The Drug War as a Make-Work Program for Law Enforcement
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
April 5, 2020
I was just watching an old episode of "In the Heat of the Night," in which drug runners feature prominently, of course. It made me wonder, what would TV have been like over the last 40 years without the Drug War? Script writers would have had to get inventive and picture their bad guys performing actual crimes - rather than hunting them down for the pre-crime of possessing politically ostracized substances.
The absurdity of the situation is clear when Chief Gillespie is asked how the officers should confront a newly arrived suspect at a drug dealer's house.
"How do you want to deal with him?" asks Virgil.
"I wanna know what he's got in that backpack," says the Chief.
That says it all about law enforcement during the Drug War: they're not interested in how anyone actually behaves: let the individual be as peaceful as a lamb, that means nothing. The police want to see what they have in the backpack, so that the full force of Drug War sharia may be brought down upon them if they dare to possess plants of which the government disapproves.
If the police go out onto a peaceful street, their job is to MAKE trouble by poking into other's business, rather than leaving well enough alone and letting peaceful citizens go about their peaceful business. And we wonder why guns proliferate and bullets fly.
In a sane world, it would be none of the Chief's damn business what anybody had in a backpack. The question would be how is the suspect behaving? What a waste of resources is thus employed in ruining Americans' lives based on what plant medicines they have chosen to use.
But the Drug Warrior never gets it. Their anti-scientific and draconian laws create a black market that results in crack houses popping up thanks to the profit motive. Then they point to those very crack houses as the reason why the Drug War must continue!!!
It's circular reasoning thanks to which the Drug War can never end - unless uprooted root and branch by folks who point out that it's all a power grab and a violation of natural law to outlaw naturally occurring substances in the first place.
Think of the cost of the Drug War: in terms of deaths and ruined lives and all the powerful psychoactive therapies for which even research is blocked, the soldiers going without powerful medicines for PTSD, the elderly going without powerful medicines for depression, the young minorities wasting away in overcrowded prisons for possessing natural substances that politicians have outlawed. Then ask yourself: would there be anything near this kind of drug-related suffering in the world had America NOT chosen to begin criminalizing plant medicines in 1914?
Obviously not. There was no drug problem prior to 1914. Why? Because back then people were still judged on how they actually behaved every day of their life and not on what natural substances they may or may not have in their digestive system.
But the power-hungry politicians saw an opening in 1914 and they ran through it.
Time to rewind and re-answer the question of how America intends to deal with substances: Let's try education this time instead of law enforcement. And let's not moralize about substance use, let's present the statistical facts on every substance known to humankind, without hypocritically leaving out alcohol and prescription drugs and tobacco, but definitely including every non-addictive psychedelic substance, substances which are now thought to promote the growth of new neurons in the brain - neurons that Drug Warriors could certainly use, judging by the illogical and circular reasoning that they continue to employ to this very day, over 100 years after Francis Burton Harrison succeeded in overturning natural law and criminalizing the use of a mere plant.
PS Not satisfied with arresting the perps, the Sheriff Bill Gillespie in the TV story gleefully confiscates the bad guy's property, under the tyrannical legal fiction that real estate may be held responsible for drug law violations. Of course, the property owner in the TV show is not a nice guy, so it's easy for American viewers to overlook the fact that the legal system is having a tyrannical heyday while cracking down on the mere substances that humans choose to ingest. Yet this passes as entertainment in America: watching law enforcement run roughshod over natural law and common sense, all in the name of combating a drug problem that the law itself has created out of whole cloth.
And then conservatives wring their hands, wondering, "Why do so many people fear, hate, and mistrust the police?" The answer: because the police aren't the police anymore: they are the enforcement arm of the ultra-strict Christian Science Sharia, AKA the war on plants, which tyrant politicians disingenuously refer to as the Drug War.
