Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war lies
an open letter to WTOP News
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
August 24, 2023
The author submitted the following suggestions to WTOP News today in the hopes of convincing the news outlet to stop promoting the hateful Drug War narrative.
1) regarding coverage of DC killings. In 2014, Ann Heather Thompson wrote the following in the Atlantic: "Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence 1 that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist." Yet most media outlets in the country write as if the rising inner-city gun violence 2 is inexplicable. I request that WTOP start connecting the dots between prohibition and gun violence 3 , for it was prohibition that incentivized the disastrous arming of the hood in the first place, leading to the creation of no-go shooting zones that, to America's shame, have remained in force for almost half a century now.
2) Regarding your coverage of drugs like Fentanyl and MDMA 4 and laughing gas : Please remember ALL the stakeholders in the drug debate. When we demonize drugs rather than understand them, we throw pain patients and the depressed under the bus, by forcing them to go without godsends -- or without adequate doses of godsends -- because doctors are afraid to prescribe. There's a call now for the outlawing of laughing gas . That's throwing millions of the depressed under the bus. I hope that WTOP will remind its readers, by way of context, that the philosophy of William James was inspired by his use of laughing gas 5 and that he himself said that we must study altered states in order to understand ultimate reality. "No account of the universe in its totality," wrote James, "can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded." But disregard them we must if prohibitionists have their way.
3) Please be sceptical of anything that the DEA reports. They have a vested interest in seeing that there is always a drug problem. Their multi-billion-dollar budget depends upon it. I suggest that you have your reporters read "Synthetic Panics" before they report government drug information as gospel truth. It tells how the DEA leverages local drug misuse into a series of national crises with the help of agitprop documentaries on shows like 48 Hours. "The New Face of Fentanyl 6 , the New Face of Ice, the New Face of Crack, The New Face of PCP 7," etc. NIDA 8 is not a good source either, for they fund studies only on abuse and misuse - never on positive use, meaning they are truly a propaganda arm of the US government.
If these suggestions seem controversial, please consider that Donald Trump won the 2016 election because of the Drug War, whose draconian laws sent millions of minorities to jail, thereby depriving them of the right and/or the ability to vote. In fact, that's clearly the REAL reason for the War on Drugs: like GOP redistricting, it's a way to let the far right steal elections. 37,000 people are killed by cars every year, but we do not need to outlaw cars: we need to teach safe driving. Just so with the modern scapegoat called drugs. We have created all the problems by ensuring dangerous uncertain drug supplies for users, meanwhile absolutely refusing to teach them safe use - for the insane reason that this might encourage use. Use is not bad in itself. To say so is Christian Science.
In short, please stop reckoning without the Drug War. It has huge negative ramifications on a free society. Please start pushing back with smart coverage that connects the dots between today's problems and our disastrous drug policy. The kinds of drugs we demonize today have inspired entire religions. As Trump's propaganda-aided election has shown, America can have democracy or it can have a Drug War, but it cannot have both.
Author's Follow-up:
April 08, 2025
Imagine a world in which the media covered other risky activities the way that they cover drug use.
We would see the following newscasts:
Killer Horses
NEWSCASTER 1: Yet another Boulder County teenager has been killed by a horse. 15-year-old Constance Noring was riding alone on Shadow Canyon Trail last night when her palomino horse slipped and fell, precipitating both animal and rider down into a 300-foot ravine.
NEWSCASTER 2: How terrible, Bill!
NEWSCASTER 1: Apparently, Constance had been boasting to her friends just recently that she could, ahem, quote-unquote, "handle a horse."
NEWSCASTER 2: She failed to realize, Bill, that NOBODY can handle a horse.
NEWSCASTER 1: You got that right, Sue.
NEWSCASTER 2: Christopher Reeves thought HE could handle a horse.
NEWSCASTER 1: What we're saying is, kids: just say no to horses. Fair enough?
Plane Silly
NEWSCASTER 1: The slaughter continues. Yet another deadly plane crash in the U.S., this time in Michigan.
