in response to the misguided billboard campaign of Cindy DeMaio and Rachel's Angels
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
April 14, 2025
I was bouncing along on poorly maintained I-295 through Philadelphia, yesterday, being force-fed enormous billboards hawking the benefits of alcohol, chiropractors, and lawyers. This was jarring enough from multiple perspectives and I resolved never to take that route again from Jersey to Virginia, even if it was toll-free.
Americans have been taught to superstitiously believe that drugs are bad. Drugs are not bad or good. They are inanimate objects. Their widespread misuse tells us something about society, not about drugs.
But just when I had made my peace with the existing irritations, another one arose which was more jarring than the rest, more jarring than any of the many linear asphalt cracks or poorly patched potholes on my penny-pinching route. For I began encountering a series of in-your-face billboards plastered with the portraits of smiling white young people and bearing the words "Fentanyl kills" and "Fentanyl steals loved ones."
"Oh, really?" I thought to myself. "An inanimate object does all that? By such logic, we could say that alcohol not only kills, but it massacres. Alcohol, after all, kills 178,000 a year according to the CDC, and yet liquor consumption is glorified with pride of place on many a nearby billboard.1"
These anti-Fentanyl signs were infuriating to me, because they promote the attitude that powers the War on Drugs, the belief that substances can be bad in and of themselves without regard to context of use. That is simply a superstition. Saying "Fentanyl kills" is just like saying "Fire bad!" It is a childish way of looking at the world. It is all about demonizing a thing by thinking only of its downsides and never of its upsides.
So as I bounced my way toward Maryland and the well-paved and commercial-free I-70 bypass near Washington, D.C., I resolved to write the organization responsible for those Fentanyl-bashing billboards when I arrived home and to kindly request that they change their tune. The organization in question turned out to be Rachel's Angels begun by Cindy DeMaio to honor her daughter and to ensure that her Fentanyl-related death was not in vain. While I condole Cindy for her loss, I am duty-bound to point out that her approach to fighting back is ill-advised and counterproductive in the extreme. Drug policy made Fentanyl a killer. Indeed, modern opiates exist thanks to the outlawing of opium , which was used peaceably at home until racist politicians decided to outlaw the drug that all ancient physicians had considered to be a panacea.
Open Letter to Rachel's Angels.
With all due respect, young people were not dying in the street from opiate use when opium 2 was legal, before it was outlawed by racist politicians. Fentanyl only kills in the sense that cars kill or alcohol kills. They kill when people are uneducated and lack alternatives and receive product of unknown quality and quantity -- all of which problems are brought about by drug prohibition!
prohibition is the problem 3 . It outlaws many inherently non-addictive alternatives to opiates. Even opiates can be used safely and without addiction, although the media refuses to publish any examples of that fact and the Drug Warrior refuses to teach safe and non-addictive use!!! In fact, the White House, since the Nixon years, has helped censor sitcoms and other TV shows 4 to conform to the drug-blaming ideology of the Drug Warrior, so that Americans will not even think that safe and non-addictive use is possible.
When we blame drugs rather than drug policy, we wage a Drug War that has revoked American liberties and destroyed the rule of law in Latin America. It has handed the presidency to Donald Trump by jailing over a million Blacks for gun violence 5 directly brought about by drug prohibition itself. Guns first entered the hood thanks to liquor and drug prohibition.
Drug prohibition has also given racist police officers carte blanche to be as evil as they want to be. The racist officers know this. That's why the police who killed George Floyd were shouting, "Just say no to drugs!" Meanwhile, minority kids die every day from drive-by shootings caused by drug prohibition.
There are positive uses even for cyanide, even for Fentanyl. When we outlaw substances based on misuse, we deny people godsend medicine, like the children in hospice in India where morphine 6 is difficult to find and use thanks to U.S.-inspired fears about opiate use.
The Hindu religion was inspired by drug use. Drugs are not the problem. Bad drug laws and a lack of education are the problems.
Every life is sacred, but that includes the lives of minorities like 15-year-old Niomi Russell, who was killed by a drive-by shooting in D.C. in 2024 thanks to drug prohibition, and that includes the 60,000 Mexicans who have been "disappeared" over the last two decades thanks to the War on Drugs.