PPS Even in episodes that are not centered around drug dealing, the show gratuitously portrays cocaine use in the most lurid light possible, something of which only bad guy "trailer trash" partake, whereas Sigmund Freud used the stimulant liberally -- not in order to beat his wife and shortchange his business partners, but rather to goad himself on to a prolific vocational output that led to his self-actualization in life and his worldwide fame (but you will never see Hollywood portray cocaine used in THAT fashion, since that runs counter to their role in cranking out Drug War propaganda to keep the war on plants going strong until the end of time).
Author's Follow-up: March 25, 2025
I would be glad to respect the police -- but that's hard to do when they have been given the role of the Gestapo by politicians. The Drug War is obviously just a way to harass blacks -- although it has a lot of collateral downsides among whites. I loved my mother, but when she had a problem with prescribed oxy, she was compassionated and helped -- albeit she was not given any common-sense substances that could help her kick oxy without the gnashing of teeth. Meanwhile, racist pols in Washington passed laws to kick Black women out of their government housing were they found to be using meds like oxy. Yes, meds. No substance is a monster in and of itself. The idea that such evil drugs exist has forced millions to go without godsends all because a minority misuse -- and then only because we refuse to teach safe use, nor have we offered them less problematic and inherently less non-addictive alternatives, like the blatantly obvious godsend phenethylamines whose use has been described in Pihkal by chemist Alexander Shulgin -- with such user reports as:
"I acknowledged a rapture in the very act of breathing."
"Excellent feelings, tremendous opening of insight and understanding, a real awakening."
"Tremendous feeling of confidence in life and the life process. Complete sense of resolution."
There is no doubt that non-addictive bliss like this could have helped my mom get off her prescribed oxy without enormous trauma -- and yet our Drug Warriors wanted her to suffer instead. And so they promoted fear and irrationality about drugs. DEA leaders in particular should be put on trial for crimes against humanity, for they are the ones who have lied with impunity for decades about godsend medicines.
Meanwhile, we need to relieve America's police force of Gestapo duties -- and then they will have my complete respect and honor. Of course, they will then have to learn to exist on a budget -- they will no longer be able to confiscate mansions and dormitories at will because they found a plant medicine of which racist politicians disapproved.
It's interesting that the only public buildings you find these days that are ornate and large are hospitals and police headquarters. Just re-visited my hometown in Seaford, Virginia, and saw a new police headquarters that far outstripped the modest local library in magnificence and was by far the largest public building in the county. We cannot educate folks or save them from overdoses in America -- but boy can we arrest 'em! What a disgrace!
Ten Tweets
against the hateful war on US
As such, "we" are important. The sun is just a chaos of particles that "we" have selected out of the rest of the raw data and declared "This we shall call the sun!" "We" make this universe. Consciousness is fundamental.
Of course, prohibitionists will immediately remind me that we're all children when it comes to drugs, and can never -- but never -- use them wisely. That's like saying that we could never ride horses wisely. Or mountain climb. Or skateboard.
The Drug War shows us that American democracy is fundamentally flawed. Propaganda and fearmongering has persuaded Americans to give up freedoms that are clearly enunciated in the U.S. Constitution. We need a new democracy in which a Constitution actually matters.
It's disgusting that folks like Paul Stamets need a DEA license to work with mushrooms.
After over a hundred years of prohibition, America has developed a kind of faux science in which despised substances are completely ignored. This is why Sci Am is making a new argument for shock therapy in 2023, because they ignore all the stuff that OBVIOUSLY cheers one up.
Let's pass a constitutional amendment to remove Kansas from the Union, and any other state where the racist politicians leverage the drug war to crack down on minorities.
Michael Pollan is the Leona Helmsley of the Drug War. He uses outlawed drugs freely while failing to support the re-legalization of Mother Nature. Drug laws are apparently for the little people.
The war on drugs is has destroyed America's faith in the power of education. In fact, it has made us think of education as WRONG in and of itself. It has made us prefer censorship and fear-filled ignorance to education!
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!"
This pretend concern for the safety of young drug users is bizarre in a country that does not even criminalize bump stocks for automatic weapons.
As such, "we" are important. The sun is just a chaos of particles that "we" have selected out of the rest of the raw data and declared "This we shall call the sun!" "We" make this universe. Consciousness is fundamental.