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The Criminalization of Nitrous Oxide is No Laughing Matter

an open letter to the Drug Policy Alliance

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher





March 22, 2023



Channel 5 UK recently interviewed Niamh Eastwood (Executive Director of Release) and Dr. David Nicholl (NHS neurologist) about the perceived need to criminalize the use of laughing gas1.

April 2025 Update

Although the guests were diplomatic, the presenter was goading them on to admit what to her was an obvious conclusion: namely, that laughing gas must be outlawed to protect "our children."

Whenever biased coverage of this kind occurs, DPA should send complaint letters to station management, just as it now sends protest letters to Congress.

The letter would point out that "our children" are not the only stakeholders in the prohibition game. What about the rights of the hundreds of millions of the depressed to godsend treatment? What about philosophers who want to follow up on the work of William James, whose use of laughing gas inspired his entire philosophy? What about the rights of minorities in inner cities to be free from random gunfire?

The protest letter would continue with some more stubbornly ignored Drug War home truths, such as the following:

Drug prohibition has destroyed the rule of law in Central America, militarized police forces around the world, created "no-go" zones in inner cities, and censored scientists. News organizations should be taught to remember this before ignorantly championing a drug control policy that has killed millions and facilitated the election of fascists, even in the United States, by disfranchising millions of minority voters.

Even if "our children" were the only stakeholders in the drug game, the answer in a free society would be to educate them about all psychoactive substances, rather than to proceed down the murderous and anti-scientific road of prohibition.

Such letters should then be endorsed by DPA members and shipped to station management at Channel 5 -- and to every other station and network which (wittingly or otherwise) promotes drug-war hysteria by ignoring the seemingly endless downsides of prohibition.

Best Wishes

Brian Quass
abolishthedea.com



Author's Follow-up:

April 17, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




Am I really the only person in the world who sees the affront to philosophy from the outlawing of laughing gas, the substance which inspired the ontology of William James? If I am not, please let me know. Get in touch at quass@quass.com. Or even if you don't know, get in touch. I'd like to hear from someone who is not completely bamboozled by the paleolithic ideology of the War on Drugs.

I have written to hundreds of philosophers on the subject and been ghosted by almost all of them -- and gaslighted by the rest. I can find no philosopher who is willing to admit that the quest for truth has been stymied by drug prohibition. Do they not realize that drug use inspired the Hindu religion? Do they not understand that drug use gives us glimpses of other potential realities? Do they not recall what James himself said about such things in "The Varieties of Religious Experience:

"No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded."


Yet disregard them we must because of the paleolithic belief that drugs are bad.

Wake up, World: drugs are bad only in the sense that fire is bad. Both are dangerous substances that humanity can put to beneficial uses -- if it prefers progress over dogmatic superstition.

How disgusting that the UK is making laughing gas possession a criminal offence. It is just as wrong -- and asinine -- as outlawing fire.

Thanks to such viewpoints, the severely depressed have to have their brains damaged by shock therapy, the suicidal are denied the use of substances that could keep them from killing themselves, the hothead is denied treatments that could keep him or her from shooting up a grade school, and the philosopher is barred from studying the true nature of mind and matter.

Well done, Channel 5.

*william*

Laughing Gas




Laughing gas is the substance that inspired William James' philosophy about human perception and the nature of ultimate reality. "No account of the universe in its totality," wrote James, "can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded." And yet disregard them we must because the Drug War has outlawed all substances that help create such states. This is a veto on human progress. It is also psychological common sense that laughing gas could be used to prevent suicides and treat depression -- but materialist science ignores common sense. This is why they need to butt out when it comes to psychoactive medicine. They are no experts on emotional states, except in their own dogmatic materialist minds. It is a category error to place materialists in charge of our thoughts and feelings. We actually know what works for ourselves. And if there are any experts in the field, they are not materialists, they are pharmacologically savvy empaths, what the indigenous world calls shaman.

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  • My Realistic Plan for Getting off of Big Pharma Drugs and why it's so hard to implement
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  • 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
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  • Unscientific American
  • Using plants and fungi to get off of antidepressants
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  • Whitehead and Psychedelics
  • Why DARE should stop telling kids to say no
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  • 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
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  • Matthew Perry and the Drug War Ghouls
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  • Why CBS 19 should stop supporting the Drug War
  • Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide
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  • Listening to Laughing Gas
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  • Why the FDA should not schedule Laughing Gas
  • William James rolls over in his grave as England bans Laughing Gas

  • 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: Nitrous Oxide: Possession of laughing gas to be criminal offence (up)







    Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    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.

    Psychedelics and entheogens should be freely available to all dementia patients. These medicines can increase neuronal plasticity and even grow new neurons. Besides, they can inspire and elate -- or do we puritans feel that our loved ones have no right to peace of mind?

    "Dope Sick"? "Prohibition Sick" is more like it. The very term "dope" connotes imperialism, racism and xenophobia, given that all tribal cultures have used "drugs" for various purposes. "Dope? Junk?" It's hard to imagine a more intolerant, dismissive and judgmental terminology.

    Over 45% of traumatic brain injuries are caused by horseback riding (ABC News). Tell your representatives to outlaw horseback riding and make it a federal offence to teach a child how to ride! Brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.

    If I beat my depression by smoking opium nightly, I am a drug scumbag subject to immediate arrest. But if I do NOT "take my meds" every day of my life, I am a bad patient.

    The Drug Warriors say: "Don't tread on me! (That said, please continue to tell me what plants I can use, how much pain relief I can get, and whether my religion is true or not.)"

    "Chemical means of peering into the contents of the inner mind have been universally prized as divine exordia in man’s quest for the beyond... before the coarseness of utilitarian minds reduced them to the status of 'dope'." -- Eric Hendrickson

    Researchers insult our intelligence when they tell us that drugs like MDMA and opium and laughing gas have not been proven to work. Everyone knows they work. That's precisely why drug warriors hate them.

    If we can go overseas to burn poppy plants, then Islamic countries should be free to come to the United States to burn our grape vines.

    Did the Vedic People have a substance disorder because they wanted to drink enough soma to see religious realities?


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






    Declaration of Independence from the War on Drugs
    Night of the Addicted Americans


    Copyright 2025 abolishthedea.com, Brian Quass

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