America's attitudes and laws are the problem, not drugs. We have got to stop playing "whack-a-mole" with inanimate substances like Fentanyl, PCP 7, Ice, etc., and address the real problems: a lack of education, a lack of alternatives, and a lack of government regulation of drug supply.
Sincerely Yours
PS 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life on antidepressants 8. The antidepressant that I am on is harder to kick than heroin 9. The medical peddlers who sold me that "junk" never told me that it would make me a patient for life -- and yet no one is complaining on MY behalf. To the contrary, they are telling me to "just take your meds."
PPS Opiates cause less cravings than nicotine. See Andrew Weil's book, "From Chocolate to morphine 10 ."
The Drug War is all about fearmongering rather than solving problems. It causes suicides by outlawing all drugs that could inspire and elate without causing addiction. It causes unnecessary shock therapy for the depressed, by outlawing all alternatives. It denies godsend meds to the autistic, meds that could help them feel compassion for others!
For these reasons and many more, I urge you to start demanding education and a regulated drug supply instead of launching a war on an inanimate substance like Fentanyl.
Discussion Topics
May 23, 2025
Attention Teachers and Professors: Brian is not writing these essays for his health. (Well, in a way he is, actually, but that's not important now.) His goal is to get the world thinking about the anti-democratic and anti-scientific idiocy of the War on Drugs. You can stimulate your students' brainwashed grey matter on this topic by having them read the above essay and then discuss the following questions as a group!
Brian says that if Fentanyl kills, then alcohol massacres. Explain.
Why is saying "Fentanyl kills!" philosophically indistinguishable from saying "Fire bad!"
Name some of the (enormous) downsides of drug prohibition.
What is the obvious takeaway message from the fact that the police were shouting 'Just say no to drugs' as they killed George Floyd?
What are the 'real' problems, according to Brian?
How does drug prohibition bring about suicide 11 and the unnecessary use of brain-damaging shock therapy?
After over a hundred years of prohibition, America has developed a kind of faux science in which despised substances are completely ignored. This is why Sci Am is making a new argument for shock therapy in 2023, because they ignore all the stuff that OBVIOUSLY cheers one up.
Getting off some drugs could actually be fun and instructive, by using a variety of other drugs to keep one's mind off the withdrawal process. But America believes that getting off a drug should be a big moral battle.
Doc to Franklin: "I'm sorry, Ben, but I see no benefits of opium use under my microscope. The idea that you are living a fulfilled life is clearly a mistake on your part. If you want to be scientific, stop using opium and be scientifically depressed like the rest of us."
"Abuse" is a funny term because it implies that there's a right way to use "drugs," which is something that the drug warriors deny. To the contrary, they make the anti-scientific claim that "drugs" are not good for anybody for any reason at any dose.
"They have called thee Soma-lover: here is the pressed juice. Drink thereof for rapture." -Rig Veda
(There would be no Hindu religion today had the drug war been in effect in the Punjab 3,500 years ago.)
Capitalism naturally results in disease-mongering by a self-interested medically establishment -- and disease-mongering requires the suppression of medicines that work holistically.
In "Psychedelic Refugee," Rosemary Leary writes:
"Fueled by small doses of LSD, almost everything was amusing or weird." -- Rosemary Leary
In a non-brainwashed world, such testimony would suggest obvious ways to help the depressed.
My cousin says we should punish drug dealers. I say we should punish those politicians who created those drug dealers out of whole cloth by passing unprecedented laws against the use of Mother Nature's bounty.
"My faith votes and strives to outlaw religions that use substances of which politicians disapprove."
Drug-designing chemists have no expertise in deciding what constitutes a cure for depression. As Schopenhauer wrote:
"The mere study of chemistry qualifies a man to become an apothecary, but not a philosopher."
Attention Teachers and Professors: Brian is not writing these essays for his health. (Well, in a way he is, actually, but that's not important now.) His goal is to get the world thinking about the anti-democratic and anti-scientific idiocy of the War on Drugs. You can stimulate your students' brainwashed grey matter on this topic by having them read the above essay and then discuss the following questions as a group! 
(up)