The Drug War Philosopher
essays against the bloody Drug War
So many organizations talk about fighting the Drug War with facts and figures. That sounds great. But the problem is that the Drug War represents an ideology, not just a set of problematic laws. It implies an idea of "the good life" and writes laws accordingly. It is not enough to complain about implementations of the Drug War ideology. Rather, that ideology must be attacked at its root by unveiling and refuting the assumptions upon which it is based. That is not a job for mere facts and figures but for philosophy.
B. Quass, "the drug war philosopher"
In order of most recently updated
The Drug War as Religion
Those who support the Drug War do so based on a kind of materialist version of Christian Science.
Drug Use as Self-Medication
It is perfectly natural that folks would seek medical help outside the system. In fact, except for the fear of arrest, it is perfectly logical to make such a choice.
This is your brain on Neuralink
Scientistic America will gladly give lobotomies and ECT -- but will have nothing to do with non-addictive psychedelics that grow new neurons in the brain.
Alexander Shulgin: American Hero
American pharmacologist Alexander Shulgin was the epitome of what a psychoactive drug researcher should be -- and what they WOULD be were America not under the spell of Drug War propaganda
Richard Feynman and the Drug War
Rimbaud was right. Science is too slow for us (for we the depressed). And this slowness has consequences, for it gives a green-light for scheming politicians to outlaw godsend psychoactive substances.
Psychoactive Drugs and the Fountain of Youth
Ponce Leon was right: there is a fountain of youth.
It was growing all around him, in the form of psychoactive plants and fungi.
But the Drug War has padlocked the fountain and threatened trespassers with imprisonment and death.
Sherlock Holmes versus Gabriel Maté
I am picking on Gabriel Maté here, but he is in good company. Almost every popular non-fiction author of our times reckons without the Drug War.
Teenagers and Cannabis
The reason that cannabis is omnipresent these days is because we have outlawed all of its natural competition.
Using Opium to Fight Depression
hey, here's an idea: let psychiatrists use any plant medicine that works! Replacing psychiatry with pharmacologically savvy empaths.
Open Letter to Diane O'Leary
The search for a reductive cure for depression created the unacknowledged pharmacological dystopia in which we live today, thanks to which 1 in 4 American women are dependent on Big Pharma 'meds' for life.
Calling All Philosophers
Philosophers: speak out against the Christian Science drug war, about how it violates natural law, while yet also violating the Christian understanding in Genesis that God gave US plants, not the government, and that God himself said that they were GOOD!
Why I Am Pro Drugs
Sobriety is no goal in itself. Most suicides could pass a drug test. The idea that drugs are "bad" is Christian Science.
President Calls for Executing Drug Dealers
Ayatollah Trump declares fatwah against Mother Nature and all who deal therein. He will henceforth execute those who dare sell godsend plant medicines, while allowing psychiatrists to continue addicting 25% of the nation at will to mind-fogging SSRIs.
Addicted to Ignorance
How the drug war prevents the effective treatment of addiction and withdrawal, forcing patients onto addictive Big Pharma meds while ignoring the godsend mind-changing medicines of Big Pharma, which are crying out to be used in psychiatric settings.
Why Kevin Sabet is Wrong
It's no surprise that Jimmy Carter gives Kevin Sabet rave reviews, for his politics are rooted in the past
The Problem with Following the Science
If there is a problem with marijuana use, folks like Kevin Sabet caused it by championing a Drug War that gives us no psychoactive substances to use EXCEPT for marijuana.
The War on Plants
The Salem Witch Hunt never ended: Christian Science drug warriors continue to persecute those who reach higher states of consciousness using plants
End the Drug War Now
How the American Drug War is an imperialist and racist violation of natural law, traveling worldwide to burn plants that have been used responsibly by other countries for millennia, replacing them with the Christian drug known as alcohol
Majoring in Drug War Philosophy
It tells us what we should already know, that we need to be educated and honest about all substances and learn how to profit from them as safely as possible, rather than demonizing substances a priori at the self-interested whim of demagogues.
