before it kills any more Christian Science heretics
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
July 26, 2022
The western world occasionally comes out sparring against Singapore's harsh "drug laws," but they always do so with one hand tied behind their back. Take this March 2022 article from ABC News entitled "Singapore hangs drug trafficker in resumption of executions." The all-too-brief article concerns the recent execution of 68-year-old Abdul Kahar Othman for "drug dealing," a punishment that we're implicitly told is an outrage in the eyes of the west, not because of the "hanging bit," mind you, but because Abdul had a hard life and insufficient opportunities to reform (i.e., to stop using substances of which state authorities disapprove). The article then mentions a mentally disabled Singaporean on death row, Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam, who was apparently scheduled to die next for substance heresy, notwithstanding the protests of western groups and leaders, like European Union reps and LSD-friendly Richard Branson. (Spoiler alert: Nagaenthran was indeed executed little more than a month after the above article was published.)
It's no wonder that the west can't get this Asian monster to back down because we are the Frankensteins who created it. Moreover, the US has a long history now of referring to substance dealers as "vermin," so we've got a lot of incongruous backpedaling to do when we start calling for leniency toward Christian Science heretics.
Democratic Rep. Hanley of New York showed the typical left liberal scorn for substance dealers when he asked the Baldwinsville, NY Chamber of Commerce several decades ago:
"How many vermin are infesting our high schools and colleges?"
To which Thomas Szasz importantly responded in the book "Ceremonial Chemistry":
'Rep. Hanley here uses the same metaphor for condemning persons who use or sell illegal drugs that the Nazis used to justify murdering Jews by poisoned gas -- namely that the persecuted persons are not human beings but "vermin."' [See ]
And so the western opposition is hamstrung because they agree with the Christian Science goal of eradicating "drug use" (as opposed to liquor use or Big Pharma use) -- they just do not want to be embarrassed by draconian enforcement measures which serve to highlight the hypocritical injustice of the tyrannical path which they themselves are otherwise happily following.
Meanwhile, Singapore is where all Western Drug Warriors should want to go when they die, for it's the perfect capitalist nirvana; freedom for corporations and mental control for everyone else. And how is this mental control enforced: by outlawing the kinds of medicines that have inspired entire religions in the past, like opium 1 , psychedelics and the coca plant.
Would our forebears have been comfortable with seeing Thomas Jefferson swinging at the end of a Singaporean noose for growing poppy plants? Neither should we be comfortable today when we see Abdul and Nagaenthran dangling there for a similar "crime."
If we really want to get our message across, we will call for a boycott of Singapore -- either until it ends its Drug War, or, barring that, makes its Drug War an equal opportunity killer, by considering alcohol and Big Pharma 23 meds to be "drugs" as well, thereby consigning beer-swilling and Xanax-popping corporate executives to the same fate as Singapore's mentally challenged poor.
*Christian Science: the religion founded by American Mary Baker Eddy in the 19th century, according to which "drugs" were bad, since one should only find peace of mind in Jesus.
It's because of such reductive pseudoscience that America will allow us to shock the brains of the depressed but won't allow us to let them use the plant medicines that grow at their feet.
America created a whole negative morality around "drugs" starting in 1914. "Users" became fiends and were as helpless as a Christian sinner -- in need of grace from a higher power. Before prohibition, these "fiends" were habitues, no worse than Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson.
Drug prohibition began as a racist attempt to prevent so-called "miscegenation." The racist's fear was not that a white woman would use opium or marijuana or cocaine, but that she might actually fall in love with a Chinese, Hispanic or Black person respectively.
Psychiatrists keep flipping the script. When it became clear that SSRIs caused dependence, instead of apologizing, they told us we need to keep taking our meds. Now they even claim that criticizing SSRIs is wrong. This is anti-intellectual madness.
Freud found that cocaine CURED most people's depression and he "got off it" without trouble.
Conservatives say they're against Big Government -- but they let bureaucrats decide what medicines they can use.
Psychedelic retreats tell us how scientific they are. But science is the problem. Science today insists that we ignore all obvious benefits of drugs.
Assisted suicide cannot be discussed meaningfully without discussing the drug prohibition that renders it necessary in the first place.
Addiction was not a big thing until the drug war. It's now the boogie-man with which drug warriors scare us into giving up our freedoms. But getting obsessed on one single drug is natural in the age of choice-limiting prohibition.
The addiction gene should be called the prohibition gene: it renders one vulnerable to prohibition lies and limitations: like the lack of safe supply, the lack of choices, and the lack of information. We should pathologize the prohibitionists, not their victims.
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