NEWSCASTER 2: That's right, Bill. Planes have killed a total of 352 passengers in the United States alone since the year 2000.
NEWSCASTER 1: That's right, Sue. It makes you wonder: when will the madness end?
NEWSCASTER 2: Not until Congress wakes up and outlaws those death traps that we call airplanes, Bill.
NEWSCASTER 1: Right enough, Sue. Right enough.
Shark Bait
NEWSCASTER 1: Sharks continue to kill with impunity along the beaches of Central Florida. Another young white shark victim has been reported in Volusia County.
NEWSCASTER 2: In today's op-ed piece, Channel 9 General Manager Ella Vader makes the case for an aggressive extermination campaign against the killer fish. Stay tuned.
NEWSCASTER 1: Before anybody starts calling the ASPCA, remember that it is the welfare of our KIDS that we are talking about here! Humph!
NEWSCASTER 2: That's right, Bill. A nation is judged by how well it takes care of its poor little innocent white children.
The Bamboozled 1980s
As much as I blame the modern media for kowtowing to the drug-demonizing ideology of the Drug War, they were worse in the 1980s, the decade in which it was considered "hip" to turn in your very parents for using substances of which politicians disapprove.
The most cringing and unforgivable act of media kowtowing to Drug War sensibilities was performed by then-NBC correspondent Tom Brokaw. I do not remember the exact words that he used, but I certainly remember the gist. He was wrapping up a drug-related story when he said something to this effect about the Drug War: "We are waging a war, after all, and we all have to do our part."
Brokaw was ahead of his time when it comes to bowing and scraping before the racist demagogues of drug prohibition. It still turns my stomach just to think of that episode. I would like to say that it turned my stomach at the time, however, I was still at least partially bamboozled in the 1980s. I always realized at some level that the Drug War was nonsense, but I still had not seen through all the misdirection and lies that the Drug Warriors were using to get me onboard -- like the most mendacious public service announcement in human history, the one in which the Partnership for a Drug Free America 9 told us that our brains would be fried by the use of the kinds of substances that had inspired entire religions.
The execs who created that lying ad should be put on trial with the DEA for working to deprive the world of godsend medicines.
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.
Psychiatrists keep flipping the script. When it became clear that SSRIs caused dependence, instead of apologizing, they told us we need to keep taking our meds. Now they even claim that criticizing SSRIs is wrong. This is anti-intellectual madness.
Materialist scientists are drug war collaborators. They are more than happy to have their fight against idealism rigged by drug law, which outlaws precisely those substances whose use serves to cast their materialism into question.
To understand why the western world is blind to the benefits of "drugs," read "The Concept of Nature" by Whitehead. He unveils the scientific schizophrenia of the west, according to which the "real" world is invisible to us while our perceptions are mere "secondary" qualities.
I wonder if Nixon knew what a favor he was doing medical capitalism when he outlawed psychedelics. Those drugs can actually cure things, and there's no money in that.
Drugs are not the enemy, ignorance is -- the ignorance that the Drug War encourages by teaching us to fear drugs rather than to understand them.
Anytime you hear that a psychoactive drug has not been proven to be effective, it's a lie. People can make such claims only by dogmatically ignoring all the glaringly obvious signs of efficacy.
What attracts me about "drug dealers" is that they are NOT interested in prying into my private life. What a relief! With psychiatry, you are probed for pathological behavior on every office visit. You are a child. To the "drug dealer," I am an adult at least.
Who would have thought back in 1776 that Americans would eventually have to petition their government for the right to even possess a damn mushroom. The Drug War has destroyed America.
There are no recreational drugs. Even laughing gas has rational uses because it gives us a break from morbid introspection. There are recreational USES of drugs, but the term "recreational" is often used to express our disdain for users who go outside the healthcare system.
Psychiatrists keep flipping the script. When it became clear that SSRIs caused dependence, instead of apologizing, they told us we need to keep taking our meds. Now they even claim that criticizing SSRIs is wrong. This is anti-intellectual madness.