Michael Pollan and the Drug War
How can a great botanist like Michael Pollan agree with the Drug War proposition that folks should be arrested for accessing the bounty of Mother Nature?
How the Drug War killed Leah Betts
How the British government discouraged research that could have saved Leah Betts, meanwhile shutting down the rave scene Camelot and replacing it with gangsters and crack
Fifty Years of Bogus Articles about Creativity
American authors who write about creativity have self-censored their work for 50 years in deference to the drug war, to denying the role that psychoactive plants have always played in facilitating creative breakthroughs
Mycologists as DEA Collaborators
Mycology in drug war America: a field in which the DEA is standing over your shoulder, telling you which of Mother Nature's mushrooms you can study and when
Did You Take Your Meds?
This politically created distinction between 'meds' and 'drugs'
lets us sneer at substances that have inspired entire religions
Venezuela continues to kowtow to US Drug Policy
The Venezuelan government has no problem running roughshod over their citizens' naturally given right to access the medicines of Mother Nature. It just wants to be the one to break heads.
When you say 'Drugs'
The term 'drugs' is no more a scientific term than the word 'scabs': both terms not only denote a noun but they pass judgment on that noun in so doing.
There is no drug problem
The Drug War represents a superstitious fetishization of psychoactive substances as the root of all evil.
What We Mean When We Say 'Drugs'
There was no drug problem in the 1800s because then folks still blamed PEOPLE for bad behavior, not substances. Today's "drug" user is the new witch. We are superstitiously frightened of their ability to achieve transcendence with psychoactive plants
Rationality Uber Alles
from Socrates to Social Physics: tracing the drug war to America's scientistic disregard of human emotions
Hurray for Self-Medicating
We need a Drug Education Agency, not a Drug Enforcement Agency. We need to teach the world how to use drugs safely. We need to stop infantilizing Americans by convincing them through one-sided propaganda and horror stories that they will never be smart
Michael Pollan on Drugs
It's not clear why Michael thinks that continued criminalization is going to help things when the MO of the Drug War is to keep users in ignorance of the psychoactive drugs that they use.
In praise of doctor hopping
Doctor hopping is a duty, if we’re to be true to ourselves and our own needs and desires rather than those of the doctor and the DEA.
How the Drug War turned me into an eternal patient
The DEA does not trust me after 40 years to use psychiatric prescriptions wisely, even though I'd be the first to give them up were the thousands of alternative substances de-criminalized at long last
Taking the Drug War for Granted
Americans are so used to urinating upon demand and giving up their rights to plant medicine that they forget that a Drug War even exists.
Why DARE should stop telling kids to say no
DARE promotes an unscientific view of plant medicine, one that supports a drug war that is anti-science, anti-minority, anti-depressed, anti-elderly, and a violation of natural law.
Heroin versus Alcohol updated
How the lies and rewritten histories of drug-war culture shape our views on psychoactive substances ranging from coffee, to antidepressants, to heroin.
Drug War Uber Alles
The drug war outlaws substances that could tame humanity's violence-prone heart and thus help us avoid the eventual nuclear annihilation toward which our species seems inevitably headed.
Defund the DEA
Richard Nixon's DEA helped popularize the belief that drug suspects could be treated like dirt, so it's no surprise that the DEA is anti-minority -- the only surprise is that minorities would want to work there.
How the drug war promotes drug abuse
The drug war promotes drug abuse by superstitiously pretending that plant medicines are evil in and of themselves, when plant medicines are morally neutral and only good and bad with respect to how and why they are used
Listening to Laughing Gas
Drug Warriors demonize precisely those substances whose use might conduce to a non-materialistic way of seeing the world.
Why America is Hung Up on Drugs
Drugs is a political term. Otherwise it would include alcohol and antidepressants, to which one in four American women are addicted.
