Harm reduction is great, but we need benefit promotion as well
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
September 12, 2025
One of the biggest canards of the Drug War is the idea that we are not supposed to glorify drug use. Why not, exactly? The Jim Beam company targets ads for bourbon at young people on prime-time television. Why then is it wrong to say positive things about the psychoactive substances that have inspired entire religions? The fact is, we should be glorifying drug use if and when drug use has benefits that are worth glorifying.
The intermittent use of laughing gas and/or coca and/or opium could keep a depressed individual from killing themselves. It could prevent suicide. It could make it unnecessary for them to receive brain-damaging shock therapy. That is a GOOD thing! We SHOULD be glorifying such drug use and demanding the restoration of our time-honored right to take care of our own health with the medicines of our choice!
Empathogens like MDMA help bring the world together in peace and understanding. It's amazing that I have to remind the Drug Warriors of this, but that's actually a GOOD thing. It's actually a good thing to bring the world together in peace and understanding, especially given that the world is on the brink of nuclear annihilation thanks to our hatred of "the other."
I am always amazed that I am the only drug pundit on the planet who seems to acknowledge this outcome of MDMA use as an actual benefit. This illustrates the perverse priorities of the Drug War. The Drug Warriors hate nothing so much as peace, love and understanding. They cracked down on the Summers of Love on both sides of the Atlantic using the pretext of drugs. They used LSD as an excuse in the States and MDMA as an excuse in the UK. And yet drug pundits like Michael Pollan and Rick Strassman -- and even Julie Holland, alas! -- tell us that Nixon was worried about our safety?! Please! He clearly wanted to arrest his peace-loving opponents and remove them from the voting rolls by charging them with felonies!
Had he wanted us to be safe, he would not have implemented a policy that promotes gun violence; he would not have refused to teach safe use; he would not have refused to regulate product.
The U.S. government not only fails to recognize the benefits of drugs, they have a well-documented history of trying to use those very drugs in chemical warfare! Chemical warfare!
I have lately been watching westerns on the Classic Reel streaming channel. That entire genre is a glorification of deadly gunfire and excessive drinking. But then what do I expect? As Malcom X well understood, violence is as American as apple pie. We love it!
Just consider the irony: we outlaw medicines that inspire peace -- and then we make movies to glorify the violence that such prohibition brings about!
Our modern drug-war movies are full of violence: movies like "Running with the Devil," in which a cigarette-smoking DEA agent hangs a drug suspect up on a meat hook and then shoots another drug suspect at point-blank range -- all because he was engaged in the sale of a plant medicine that the Peruvian Indians consider to be a gift from the gods. We love that violence! We consider it top-notch entertainment, in the same way that the Romans "got off" on the bloody fighting of gladiators.
Americans have fallen in love with the Hollywood image of guns and violence -- they consider it a kind of recipe for modern living. This is why our politicians still champion a Drug War that has destroyed minority communities around the world. This ongoing support of drug prohibition is inexcusable, since we know from liquor prohibition, that such policies create violence out of whole cloth. It was liquor prohibition that created the Mafia as we know it today.
Believe it or not, I used to be something of a slightly right-leaning centrist in the past (God forgive me). It was only when I started to philosophically parse the War on Drugs that I realized the complete lack of principles that exists on the right today. They claim to be worried about the poor little white children who might misuse time-honored medicines -- and yet if you even mention the words "gun control," they will treat you like a Communist. They support the Drug War because it outlaws drugs that they do not personally use. Of course, they are thereby outlawing all sorts of drug-related research that could prevent Alzheimer's and treat autism and make themselves comfortable in their old age. They are, in fact, outlawing human progress and censoring academia, meanwhile coldheartedly denying the depressed their God-given right to access the medicines of Mother Nature. And they support their tyranny with abject lies. Opium was considered a panacea by all the great doctors of yore: by Galen, by Paracelsus and by Avicenna -- and yet our DEA and our FDA would have us believe that opium has no beneficial uses for anybody, anywhere, ever.
Their demonization of opiates has forced pain patients to go without relief. In India, kids in hospice have to do without morphine. This is because Americans have demonized such drugs so thoroughly as to make morphine impossible to provide for bureaucratic and financial reasons.
Not content with merely outlawing such time-honored substances, we are told that it is even wrong to talk about their safe and beneficial use, hence the tacit dictum in today's society that tells us we are not allowed to "glorify" drug use. And yet our Hollywood movies glorify torture! They glorify torture in the name of fighting against drug use.
This is why I say that the Drug War is the great philosophical problem of our time. For it tells us about far more than drug policy -- it tells us about what Americans really value in life. Hint: it is not peace, love and understanding. It is not freedom to take care of our own health. It is not freedom of speech. It is not freedom of religion.
