to personifying "evil" drugs in the forms of Crack Raccoons and Meth Gators. It's sad that America has become so superstitious and childish about drugs -- and the media can take much of the blame.

  • America's Blind Spot
  • Canadian Drug Warrior, I said Get Away
  • Common Sense Drug Withdrawal
  • Drug War Murderers
  • Drugs are not the problem
  • End the Drug War Now
  • Feedback on my first legal psilocybin session in Oregon
  • Finally, a Drug War opponent who checks all my boxes
  • Freedom of Religion and the War on Drugs
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the Drug War
  • God and Drugs
  • Hello? MDMA works, already!
  • How Addiction Scientists Reckon without the Drug War
  • How National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of coca
  • How Scientific American reckons without the Drug War
  • How the Drug War is Threatening Intellectual Freedom in England
  • How the Drug War Outlaws Criticism of Immanuel Kant
  • How the Monticello Foundation betrayed Jefferson's Legacy in 1987
  • How the US Preventive Services Task Force Drums Up Business for Big Pharma
  • I'll See Your Antidepressants and Raise You One Huachuma Cactus
  • Ignorance is the enemy, not Fentanyl
  • Illusions with Professor Arthur Shapiro
  • In Defense of Religious Drug Use
  • Keep Laughing Gas Legal
  • MDMA for Psychotherapy
  • My Realistic Plan for Getting off of Big Pharma Drugs and why it's so hard to implement
  • No drugs are bad in and of themselves
  • Open Letter to Addiction Specialist Gabor Mate
  • Open Letter to Anthony Gottlieb
  • Open Letter to Congressman Ben Cline, asking him to abolish the criminal DEA
  • Open Letter to Diane O'Leary
  • Open Letter to Erica Zelfand
  • Open Letter to Francis Fukuyama
  • Open letter to Kenneth Sewell
  • Open Letter to Lisa Ling
  • Open letter to Professor Troy Glover at Waterloo University
  • Open Letter to Richard Hammersley
  • Open Letter to Rick Doblin and Roland Griffiths
  • Open Letter to Roy Benaroch MD
  • Open Letter to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
  • Open Letter to the Virginia Legislature
  • Open Letter to Variety Critic Owen Glieberman
  • Open Letter to Vincent Hurley, Lecturer
  • Open Letter to Vincent Rado
  • Open letter to Wolfgang Smith
  • Predictive Policing in the Age of the Drug War
  • Prohibitionists Never Learn
  • Regulate and Educate
  • Replacing antidepressants with entheogens
  • Review of When Plants Dream
  • Science News Continues to Ignore the Drug War
  • Science News magazine continues to pretend that there is no War on Drugs
  • Solquinox sounded great, until I found out I wasn't invited
  • Speaking Truth to Big Pharma
  • Teenagers and Cannabis
  • The common sense way to get off of antidepressants
  • The Criminalization of Nitrous Oxide is No Laughing Matter
  • The Depressing Truth About SSRIs
  • The Invisible Mass Shootings
  • The Menace of the Drug War
  • The problem with Modern Drug Reform Efforts
  • The Pseudoscience of Mental Health Treatment
  • There is nothing to debate: the Drug War is wrong, root and branch
  • Time for News Outlets to stop promoting Drug War lies
  • Top 10 Problems with the Drug War
  • Unscientific American
  • Using plants and fungi to get off of antidepressants
  • Vancouver Police Seek to Eradicate Safe Use
  • Weed Bashing at WTOP.COM
  • Whitehead and Psychedelics
  • Why DARE should stop telling kids to say no
  • Why Rick Doblin is Ghosting Me
  • Why the Drug War is Worse than you can Imagine
  • Why the FDA is not qualified to judge psychoactive medicine
  • Attention American Screenwriters: please stop spreading Drug War propaganda
  • Colorado plane crash caused by milk!
  • Common Nonsense from Common Sense Media
  • Cop shows as Drug War propaganda
  • COPS PRESENTS the top 10 traffic stops of 2023
  • COPS: TV Show for Racist Drug Warriors
  • Drug War Agitprop
  • Drug War Hysteria and the Opioid Crisis
  • Drug War Murderers
  • Drug War Quotes in TV and Movies
  • Fabricate at Will: editors give journalists free rein to lie about psychedelics
  • Fentanyl does not kill! Prohibition does!
  • Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide
  • Glenn Close but no cigar
  • How National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of coca
  • How Scientific American reckons without the Drug War
  • How the Atlantic Supports the Drug War
  • How the Atlantic Supports the Drug War Part II
  • Jim Beam and Drugs
  • Matthew Perry and the Drug War Ghouls
  • More Weed Bashing at the Washington Post
  • Movie Warnings from Uncommon Sense
  • Open Letter to Lisa Ling
  • Open Letter to Variety Critic Owen Glieberman
  • Potty-Mouth Drug Warriors
  • Science News Continues to Ignore the Drug War
  • Science News magazine continues to pretend that there is no War on Drugs
  • Science News Unveils Shock Therapy II
  • Stigmatize THIS
  • The Award for most biased reporting on psychedelic drugs in an online newspaper goes to…
  • The Criminalization of Nitrous Oxide is No Laughing Matter
  • The Runner: Racist Drug War Agitprop
  • The Unpeople of Southeast Washington, D.C.
  • Time for News Outlets to stop promoting Drug War lies
  • Unscientific American: the hypocritical materialism of Elon Musk
  • Weed Bashing at WTOP.COM
  • Why CBS 19 should stop supporting the Drug War

  • Open Letters




    Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.

    I don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.

    Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the Drug War ideology of substance demonization.



