there are just substances that, like anything else, can be used and misused
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
February 4, 2020
There is no such thing as 'drugs,' the way that the modern Drug Warrior defines that term. There are simply substances that can be used or misused. To think otherwise is to be superstitious. To think otherwise is to scapegoat substances and thus ignore true social problems that would otherwise cry out for solutions. To think otherwise is to create a make-work program for modern psychiatry, prison guards, sheriffs, the D E A, and Big Pharma .
Yet America is all about keeping Americans and the world from accessing the plants that grow at their very feet under the fiction that politically demonized substances are evil incarnate. This is a power grab that elevates common law over natural law, destroying the human being's right to Mother Nature, which is about as basic a natural right as possible. Not happy thus merely to deprive Americans of godsend medications, Drug War colonialism spreads the war on Mother Nature planet wide, ensuring eternal suffering of the mentally ill and their continued dependency on Big Pharma 12 's addictive meds, all so that imperial America can intervene at will in the countries of its choice, under the pretext of enforcing the American Empire's drug laws -- when we're actually enforcing the monopoly power of Big Liquor and the ideology of the religion known as Christian Science.
The Drug War is the ultimate example of strategic fearmongering by self-interested politicians.
Magazines like Psychology Today continue to publish feel-good articles about depression which completely ignore the fact that we have outlawed all drugs that could end depression in a heartbeat.
The drug war is being used as a wrecking ball to destroy democratic freedoms. It has destroyed the 4th amendment and freedom of religion and given the police the right to confiscate the property of peaceful and productive citizens.
In "The Book of the Damned," Charles Fort writes about the data that science has damned, by which he means "excluded." The fact that drugs can inspire and elate is one such fact, although when Fort wrote his anti-materialist broadside, drug prohibition was in its infancy.
That's why we damage the brains of the depressed with shock therapy rather than let them use coca or opium. That's why many regions allow folks to kill themselves but not to take drugs that would make them want to live. The Drug War is a perversion of social priorities.
All mycologists should denounce the criminalization of mushrooms. Those who don't should be drummed out of the field.
We're living in a sci-fi dystopia called "Fahrenheit 452", in which the police burn thought-expanding plants instead of thought-expanding books.
Drug Warriors rail against drugs as if they were one specific thing. They may as well rail against penicillin because cyanide can kill.
In the Atomic Age Declassified, they tell us that we needed hundreds of thermonuclear tests so that scientists could understand the effects. That's science gone mad. Just like today's scientists who need more tests before they can say that laughing gas will help the depressed. Science today is all about ignoring the obvious.
America takes away the citizen's right to manage their own pain by making opium illegal. Then psychiatrists treat the resulting epidemic of depression and anxiety by damaging the patient's brain with shock therapy.
The Drug War is the ultimate example of strategic fearmongering by self-interested politicians.
