bird icon for twitter bird icon for twitter


Vice and The 'One Strike You're Out' Fallacy

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

March 7, 2021



Written in response to Drugs Reddit post entitled Does anyone else just hate how Vice writes about Drugs, posted March 6, 2021

Vice writers are like all Drug Warriors: they write as if a natural psychoactive substance can be justifiably condemned provided only that it causes one single solitary problem for one single solitary person (even if the person in question was massively irresponsible when using said substance). What anti-scientific idiocy! A 2017 study shows that aspirin kills 3,000 people a year, and yet Vice is not writing horror stories to illustrate that fact. Why not? Because Vice authors have an agenda. They're not out to demonize drugs in general, but only those substances that threaten Big Business and the scientistic status quo.

Vice is guilty of what we should henceforth call the "ONE STRIKE YOU'RE OUT" fallacy, which says that a criminalized substance can be dismissed as evil merely because of its association with one single solitary instance of misuse. The fact that adult writers can glibly accept such an idiotic assumption shows how far the Drug War has melted the brains of America's so-called intellectual class.

The British Parliament was guilty of the "One Strike You're Out" fallacy when they broke up the peaceful rave scene in 1995 by cracking down on Ecstasy, merely because the drug had resulted in one single solitary death -- a death which was caused by the Drug War itself because it outlawed objective research into the drug in question, thereby denying safe-use information to the ravers who used it.




Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




The drug war is a meta-injustice. It does not just limit what you're allowed to think, it limits how and how much you are allowed to think.

The outlawing of coca and opium is a crime against humanity.

The Drug War is based on a huge number of misconceptions and prejudices. Obviously it's about power and racism too. It's all of the above. But every time I don't mention one specifically, someone makes out that I'm a moron. Gotta love Twitter.

In a free future, newspapers will have philosophers on their staffs to ensure that said papers are not inciting consequence-riddled hysteria through a biased coverage of drug-related mishaps.

Philip Jenkins reports that Rophynol had positive uses for treating mental disorders until the media called it the "date rape drug." We thus punished those who were benefitting from the drug, tho' the biggest drug culprit in date rape is alcohol. Oprah spread the fear virally.

People magazine should be fighting for justice on behalf of the thousands of American young people who are dying on the streets because of the drug war.

Drug prohibition is the perfect racist crime. It brought gunfire to inner cities, yet those who seek to end the gunfire pretend that drug prohibition has nothing to do with it.

If religious liberty existed, we would be able to use the inspiring phenethylamines created by Alexander Shulgin in the same way and for the same reasons as the Vedic people of India used soma.

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies." -- Groucho Marx

We've got to take the fight TO the drug warriors by starting to hold them legally responsible for having spread "Big Lies" about "drugs." Anyone involved in producing the "brain frying" PSA of the 1980s should be put on trial for willfully spreading a toxic lie.


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






Self-help nonsense in the age of the Drug War
Why the Drug War is far worse than a failure


Copyright 2025 abolishthedea.com, Brian Quass

(up)