  • America's Blind Spot
  • Canadian Drug Warrior, I said Get Away
  • Common Sense Drug Withdrawal
  • Drug War Murderers
  • Drugs are not the problem
  • End the Drug War Now
  • Feedback on my first legal psilocybin session in Oregon
  • Finally, a Drug War opponent who checks all my boxes
  • Freedom of Religion and the War on Drugs
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the Drug War
  • God and Drugs
  • Hello? MDMA works, already!
  • How Addiction Scientists Reckon without the Drug War
  • How National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of coca
  • How Scientific American reckons without the Drug War
  • How the Drug War is Threatening Intellectual Freedom in England
  • How the Drug War Outlaws Criticism of Immanuel Kant
  • How the Monticello Foundation betrayed Jefferson's Legacy in 1987
  • How the US Preventive Services Task Force Drums Up Business for Big Pharma
  • I'll See Your Antidepressants and Raise You One Huachuma Cactus
  • Ignorance is the enemy, not Fentanyl
  • Illusions with Professor Arthur Shapiro
  • In Defense of Religious Drug Use
  • Keep Laughing Gas Legal
  • MDMA for Psychotherapy
  • My Realistic Plan for Getting off of Big Pharma Drugs and why it's so hard to implement
  • No drugs are bad in and of themselves
  • Open Letter to Addiction Specialist Gabor Mate
  • Open Letter to Anthony Gottlieb
  • Open Letter to Congressman Ben Cline, asking him to abolish the criminal DEA
  • Open Letter to Diane O'Leary
  • Open Letter to Erica Zelfand
  • Open Letter to Francis Fukuyama
  • Open letter to Kenneth Sewell
  • Open Letter to Lisa Ling
  • Open letter to Professor Troy Glover at Waterloo University
  • Open Letter to Richard Hammersley
  • Open Letter to Rick Doblin and Roland Griffiths
  • Open Letter to Roy Benaroch MD
  • Open Letter to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
  • Open Letter to the Virginia Legislature
  • Open Letter to Variety Critic Owen Glieberman
  • Open Letter to Vincent Hurley, Lecturer
  • Open Letter to Vincent Rado
  • Open letter to Wolfgang Smith
  • Predictive Policing in the Age of the Drug War
  • Prohibitionists Never Learn
  • Regulate and Educate
  • Replacing antidepressants with entheogens
  • Review of When Plants Dream
  • Science News Continues to Ignore the Drug War
  • Science News magazine continues to pretend that there is no War on Drugs
  • Solquinox sounded great, until I found out I wasn't invited
  • Speaking Truth to Big Pharma
  • Teenagers and Cannabis
  • The common sense way to get off of antidepressants
  • The Criminalization of Nitrous Oxide is No Laughing Matter
  • The Depressing Truth About SSRIs
  • The Invisible Mass Shootings
  • The Menace of the Drug War
  • The problem with Modern Drug Reform Efforts
  • The Pseudoscience of Mental Health Treatment
  • There is nothing to debate: the Drug War is wrong, root and branch
  • Time for News Outlets to stop promoting Drug War lies
  • Top 10 Problems with the Drug War
  • Unscientific American
  • Using plants and fungi to get off of antidepressants
  • Vancouver Police Seek to Eradicate Safe Use
  • Weed Bashing at WTOP.COM
  • Whitehead and Psychedelics
  • Why DARE should stop telling kids to say no
  • Why Rick Doblin is Ghosting Me
  • Why the Drug War is Worse than you can Imagine
  • Why the FDA is not qualified to judge psychoactive medicine


  • Notes:

    1: A next-gen pain drug shows promise, but chronic sufferers need more options (up)
    2: Science News Continues to Ignore the Drug War (up)
    3: Opium for the Masses: Harvesting Nature's Best Pain Medication (up)







    Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    There are times when it is clearly WRONG to deny kids drugs (whatever the law may say). If your child is obsessed with school massacres, he or she is an excellent candidate for using empathogenic meds ASAP -- or do we prefer even school shootings to drug use???

    America's "health" system was always screaming at me about the threat of addiction from drugs. Then what did it do? It put me on the most dependence-causing meds of all time: SSRIs and SNRIs.

    The MindMed company (makers of LSD Lite) tell us that euphoria and visions are "adverse effects": that's not science, that's an arid materialist philosophy that does not believe in spiritual transcendence.

    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.

    The most addictive drugs have a bunch of great uses, like treating pain and inspiring great literature. Prohibition causes addiction by making their use as problematic as possible and denying knowledge and choices. It's always wrong to blame drugs.

    All the problems that folks associate with drugs are caused by prohibition. Thousands were not dying on the streets when opioids were legal in America. It took prohibition to bring that about.

    Oregon's drug policy is incoherent and cruel. The rich and healthy spend $4,000 a week on psilocybin. The poor and chemically dependent are thrown in jail, unless they're on SSRIs, in which case they're congratulated for "taking their meds."

    We drastically limit drug choices, we refuse to teach safe use, and then we discover there's a gene to explain why some people have trouble with drugs. Science loves to find simple solutions to complex problems.

    Yeah. That's why it's so pretentious and presumptuous of People magazine to "fight for justice" on behalf of Matthew Perry, as if Perry would have wanted that.

    LA Police Chief Daryl Gates said drug users should be summarily executed. William Bennett said drug dealers should be beheaded. These are the attitudes that the drug war inculcates. This racist and brutal ideology must be wiped out.


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






    Hello? MDMA works, already!
    Regulate and Educate


    Copyright 2025 abolishthedea.com, Brian Quass

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