10 Idiots who helped spread drug war propaganda on Listverse
in response to the listverse article entitled 10 historical figures who were dependent on opium
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
July 11, 2020
t's hard to be a good writer when fighting America's insane drug war because it's just so irritating and dispiriting to do the research. I guess I'm thin-skinned, but I get truly pissed when I see how much wrong-headed thinking there is on this subject, probably because I know that it's this kind of anti-philosophical thinking that has resulted in laws that keep me from accessing plant medicines that should be mine as a birthright under natural law.
Thanks to drug law, I not only go without those medicinal godsends but I'm shunted off onto highly addictive Big Pharma meds that I'm forced to take for life -- drugs with which no one in America seems to have a problem even though they're harder to quit than heroin.
One website that really rattled my cage this morning featured a Listverse page entitled "10 Historical Figures Who Were Dependent on Opium."
The title itself betrays the hypocritical drug warrior habit of denouncing supposed "dependence" to natural plant medicines while remaining silent about full-blown addiction to Big Pharma meds. In the minds of the modern American, it is almost a moral duty for a depressed or anxious person to "take their meds." Why then do we consider it a moral fault when historical figures "took their meds" in order to achieve self-actualization in the world? (Probably because America wants to medicalize human behavior, and so the doctors get upset when the use of such meds leaves the medical establishment out of the loop, financially speaking.)
Of course, the truly irritating part of the page is the comments section. Since DISQUS's algorithms are all about "getting eyeballs," they place the most idiotic comments at the very top of the comments page. Check out the following gem from a certain Chaos, an anonymous member of the Cult of the American Drug War. It currently appears at the very top of the comments section for the Listverse page about opium users, ahead of 75 other entries.
I think that taking, drinking, eating, smoking or injecting drugs is like someone blowing his brains off in an extreme slow-motion sequence.
(Personally, I think that reading drug war propaganda of this kind is like blowing one's brains off in an extreme slow-motion sequence.)
Meanwhile I tried to approach the matter rationally, and where do my comments appear? At the bottom of the page, separated by at least 30 inane comments from Chaos's musings, the interval between us being filled with such enlightening observations as: "quit bogarting the joint" and "the bust of Aurelius is obviously stone(d)" ha ha.
The good thing is, such chop logic motivates me to write comments like the following, when my depression might otherwise prevent me from doing so -- that depression that logic-challenged drug warriors will not let me treat effectively thanks to their ungrateful demonization of mother nature's plant medicines.
The drug war has fried American brains by convincing them that they can't even say the word 'opium' without raising eyebrows. Do you know how many TV shows and movies portray opium and cocaine use in a positive light? Zero. It's drug war censorship at work.
There's nothing moral or scientific about renouncing our right to medical godsends of mother nature. But the drug warrior spouts lies that make us think otherwise. The "frying pan" ad by the Partnership for a Drug Free America is the biggest lie in advertising history. Drugs like cocaine focus the brain -- as Sigmund Freud knew. Opium conduces to creativity -- as Benjamin Franklin knew. Psychedelics inspired Francis Crick to visualize the DNA helix.
But we've been taught in the west to think of Mother Nature as a drug kingpin rather than as a dispenser of godsend medicines. The drug war is Christian Science, telling us that we must not treat our conscious mind with "drugs".
Until 1914, we judged people on their actual behavior. Now we judge them on what they have in their digestive systems. It's all a sick and superstitious way of looking at the world. And it's hypocritical. If any drugs "fry" the brain, it's modern antidepressants, to which 1 in 4 American women are addicted. Many SSRIs and SNRIs are harder to quit than heroin. (source: Julie Holland).
I "take" Effexor -- paying dearly for it every month of my life, helping finance Maseratis for Big Pharma execs -- and my shrink says not to bother trying to get off it since its recidivism rate is so high. Yet America's drug war cult refuses to even RECOGNIZE that addiction. Because the drug war has nothing to do with America's health -- it's all about fomenting violence via prohibition and thus empowering the police and the military to crack heads -- and to take America's mind off of social problems (like the drug war itself) that lead to drug abuse.
