in response to the Atlantic article by Anthony Murray
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
February 5, 2024
The following letter was written in response to a 2014 article entitled "When Judges Believe in Natural Law" by Anthony Murray in the Atlantic. When I attempted to send it to the author, my message was kicked back as "blocked" by the Murray law firm. (Hmm. Block ME will they?!) So I said, "No big deal, I'll just call their L.A. office number listed on their website." After doing so, however, I received the following somewhat cryptic prerecorded response:
"1-213-465-2367 F-R-E-E-S-W-I-T-C-H underscore H-A-1 -- no route to destination."
Well, either Murray's law firm is out of business, or they have never heard of the concept of user-friendliness. But I guess Murray is one of those high and mighty who have slipped the surly bonds of internet connectivity and are reachable only by a handful of his fellow worthies.
Dear Mr. Murray:
In regard to your Atlantic article, you say that democracy suffers "When Judges Believe in Natural Law"1. But I would like to ask you the following question: What happens when judges give up on the concept of natural law?
ANSWER: The War on Drugs happens, which is based on the concept that a government can take over our rights to Mother Nature's bounty. Surely that is outrageous in the eyes of common sense, not to say world history. Nor is it even Christian, since the Christian god said that his bounty was good. If the concept of natural law upon which America was founded means anything at all, has any power to inspire or deter, then natural law says this: that human beings have the right to what Locke called the earth and all that lies therein.
Sure, we must combat the problem of natural law leading to subjective judicial outcomes based on specific religious beliefs -- but you seem to want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. By throwing out natural law, we return unbridled license to popular opinion led by demagogues. Surely, Jefferson was spinning in his grave when the DEA stomped onto Monticello 2 in 1987 and confiscated his poppy plants3.
But you seem to say that, because natural law can be "abused" by those with narrow religious beliefs, we should hold no truths whatsoever to be self-evident. That idea has given the green light to a war on plant medicine that has outlawed entire religions, criminalized the substances that William James said we must investigate4, denied necessary pain medicine to those in hospice5 (100s of Indian hospitals no longer dare to even stock morphine 6 ) and it has completely censored academia, which cranks out endless articles about addiction and depression and consciousness in which they pretend that outlawed psychoactive medicines either do not exist or that they have no beneficial qualities whatsoever (thereby ignoring all that psychoactive experiences might tell us about the subjects in question)7. This Drug War has arrested millions of minorities by tempting the young and poor with wild profits -- and then arresting them when they took the bait -- thereby directly leading to the election of folks like Donald Trump by relatively small margins8.
The price of ignoring Natural Law is the hateful War on Drugs, which is a folly that American democracy is not likely to survive. Indeed, the 1st and 4th amendments are no longer valid in the USA thanks to the Drug War -- and property can be seized at the government's whim -- and religious freedom is outlawed, unless a church follows the substance-use policy of Christian Scientists9. And this in a country where we claim that guns do not kill people.
As an enemy of the Drug War, I cringe when I hear folks dissing natural law -- for your doctrine seems to say that government does indeed have a right to outlaw nature -- and that is something I will never believe -- nor would Jefferson.
Author's Follow-up: February 5, 2024
I am not saying that I am comfortable with the ways that Clarence Thomas might invoke natural law; but Martin Luther King himself invoked such law when he spoke of our God-given right to freedom and insisted that no law is above this right or can justly countermand it.
"We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights."10
It is surely throwing out the baby with the bath water to claim that we have no inalienable rights whatsoever just because some may, in our view, misuse that term.
Once we concede that there are no such rights, then Mother Nature is no longer ours by right -- which is the absurd result that should make us rethink our priorities. Once we concede that there are no such rights, then government may tax the very air we breathe. But I am at a loss for citing more dire power-grabs from government, since government's claim to control Mother Nature is the power-grab par excellence, for it denies us the right to pain relief on our own terms, and when a government controls pain, it has its hooks in our flesh. By controlling psychoactive substances, it tells us literally how we can think and feel about this world -- a far more dire censorship than merely outlawing books.
Of course, even on the grounds of expediency, the Drug War is insane -- for if we were to outlaw all activities that had a similar (or worse) risk profile than drug use, we would give up horseback riding and skiing and we would not even be driving automobiles11. The only remaining grounds for outlawing drugs is an anti-scientific and ahistorical view that psychoactive substances can have no good uses for anybody, anywhere, ever -- a viewpoint that has been responsible for immense suffering over the last 100 years, because Drug Warriors are blind to all the stakeholders in the drug debate -- except for the white suburban young people that they claim they want to protect -- while locking up their black counterparts in the 'hood, turning inner cities into shooting galleries, and destroying the rule of law in Latin America.
The first step in harm reduction is to re-legalize mother nature's medicines. Then hundreds of millions of people will no longer suffer in silence for want of godsend medicines... for depression, for pain, for anxiety, for religious doubts... you name it.
When the FDA tells us in effect that MDMA is too dangerous to be used to prevent school shootings and to help bring about world peace, they are making political judgments, not scientific ones.
Drug warriors have harnessed the perfect storm. Prohibition caters to the interests of law enforcement, psychotherapy, Big Pharma, demagogues, puritans, and materialist scientists, who believe that consciousness is no big "whoop" and that spiritual states are just flukes.
Almost all addiction services assume that the goal should be to get off all drugs. That is not science, it is Christian Science.
We need a few brave folk to "act up" by shouting "It's the drug war!" whenever folks are discussing Mexican violence or inner city shootings. The media treat both topics as if the violence is inexplicable! We can't learn from mistakes if we're in denial.
Drug prohibition is superstitious idiocy.
It is based on the following crazy idea:
that a substance that can be misused by a white young person at one dose for one reason must not be used by anybody at any dose for any reason.
It also bothers me that gun fanatics support the drug war. If I have no rights to mother nature, then they have no rights to guns. If the Fourth Amendment can be ignored based on lies and ignorance, then so can the Second.
Americans won't be true grown-ups until they learn to react to drug deaths the same way that they react to deaths from horseback riding and mountain climbing. They don't blame such deaths on horses and mountains; neither should they blame drug-related deaths on drugs.
"The homicidal drug is booze. There's more violence on a Saturday night in a neighborhood tavern than there has been in the whole 20-year history of LSD." -- Timothy Leary
This is the problem with trusting science to tell us about drugs. Science means reductive materialism, whereas psychoactive drug use is all about mind and the human being as a whole. We need pharmacologically savvy shaman to guide us, not scientists.
The first step in harm reduction is to re-legalize mother nature's medicines. Then hundreds of millions of people will no longer suffer in silence for want of godsend medicines... for depression, for pain, for anxiety, for religious doubts... you name it.