Is Rick Doblin Running with the Devil?
Is compromise really the best way to regain our human right to access the plants and fungi that grow at our very feet? Check out these thoughts on Rick Doblin's initiatives to (eventually) legalize psychedelics by working with the DEA.
Why American Drug Policy is Insane
how Americans would rather damage the brain with ECT than allow patients to use the plants that grow at their very feet for psychological relief
Sending Out an SOS
Letter to Sentara Board of Directors, asking them to stop treating veteran psychiatric clients as children and eternal patients
Black Lives Don't Matter
Detective Wall calls a black teenager a 'scumbag' and a 'waste' for selling plant medicine of which politicians disapprove
Penn State Patsies for the Drug War
If you're going to ban words, ban the term 'drugs,' which is a pejorative epithet for psychoactive medicine of which racist politicians disapprove.
Materialism and the Drug War
Why materialism is an unindicted co-conspirator in America's anti-patient war on psychoactive medicine, aka the war on drugs.
Moonfall
Humanoids will tell you that they want peace, but if they're anything like us purebred human beings, peace comes in a distance second to demonizing the very substances that could make that peace possible.
The Racist Drug War killed George Floyd
The Drug War taught cops to treat suspects like scumbags. No wonder that one of the accomplices in George Floyd's murder taunted the crowd by saying: 'just say no to drugs'.
Spike Lee is Bamboozled by the Drug War
Liquor prohibition created the American Mafia. Why is it so hard for black leaders to believe that substance prohibition created the armed gangs that continue to snuff out inner-city lives to this very day?
How the Drug War Punishes the Elderly
How the drug war and its anti-scientific laws punish the elderly by denying them godsend natural medications that can cheer them up and even help them make their peace with death.
Glenn Close but no cigar
Four Good Days reinforces all the usual Christian Science nonsense about plant medicines, advocating science as the way forward when all it offers is 'cold turkey' and a $3,000 bill for a three-day stay in a glorified flophouse.
Nature's Most Wanted
Help America crack down on godsend plant medicine. Report these plants to your local DEA office.
PROTEST DRUG TESTING NOW!
Take a stand against drug testing, which is the extrajudicial enforcement of Christian Science Sharia and a violation of natural law, which gives us free access to plants and fungi
Doctor Feel Bad
Thanks to drug war ideology, Brain-dead patients have to be heartlessly 'unplugged' rather than lulled to their final sleep by morphine
John Locke on Drugs
John Locke and Thomas Jefferson would be appalled by America's drug war, for they would correctly see it as the triumph of common law over natural law and the trampling of the most basic of human rights: our right to Mother Nature's plants.
In Praise of Doctor Feelgood
Psychiatry needs to lose its Puritan Drug War scruples about making patients feel good, helping them to relax and draw insight from the supervised use of mother nature's plant-based entheogens.
Open Letter to Gabrielle Glaser
Gabrielle Glaser ignores the role of the drug war in hobbling efforts to treat alcoholics, ignores the great anti-depressant addiction of our time, and fails to see the Big Liquor racism behind burning opium overseas and then using naltrexone domestically
Virus Update
Keep at least six feet of social distance away from all Drug Warriors, lest their shoddy logic and historical amnesia should infect you with the drug war virus
How The Drug War Killed Andy Gibb
Instead of educating about drugs, the drug warrior demonizes substances as pure evil, thereby keeping users in the dark about how to use them safely
In Praise of Drug Dealers
replacing the modern barbaric and puritanical treatment of so-called addicts with the pharmacologically informed shamanism of the drug dealer
The Myth of the Addictive Personality
The so-called addictive personality is actually 'on to something.' They realize that there's a vast pharmacopeia out there and they want psychiatry to use it. So end the anti-scientific drug war and let psychiatry help patients thrive.
American Sharia
Movies and presidents praise murder and torture in America, as the drug war devolves into the new American Sharia. Are you traveling? Be sure to see what version of Drug War Sharia has been adopted in your destination country.
