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The Runner: Racist Drug War Agitprop

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

September 10, 2022



Here's a review that Brian posted to IMDB for the disgraceful 2021 film "The Runner." If you share his sentiments, please do your part by slamming the flick's Nazified message in your own IMDB review.

If you want to see how the Drug War has caused Americans to turn their backs on civil rights and civil liberties, watch The Runner, a flick about a self-righteous detective who scorns the US constitution as he strong-arms a teenager into ratting on his friends.

When Aidan asks for a lawyer, Detective Wall tells him, "Guilty people want lawyers." When the detective talks about teenage drug dealers, he uses language that the Nazis once reserved for Jews. The detective calls Aidan's black teenage friend "a scumbag, not worth another thought" and vows to throw the kid in jail for 20 years. Wall doesn't get his way, but that is only because the SWAT team riddles the black kid's chest with bullets in a criminally irresponsible raid on a teenage drinking party. Was Detective Wall fired after the raid? No. In fact, he received an award. And for what? For keeping Americans from using a plant medicine that the Incas considered to be a God. The very fact that this passes for entertainment today shows how thoroughly Americans have been hoodwinked by the hysterical drug-war ideology of substance demonization.

Author's Follow-up: September 10, 2022



I say I posted this review, but I actually just submitted it. If it doesn't appear, it's just more Drug War censorship. I attempted to post a comment on Variety that was critical of this film and the form did not work -- nor did Variety respond to my ten emails when I tried to resolve the problem. It looks like Variety wants to do business as usual, without anybody calling them to account for their many uncritical reviews in which they give drug-war Nazism a complete pass. In this they're just like the media group Common Sense, which will send up flares if a movie features dirty words, but will give no warning whatsoever if a movie promotes racist drug-war tyranny, evidence-planting and torture by the DEA. Such activity apparently qualifies as family values in the age of the Drug War.

Author's Follow-up: September 26, 2022



Today, Twitter flagged one of my replies as being potentially offensive merely because I told the truth about the Drug War. Apparently, just using the word "drugs" in a non-facetious manner is now considered to be offensive. There are endless tweets in which Americans spout the usual disdain for "drugs," dutifully associating them with all things evil, in conformity with their Drug War indoctrination. But when one dares to suggest that "drugs" is a politically created term and that the substances we demonize should be understood instead, one is now considered to be offensive.

I guess Twitter would prefer that I upload funny cat photographs instead so that America can remain in denial about their anti-scientific and superstitious attitude toward the politically created category of substances known as "drugs."

It's days like this that I thank God for referendums and the state of Oregon, where they have decriminalized "drugs." Of course, this is only the first step in restoring sanity (along with natural law and the freedom of scientists) to American life, by elevating facts over fear and education over indoctrination. But such examples are necessary to show the indoctrinated Chicken Littles of the west that the sky does not fall down when we teach instead of arrest.


The Links Police


All right, buddy, do you know why I stopped you? That's right, because the Drug War gives me carte blanche to be a noxious busybody. But I also thought you might be interested in the following additional essays touching on fascism -- and also the need for the Holocaust Museum to speak out against the same -- at long last, be it said!!!






*drugwarmovies 1 2 *


Notes:

1: Glenn Close but no cigar (up)
2: Running with the torture loving DEA (up)


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.

  • 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





  • Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    Americans were always free to take care of their own health -- until drug warriors handed doctors a monopoly on providing mind and mood medicine. Instead of denouncing this attack on our healthcare autonomy, doctors began demonizing self-care as a mortal sin.

    Folks like Sabet accuse folks like myself of ignoring the "facts." No, it is Sabet who is ignoring the facts -- facts about dangerous horses and free climbing. He's also ignoring all the downsides of prohibition, whose laws lead to the election of tyrants.

    The goal of drug-law reform should be to outlaw prohibition. Anything short of that, and our basic rights will always be subject to veto by fearmongers. Outlawing prohibition would restore the Natural Law of Jefferson, which the DEA scorned in 1987 with its raid on Monticello.

    The Shipiba have learned to heal human beings physically, psychologically and spiritually with what they call "onanyati," plant allies and guides, such as Bobinsana, which "envelops seekers in a cocoon of love." You know: what the DEA would call "junk."

    Drugs that sharpen the mind should be thoroughly investigated for their potential to help dementia victims. Instead, we prefer to demonize these drugs as useless. That's anti-scientific and anti-patient.

    Someone tweeted that fears about a Christian Science theocracy are "baseless." Tell that to my uncle who was lobotomized because they outlawed meds that could cheer him up -- tell that to myself, a chronic depressive who could be cheered up in an instant with outlawed meds.

    Addiction thrives BECAUSE of prohibition, which limits drug choice and discourages education about psychoactive substances and how to use them wisely.

    Alcohol is a drug in liquid form. If drug warriors want to punish people who use drugs, they should start punishing themselves.

    It is folly to put bureaucrats in charge of second-guessing drug prescriptions: what such bureaucrats are really doing is second-guessing the various philosophies of life which are presupposed by the way we use psychoactive drugs.

    That's the problem with prohibition. It is not ultimately a health question but a question about priorities and sensibilities -- and those topics are open to lively debate and should not be the province of science, especially when natural law itself says mother nature is ours.


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






    Drug War Uber Alles
    Listening to Laughing Gas


    Copyright 2025 abolishthedea.com, Brian Quass

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