what 1950s horror movies can tell us about America's coldhearted drug policies
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
December 23, 2024
I watched one of those B horror movies from the 1950s last night. It was called "She Devil" and concerned a poor but attractive young lady who was suffering from an apparently incurable case of tuberculosis. An ambitious doctor gets wind of the case and submits the patient to a new untested drug treatment, with the reluctant help of his more cautious and elderly advisor and mentor. The drug restores the woman's health but has the unintended side effect of changing her erstwhile meek disposition into that of a heartless egoist, one determined to have her way in life no matter what.
After noticing the change, the worried mentor asks his protege if the drug he had created could have affected the lady's personality:
"Do you suppose it could be the serum, that it produced an emotional as well as a physical change in her?"
Without missing a beat, the ambitious protege responds:
"I wouldn't know about that. As a biochemist, I don't deal with the emotions."
He is so self-satisfied and glib as he makes this pronouncement that a modern viewer wants to smack him right in the puss.
A modern biochemist might not be so frank as this B-movie scientist, but Behaviorism is still the order of the day in academia, even if it goes by other names. The drug researcher doesn't care about obvious emotions. Otherwise they would see at a glance that the strategic use of drugs like coca, opium 1 and psychedelics could work wonders, and not just for the depressed and anxious but for those seeking help in achieving spiritual states and self-understanding and/or writing exotic prose and poetry. They cannot see this obvious fact because they believe that to be scientific, they have to ignore obvious emotions and look at brain chemistry instead under a microscope. Anecdote and historical usage mean nothing to them.
These drugs have inspired entire religions but that means nothing to today's scientists. They have accepted the anti-scientific Drug Warrior premise that a drug that can be misused, even in theory, by young American white people must not be used by anyone, anywhere, ever, that we are just too dumb to ever learn to use drugs wisely. These are the same people who insist that we can use guns wisely and that free climbing a sheer cliff face is a reasonable activity, as is driving a car, the same people who sign off on liquor and Jim Beam commercials for young adults, the same people who let Big Pharma 23 advertise "meds" for which the recognized side effects include death itself.
Drug researchers today may be the smartest and nicest people in the world -- but they are forced to play dumb and be cold-hearted thanks to their adherence to the mendacious dogma of today's know-nothing and anti-scientific Drug Warriors.
If MAPS wants to make progress with MDMA they should start "calling out" the FDA for judging holistic medicines by materialist standards, which means ignoring all glaringly obvious benefits.
Cocaine is not evil. Opium is not evil. Drug prohibition is evil.
The "acceptable risk" for psychoactive drugs can only be decided by the user, based on what they prioritize in life. Science just assumes that all users should want to live forever, self-fulfilled or not.
We have a low tolerance for the downsides of drug use only. We are fine with high risk levels for any other activity on earth. If drug warriors were serious about saving lives, they'd outlaw guns, free flying, free diving, and all pleasure trips to Mars.
Timothy Leary's wife wrote: "We went to Puerto Rico and all we did was take cocaine and read Faust to one another." And there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG with that!!! The drug war is all about scaring us and making illegal drug use as dangerous as possible.
The proof that psychedelics work has always been extant. We are hoodwinked by scientists who convince us that efficacy has not been "proven." This is materialist denial of the obvious.
Governor Kotek is "dealing" with the homelessness problem in Oregon by arresting her way out of it, in fealty to fearmongering drug warriors.
Here is a sample drug-use report from the book "Pihkal":
"More than tranquil, I was completely at peace, in a beautiful, benign, and placid place."
Prohibition is a crime against humanity for withholding such drug experiences from the depressed (and from everybody else).
This is the "Oprah fallacy," which has led to so much suffering. She told women they were fools if they accepted a drink from a man. That's crazy. If we are terrified by such a statistically improbable event, we should be absolutely horrified by horses and skateboards.
If Americans cannot handle the truth about drugs, then there is something wrong with Americans, not with drugs.
If MAPS wants to make progress with MDMA they should start "calling out" the FDA for judging holistic medicines by materialist standards, which means ignoring all glaringly obvious benefits.