computer screen with words DRUG WAR BLOG


Campfire Stories about America's Drug War

live from Lake Rights-Be-Gone

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher




December 30, 2019

OUNSELOR RICK: Kids, gather around, I have a good horror story for you.

KIDS: Oooh!

COUNSELOR RICK: That's right, ears in the full upright position. This one's downright eerie.

Now then, once upon a time, there were these godsend plants that could help people get over depression and conquer loneliness.

ANTOINE: THAT'S not scary!

COUNSELOR RICK: Oh, just you wait, Antoine. See, these plants grew all around us, they were our natural birthright as Earthlings, but then these bigoted people known as "Drug Warriors" decided that these plants were somehow evil.

SALLY: That's silly, Counselor Rick. Plant medicines can't be evil, only people can be evil.

ANTOINE: That's right. Medicines can be good OR bad: it all depends on how they're used.

COUNSELOR RICK: You know that, kids, and I know that, but these people were... well, how should I put this...?

ANTOINE: Dumb as crap?

COUNSELOR RICK: Well, let's just say they were superstitious.

SALLY: Sounds like they were regular cretins to me.

COUNSELOR RICK: Now, now, Sally, be nice.

ANTOINE: Counselor Rick! Counselor Rick!

COUNSELOR RICK: Yes, ANTOINE?

ANTOINE: I think I've heard this one before.

COUNSELOR RICK: Oh, really?

ANTOINE: Oh, yeah, you're talking about that science-fiction story called "Fahrenheit 452," where the government burns plants in order to stop citizens from improving their mental focus and expanding their minds!

COUNSELOR RICK: Antoine shoots and scores!

SALLY: Ooh, Counselor Rick, I don't want to hear that story. It scares me.

ANTOINE: Me too, Counselor Rick. Just imagine a government that is so evil that it bars its own citizens from accessing the plants and fungi that grow at their very feet. I don't think I'm gonna be able to sleep tonight just thinking about it!

COUNSELOR SUE: Now you've done it, Rick, the kids are all going to have nightmares about DEA fascists kicking down their doors in order to rob them of naturally occurring godsends.

COUNSELOR RICK: Relax, kids. We're living in the 22nd century, remember? The DEA was abolished over a hundred years ago.

[kids crying]

COUNSELOR SUE: Rick, exactly how long have you been a camp counselor?

COUNSELOR RICK: Sorry, Sue. I guess I forgot just how scary the old Drug War days really were.


COUNSELOR SUE: You think?


COUNSELOR RICK: Well, it could have been worse.

COUNSELOR SUE: How's that, Rick?

COUNSELOR RICK: I could have told them about the bad old days when all the big corporations forced employees to undergo the indignity of drug testing without any probable cause, all in order to enforce the government's Sharia against the use of naturally occurring substances.

COUNSELOR SUE: Brrr! Now that really IS scary!

COUNSELOR RICK: I know, right?

COUNSELOR SUE: Thanks for bringing that up, Rick. Now I too won't be able to get to sleep tonight!

COUNSELOR RICK: That is pretty lame indeed, the government essentially forcing people to become Christian Scientists when it comes to psychological healing.

COUNSELOR SUE: You're not helping matters, Rick.



What Have We Learned?



Select the appropriate takeaway message from the above admittedly charming satire.


  1. Some plants are just plain bad and kids should be taught that from the git-go!

  2. Submitting to a drug test is a patriotic responsibility.

  3. The therapeutic needs of the suffering must be ignored so that we can carry on a full-scale Drug War. Grrr! (This answer recommended by the National Association of Prison Guards)

  4. Plant medicines can be good or bad, depending on their specific use.



  5. Answer: That's right, kids, the answer is 4: "Plant medicines can be good or bad, depending on their specific use." Unfortunately you'll never learn this from the Drug Warriors, whose patronizing MO is to insist that plant substances are bad in and of themselves. That's why we have no godsend medicines today for depression and other psychological maladies: because the unscientific Drug Warriors believe that plants are bad without regard to how they're used... which is a fib, kids, okay? And you can tell those typically Caucasian anti-scientific so-and-so's that I said so, too! Humph!

    Comedy







    The drug war is laughable -- or it would be if the drug warriors hadn't deprived us of laughing gas, the substance that William James himself used to study alternate realities. (Gee, thanks, folks, for censoring academia. Don't worry, though, I'm not going to call you prohibitionists 'fascist bastards' on THAT account. Mom just didn't raise me like that.)_

  6. A Dope Comedy Routine About Drugs
  7. A Drug Warrior in our Midst
  8. A Misguided Tour of Monticello
  9. American City Homicide Awards 2021
  10. Blowing Up Arkansas
  11. Campfire Stories about America's Drug War
  12. Comedian Adderall Zoloft Riffs on the Drug War
  13. COPS PRESENTS the top 10 traffic stops of 2023
  14. Dragnet meets the Drug War
  15. Drug War Comedy Routine
  16. Drug War Copaganda
  17. Drug War Jeopardy!
  18. Drug War: the Musical!
  19. Funny Animated Gifs about America's imperialist and racist Drug War
  20. One of these things is not like the other
  21. Plants Divine, All Plants Excelling
  22. Public Service Announcements for the Post-Drug War Era
  23. Rat Out Your Neighbors
  24. The DEA: Poisoning Americans since 1973
  25. The Drug War Board Game
  26. The Joy of Drug Testing
  27. Thought Crimes Blotter





  28. computer screen with words DRUG WAR BLOG


    Next essay: Hypocritical America Embraces Drug War Fascism
    Previous essay: Depressed? Here's why.

    More Essays Here




    Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs

    If drug war logic made sense, we would outlaw endless things in addition to drugs. Because the drug war says that it's all worth it if we can save just one life -- which is generally the life of a white suburban young person, btw.
    Prohibitionists are also responsible for the 100,000-plus killed in the US-inspired Mexican drug war
    I hope that scientists will eventually find the prohibition gene so that we can eradicate this superstitious way of thinking from humankind. "Ug! Drugs bad! Drugs not good for anyone, anywhere, at any dose, for any reason, ever! Ug!"
    ME: "What are you gonna give me for my depression, doc? MDMA? Laughing gas? Occasional opium smoking? Chewing of the coca leaf?" DOC: "No, I thought we'd fry your brain with shock therapy instead."
    The Partnership for a Drug Free America should be put on trial for having blatantly lied to Americans in the 1980s about drugs, using our taxpayer money to do it!
    How would we even KNOW that outlawed drugs have no positive uses? We first have to incorporate them in a sane, empathic and creative way to find that out, and the drug war makes such a sensible approach absolutely impossible.
    There's more than set and setting: there's fundamental beliefs about the meaning of life and about why mother nature herself is full of psychoactive substances. Tribal peoples associate some drugs with actual sentient entities -- that is far beyond "set and setting."
    We live in a make-believe world in the US. We created it by outlawing all potentially helpful psychological meds, after which the number-one cause of arrest soon became "drugs." We then made movies to enjoy our crackdown on TV... after a tough day of being drug tested at work.
    Every video about science and psilocybin is funny. It shows nerds trying to catch up with common sense. But psychedelics work, whether the FDA thinks so or not. It's proven by what James Fadiman calls "citizen science," i.e. everyday experience.
    Musk and co. want to make us more robot-like with AI, when they should be trying to make us more human-like with sacred medicine. Only humans can gain creativity from plant medicine. All AI can do is harvest the knowledge that eventually results from that creativity.
    More Tweets






    front cover of Drug War Comic Book

    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, Campfire Stories about America's Drug War: live from Lake Rights-Be-Gone, published on December 30, 2019 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)