A laughable game show about a laughable drug policy
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
April 11, 2026
HOST: Welcome to What's My Line?! Today's guest is someone in the biomedical field. Someone in the biomedical field. Our contestants' duty is to identify the job that he holds. Okay, guys? Let's start with the star of Celebrity Lawn Darts, Talon West. Talon, your first question, please?
TALON: Do you work in a laboratory, my dear?
HOST: Oh, good question.
GUEST: Yes, I do.
HOST: Interesting. Let's go to Indigo Lane from CSI: Run-of-the-mill Victims Unit.
INDIGO: Do you test bodily fluids, by any chance?
GUEST: Yes, I do.
INDIGO: What can I say, I had a hunch.
HOST: A good hunch! Good for you. Let's move on to Cairo Reeves, host of Chutes & Ladders: Celebrity Edition.
CAIRO: Does your work affect people like me?
GUEST: It could.
HOST: Aha! It could affect you, Cairo! Watch out! Haha! Talon, next question, please?
TALON: You say it could affect Cairo. How so?
GUEST: It could cause him to lose his job.
HOST: Wow! How odd is THAT? This is a tough one, folks. Indigo?
Indigo: Does your job have anything to do with urine, by any chance?
HOST: Where does she GET these questions?
GUEST: Yes, actually it does.
HOST: Shut my mouth! Really?! How did you know that, Indigo? Cairo, you get to ask the final question.
CAIRO: Would you, by any chance, be one of those weasels who tests employee urine, not simply to check for impairment, but to "catch them out" for using any medicines that inspire and elate which are not produced by Big Pharma, thereby denying them their time-honored right to take care of their own health as they see fit and tossing them out of the work force for the crime of being a Christian Science heretic?
GUEST: You got it in one!
HOST: Well, he got it in two, actually, but he did get it! Congratulations.
CAIRO: You sneaky little weasel.
HOST: That's all for today, folks.
CAIRO: How does it feel, making money by running roughshod over my time-honored rights? Huh? Come back here!
Americans believe scientists when they say that drugs like MDMA are not proven effective. That's false. They are super effective and obviously so. It's just that science holds entheogenic medicines to the standards of reductive materialism. That's unfair and inappropriate.
I never said that getting off SSRIs should be done without supervision. If you're on Twitter for medical advice, you're in the wrong place.
The drug war has created a whole film genre with the same tired plots: drug-dealing scumbags and their dupes being put in their place by the white Anglo-Saxon establishment, which has nothing but contempt for altered states.
Pundits have been sniffing about the "smell" of Detroit lately. Sounds racist -- especially since such comments tend to come from drug warriors, the guys who ruined Detroit in the first place (you know, with drug laws that incentivized profit-seeking violence as a means of escaping poverty).
It's always wrong to demonize drugs in the abstract. That's anti-scientific. It begs so many questions and leaves suffering pain patients (and others) high and dry. No substance is bad in and of itself.
They drive to their drug tests in pickup trucks with license plates that read "Don't tread on me." Yeah, right. "Don't tread on me: Just tell me how and how much I'm allowed to think and feel in this life. And please let me know what plants I can access."
That's so "drug war" of Rick: If a psychoactive substance has a bad use at some dose, for somebody, then it must not be used at any dose by anybody. It's hard to imagine a less scientific proposition, or one more likely to lead to unnecessary suffering.
American businesses judge people, not by the color of their skin but by the contents of their digestive systems.
If there is an epidemic of "self-harm," prohibitionists never think of outlawing razor blades. They ask: "Why the self-harm?" But if there is an epidemic of drug use which they CLAIM is self-harm, they never ask "Why the self-harm?" They say: "Let's prohibit and punish!"
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.
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