What does the Drug War tell us about America? It tells us that we Americans do not believe in principles. The Bill of Rights owes its very existence to the idea that there are some rights so basic that public opinion must not be allowed to abnegate them. But that is precisely what has happened in America. We live in a sort of passion-ocracy. If the public feels strongly enough about something (especially drug use), then our Bill of Rights is no longer thought to apply.
This is all part of a greater trend toward fascism in America that has been going on for decades now. It is about more than drugs, it is about a hate-filled mood that has been engendered in a country that is constantly looking for scapegoats. As Thomas Szasz wrote in his introduction to "Ceremonial Chemistry":
"Lacking the usual grounds on which people congregate as a nation, we [Americans] habitually fall back on the most primitive yet most enduring basis for group cohesion, namely, scapegoating.1"
Americans need somebody to hate: they need somebody to blame their problems on.
Consider the crime shows that have been popular over the last 50 years. The most popular shows have been about no-nonsense law enforcement that proudly violates the US Constitution in the name of obtaining a specific outcome. That is why shows like CSI are so popular, and especially the "Special Victims" episodes. They paint the villains blacker than black so that we can all have the thrill of feeling self-righteous and superior. Such shows are constantly encouraging Americans in their penchant to despise Constitutional niceties as a mere hindrance to proper law enforcement and to justice. They egg on the vigilante spirit in us. In looking back over the last 50 years of television history in America, it seems almost like these shows have been part of a conscious plan to disenchant Americans with democracy.
For these reasons and many more, we need to start glorifying drug use, and especially the sort of use that can help bring Americans together on the basis of something other than scapegoating. We need to stop talking exclusively about harm prevention -- as important as that is -- and start talking about benefit promotion as well. Empathogens can help keep hotheads from shooting up grade schools. Laughing gas can keep a depressed person from killing themselves. The wise use of cocaine and opium could end almost all depression in America overnight and help end the mass dependency of 1 in 4 American women on mind-numbing Big Pharma meds. We need to tout these things as the glaringly obvious benefits that they are.
Unfortunately, we have been programmed (indeed, brainwashed) since childhood to think that the safe use of potentially addictive substances is impossible. This makes us blind to endless benefits of drug use. This blindness is reinforced by the fact that we have placed materialist scientists in charge of mind and mood medicine -- and materialists are dogmatically blind to all obvious benefits of drugs. So when we glorify beneficial drug use, we are pushing back not just against the prohibitionist but also the materialist, who will gaslight us and tell us that none of these benefits of ours have been "proven."
Was the effectiveness of the Soma juice of the Vedic religion "proven"? Was the effectiveness of the opium used in ancient Greek ritual "proven"? Was the effectiveness of the divine coca of the Peruvian Indians "proven"? How about the effectiveness of the Native American's peyote?
We must not be silenced about the benefits of demonized substances either by the infantilization practiced by the Drug Warrior nor by the gaslighting practiced by materialists. Drugs have benefits and we have a right and duty to promote those benefits!
The DEA is gaslighting Americans, telling them that drugs with obvious benefits have no benefits whatsoever. Scientists collude in this lie thanks to their adherence to the emotion-scorning principles of behaviorism.
Problem 2,643 of the war on drugs:
It puts the government in charge of deciding what counts as a true religion.
Psychedelics and entheogens should be freely available to all dementia patients. These medicines can increase neuronal plasticity and even grow new neurons. Besides, they can inspire and elate -- or do we puritans feel that our loved ones have no right to peace of mind?
DEA Stormtroopers should be held responsible for destroying American Democracy. Abolish the American Gestapo.
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.
In fact, that's what we need when we finally return to legalization: educational documentaries showing how folks manage to safely incorporate today's hated substances into their life and lifestyle.
I've been told by many that I should have seen "my doctor" before withdrawing from Effexor. But, A) My doctor got me hooked on the junk in the first place, and, B) That doctor completely ignores the OBVIOUS benefits of indigenous meds and focuses only on theoretical downsides.
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.
If we encourage folks to use antidepressants daily, there is nothing wrong with them using heroin daily. A founder of Johns Hopkins used morphine daily and he not only survived, but he thrived.
The Hindu religion was created thanks to the use of a drug that inspired and elated. It is therefore a crime against religious liberty to outlaw substances that inspire and elate.
The DEA is gaslighting Americans, telling them that drugs with obvious benefits have no benefits whatsoever. Scientists collude in this lie thanks to their adherence to the emotion-scorning principles of behaviorism.