American City Homicide Awards 2021
the American City Homicide Awards for 2021, brought to you by drug prohibition, doing its part to keep the guns firing fast and furious in the 'hood.
Brahms is NOT the best antidepressant
the Drug War itself causes depression by denying human beings the right to access mother nature and the kinds of medicines that have inspired entire religions.
The Drug War and Armageddon
Before we go tweaking the human genome to favor empathy, we should first consider the much simpler and more obvious expedient of ending the anti-scientific Drug War.
Chomsky is Right
Finally, something that tyrants and democracies can agree upon: the Drug War is a useful tool for cracking down on free thought.
Chomsky's Revenge
The regular use by the American people of substances that "bring us all together" cannot help but conduce to a moral rebirth
Heidegger on Drugs
This false way of thinking about being leads us to think that there is a 'real' self that will always come forward and shine, as it were, were we only to remove all external interference from things like 'drugs.'
Boycott Singapore
Why Singapore is America's Frankenstein monster thanks to the Christian Science war on drugs
The Ketamine Mirage
In a drug warrior society, where drugs are scheduled by politicians, it's just as likely that bad drugs will be green lighted as it is that good ones will be demonized.
Open Letter to Erowid
A philosophical criticism of article entitled "In case you choose not to say no to drugs, kids," showing how it was written under the influence of drug war superstition and lies
The Prozac Code
1 in 4 American women are on multiple drugs every day of their life and the Drug Warrior pretends not to notice
The Depressing Truth About SSRIs
open letter to MAPS, Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Therapy, urging its researchers to reject the Big Pharma pill-mill paradigm of modern psychiatry
Open Letter to Nathan at TheDEA.org
Open letter to one of the hundreds of no doubt fine interlocutors who couldn't QUITE see their way clear to communicate with me. (I'm sure this one came very close indeed, tho'!)
El Chapo Crappo
America creates drug villains out of whole cloth with its anti-scientific war on godsend plant medicine.
How Fretting Drug Warriors Block Medical Progress
drug war nonsense: american parents' hypocritical fretting over addiction to plant medicines (while 1 in 4 american females are addicted to big pharma anti-depressants), results in blocked research on thousands of promising plant medicines
In Praise of Thomas Szasz
America's number one philosopher as demonstrated by his sadly unique ability to see through the logical obfuscation of the American drug warrior
In the Realm of Hungry Drug Warriors
Gabor Mate is blind to the great addiction of our time thanks to drug war propaganda and Big Pharma PR which demonizes plants while touting antidepressant pills that addict 1 in 4 American women and are more addictive than heroin
The Mother of all Western Biases
the Drug War is impeding scientific progress, and Science News should not be writing articles that imply that such a war does not even exist
The Invisible Mass Shootings
the press does not characterize multi-victim shooting incidents as 'mass shootings' if they occur in inner cities that are rife with daily gunfire
Jefferson Bashing on Medium.com
Jefferson bashers throw out the natural-law baby with the bath water, cutting the ground out from under their arguments for individual freedom.
Saying Yes to Drugs
Say YES to empathogens like Ecstasy and Psilocybin, which teach haters how to love their fellow human being.
Elderly Victims of Drug War Ideology
In a world in which scientists were free to work with any medicine that held prima facie promise in ameliorating my mother's anxiety, there would be all sorts of anti-anxiety therapies and trials underway in America.
Put the DEA on Trial
the DEA has lied about psychedelics for almost for almost half a century now, needlessly depriving the depressed of godsend rain forest medications
Ten Reasons why the Drug War is Nonsense
The DEA causes addiction, disempowerment and bigotry and the drug war is nonsense -- nonsense with a body count of inner-city grade-schoolers and overseas victims of Civil Wars fomented by America's anti-scientific laws that criminalize mere plants.
Drug Warriors can go to Hell
A thank-you note for drug warriors who have ruined countless lives and denied godsend plant medicine to billions.