It's sad to see so many comments here panning "drugs" when drugs are nothing but the plant medicines that grow at our very feet. Those plant medicines are ours by birth under natural law. Only America decided in 1914 that the government would determine what plants we can have access to.
That's tyranny. It's a clear violation of the natural law on which America was founded.
The drug war is just a nature-hating Christian Science cult. It is the establishment of a religion. Drug law enforcement is Christian Science Sharia.
Even the title of this page demonstrates drug warrior bias. It hypocritically uses the word "dependence" as if it was some kind of character flaw. How many of us are "dependent" on coffee, sugar and salt? How about alcohol and tobacco? And how many of us are "dependent" on Big Pharma meds? Why not create a page showing all the famous Americans who are "dependent" on antidepressants?
America wants to moralize and medicalize the subject of substance use rather than judging people like everyone in the world did before 1914: by HOW THEY ACTUALLY BEHAVED and by what they actually accomplished in the world.
In America, we no longer judge a person by the color of their skin, we judge them by the contents of their digestive system.
And so the anemic epitaph of the drug warrior reads: "May not have accomplished much... but gladly gave up his/her right to all of mother nature's godsend plant medicines!"
I hope that one day, when America has outgrown its superstitions about naturally occurring substances, there will be a Listverse page entitled "10 idiots who helped spread drug war propaganda on Listverse." The author of such a post will certainly have a wide field to choose from, judging by all the logic-challenged comments that drugs-related pages attract on that Web resource.
Today's drug laws tell us that we must respect the historical use of sacred medicines, while denying us our personal right to use them unless our ancestors did so. That's a meta-injustice! It negatively affects the way that we are allowed to experience our world!
Rick Strassman isn't sure that DMT should be legal. Really?! Does he not realize how dangerous it is to chemically extract DMT from plants? In the name of safety, prohibitionists have encouraged dangerous ignorance and turned local police into busybody Nazis.
Almost all talk about the supposed intractability of things like addiction are exercises in make-believe. The pundits pretend that godsend medicines do not exist, thus normalizing prohibition by implying that it does not limit progress. It's a tacit form of collaboration.
The FDA approves of shock therapy and the psychiatric pill mill, but they cannot see the benefits in MDMA, a drug that brought peace, love and understanding to the dance floor in 1990s Britain.
Democratic societies need to outlaw prohibition for many reasons, the first being the fact that prohibition removes millions of minorities from the voting rolls, thereby handing elections to fascists and insurrectionists.
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.
Drug testing labs are the modern Inquisitors. We are not judged by the content of our character, but by the content of our digestive systems.
Now the folks who helped Matthew get Ketamine must be sacrificed on the altar of the Drug War, lest people start thinking that the Drug War itself was at fault.y
The MindMed company (makers of LSD Lite) tell us that euphoria and visions are "adverse effects": that's not science, that's an arid materialist philosophy that does not believe in spiritual transcendence.
My local community store here in the sticks sells Trump "dollar bills" at the checkout counter. I don't know what's worse: a president encouraging insurrection or an electorate that does not see that as a problem.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, 10 Idiots who helped spread drug war propaganda on Listverse: in response to the listverse article entitled 10 historical figures who were dependent on opium, published on July 11, 2020 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
t's hard to be a good writer when fighting America's insane drug war because it's just so irritating and dispiriting to do the research. I guess I'm thin-skinned, but I get truly pissed when I see how much wrong-headed thinking there is on this subject, probably because I know that it's this kind of anti-philosophical thinking that has resulted in laws that keep me from accessing plant medicines that should be mine as a birthright under natural law. 
You have been reading an article entitled, 10 Idiots who helped spread drug war propaganda on Listverse: in response to the listverse article entitled 10 historical figures who were dependent on opium, published on July 11, 2020 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)