Open Letter to Lisa Ling
Lisa Ling created a documentary about Chicago gun violence in which she never once mentioned the drug war, the policy that caused the violence just as surely as liquor prohibition created the Mafia.
Why CBS 19 should stop supporting the Drug War
The CBS affiliate in Charlottesville, Virginia supports a drug war that resulted in the confiscation of Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants and the overthrow of the Natural Law upon which Jefferson founded America.
Marci Hamilton Equates Drug Use with Child Abuse
No, Marci, to argue for plant-based religion is not to argue for some new exotic right: it's to demand the restoration of a God-given right we had until 1914, a right to the therapeutic bounty that grows at our very feet.
Open Letter to the Virginia Legislature
dear legislators: please stop the wretched drug war that deprives the world of thousands of non-addictive plant medicines: an open letter to the Virginia State Legislature from early 2020.
The DEA: Poisoning Americans since 1973
a comedy routine skewering DEA Chief John C. Lawn, who poisoned American pot smokers in the 1980s with paraquat, a weed killer that causes Parkinson's Disease
There are no such things as drugs
There are no evil plant medicines called drugs: the term drugs simply refers to psychoactive plant medicines of which politicians disapprove
In Response to Laurence Vance
Laurence Vance, bless him, hasn't quite seen his way clear to respond to my email of June '21. Hmm. Sounds like a job for MR. OPEN LETTER!!!
The real reason for depression in America
The Drug War is a violation of natural law which took away our access to Mother Nature's depression cures and forced us to rely on Big Pharma meds, many of which are more addictive than heroin.
The Philosophical Idiocy of the Drug War
Any decent philosophy professor could tear the Drug War to bits, because Drug Warriors rely exclusively on blatantly flawed premises. Unfortunately, almost no philosophy professors will risk their job by pointing this out.
Don't Worry, Be Satisfied
The Drug War is a protection racket for psychiatrists that outlaws all psychoactive plants which, if used advisedly, could beat depression. What's left are addictive emotion-flattening SSRIs which, at best, help patients accept the status quo.
A Goliath that even David is afraid of
why no Americans call for the long-overdue abolition of the corrupt drug enforcement agency, the DEA, which has kept godsend substances from the suffering for 40-plus years
Speaking Truth to Academia
Academics are censored by the drug war and don't even recognize it. At least Galileo knew that he was censored by the Church.
Let's burn some plants!
The Nazis burned books to tell people what to think; the drug warriors burn plants to tell people how to think
Blowing Up Arkansas
In 1980, the Air Force almost blew up Arkansas with a nuclear weapon. The Drug Warrior's response? Crack down on plant medicine that inspires love.
America's Imperialist Christian Science War on Drugs
America outlawed plants in violation of the Natural Law upon which it was founded, and then blackmailed the entire world to follow suit, leaving the depressed without godsend medicine anywhere on Planet Earth.
MDMA for Psychotherapy
How MDMA fights depression through anticipation, and how reductionists ignore the factd
The Therapeutic Value of Anticipation
Modern psychology ignores the benefits of plant-use anticipation because they are in thrall to the drug war dogma which says that plant medicines (like opium, cocaine and psychedelics) are "all bad" once a society has outlawed them.
Christian Science Rehab
Make rehab fun again. Use a vast variety of psychoactive medicines shaman-like to help, not to enforce a hypocritically defined Christian Science sobriety.
The Drug War Board Game
The Life Game is a Christian Science board game, for it gives you a Life card when you say no to mother nature's godsend medicines.
All these Sons
Documentary about Chicago gun violence does not even mention the drug war, which caused that violence in the first place.
The Joy of Drug Testing
live from the DEA Lounge, American comedian Johnny O'Clonapan on the patriotic duty of urinating for America -- Drug Warriors get 5 dollars off all alcohol and tobacco. Drug-Free punters get big shiny star for renouncing Mother Nature's godsend meds!
Drug War Copaganda
Comedy routine showing how cop shows are full of drug war propaganda about Mother Nature's plant medicines
Screw You, Francis Burton Harrison
The anti-American Francis Burton Harrison overrode common law and set the evil precedent that Americans are not entitled to the plants and fungi that grow at their very feet.
Seven Ways that Liberals are Confused by the Drug War
Graeme Woods just doesn't get it about the American drug war, which is actually the establishment of Christian Science as America's state religion. Graeme is completely ignorant about the psychedelic renaissance for starters.
Lock 'em up! Lock 'em up!
time to crack down on the real drug menace, by arresting hypocrites like William Bennett for possession of alcohol and tobacco
Speaking Truth to Big Pharma
Heffter Research Institute needs to recognize Big Pharma as the enemy if it wishes to excite the depressed about psychedelic therapy
Depressed? Here's why.
The DEA is not the only self-serving agency prosecuting the patient-harming drug war. The unindicted co-conspirators include Big Pharma, Psychiatry, and the political organizations supporting the interests of Prison Guards and Sheriffs
Urine Testers Needed
urine testing to enforce the drug war's Christian Science ban on the use of Mother Nature's therapeutic plants
Letter to Lamar Alexander
Lamar Alexander votes to acquit the traitor Trump, the drug warrior that wants to kill suspects in cold blood yet is now above the law himself
Self-Censorship in the Age of the Drug War
how authors take the drug war as a given, ignoring the implications of Mother Nature's psychoactive pharmacy, in all genres, including philosophical speculations of all kinds and books on self-help and exercise.
The American Stasi
Demonstrating how the DEA is America's Stasi, silencing even the thought of protest in otherwise loud-mouth Americans
Clueless Philosophers
philosophers can't make up their mind if morality exists, meanwhile Trump wants to execute minorities who sell plants
Surprise Drug Test!
Is your mind screwed up by drug-war propaganda? Take our quick four-question test to find out. Students who have used alcohol in the last three months will be promptly removed from the workforce.
Alternative Medicine as a Drug War Creation
Amit Goswami ignores the role of the drug war in creating America's healthcare protocols, such as sharply defined allopathic, alternative, and homeopathic medical protocols
The DEA's War on Alzheimer's Research
how philosophers ignore the anti-scientific role of the drug war in stifling scientific research, preferring to focus on problems like, 'do we really exist?' or 'is truth passe?'
America's Great Anti-Depressant Scam
when plant medicines have bad potential side effects, they're demonized; when big pharma anti-depressants have a side effect, they're sold with still more medicine to correct the problem, in slick television commercials
America's Blind Spot
how the American drug war is made possible by false cultural assumptions about plants and a western distaste for the world of feeling, Mother Nature and her psychedelics
Unscientific American
How Scientific American authors unconsciously self-censor their articles in line with drug war prohibitions
So, Your Faith Votes?
Conservatives like Mick Huckabee hypocritically condemn the nanny state while telling Americans which plants they can access thanks to his anti-patient 'drug war;
How Cocaine could have helped me
Psychiatry has been cowed by the drug war into denying the obvious: that drugs like cocaine can fight depression by creating circumstances under which a human being can succeed in life.
What You Can Do
Fight back against the drug war: five ways that you can end the enforcement of Christian Science with respect to plant medicine
Listening to the Drug War
If the global capitalist system cannot allow plants to be legal, then there is something wrong with the global capitalist system, not with plants.
How the Drug War Banned my Religion
The soma plant inspired the Vedic religion. The Drug War bans all such plants today, thus outlawing the very fountainhead of the religious impulse.
Childish Drug Warriors
There was no Drug War for 4,000 years of human history. The fact that there's a drug war today says far more about America than it does about drugs.
The Drug War as a Greek Tragedy
The Drug War is all about making guns relevant. It created drug cartels just as surely as liquor prohibition created the Mafia.