an open letter to Cory Morgan, columnist for the Western Standard
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
July 15, 2023
oday's Saturday, guys. I had planned to take a vacation from the whole topic of drugs. Unfortunately, I just took a quick peek at Twitter and saw Canadian columnist Cory Morgan spreading the same old Drug War propaganda that has militarized police forces around the world, turning American inner cities into no-go zones, and destroyed the rule of law in Latin America.
I've vowed not to spend time on this today, but Cory's harangue plucked my single solitary last and final nerve. So I'll just post my response to Cory here (which I sent to him via his email account at Western Standard). The offending Tweet, by the way, was his attempt to blame "meth" for the sins of the world, rather than the fearmongering and corrupt supply that leads to its misuse. That's typical "Drug Warrior" strategy for you, folks: blame the drug, but never the social policies that lead to its misuse.
With all due respect Cory, you are like all Drug Warriors: you judge drugs based on their worst possible use. This is anti-scientific. It makes such drugs unavailable for any use at any dose for any reason ever. And please stop confusing the issue: there IS such a thing as safe supply. To claim otherwise is at best to misuse words and at worst to lie. The dangers of meth are caused by prohibitionists who insist that we teach fear rather than safe use. Those who are "thin as a rail" need medical help and education: not a multi-billion-dollar military campaign that turns inner cities into shooting galleries and destroys the rule of law in Mexico and knocks down the doors of American grandmothers with stormtroopers shouting GO GO GO on a highly choreographed scene for the six o'clock news.
It is fearmonger attitudes like yours that have forced me to go a lifetime without godsend medicines, shunting me off onto dependence-causing Big Pharma drugs that turn me into an eternal patient.
Please stop the anti-scientific practice of judging drugs based on their worst possible use. That practice has stopped us from finding treatments for Alzheimer's and autism by outlawing drugs that grow new neurons in the brain. It has turned America into an anti-scientific country and censored scientists.
Here's more I might have added:
Thanks, Cory, for that one-hour-long grilling I got when I entered Canada as a 30-year-old male 30 years ago. I was a drug suspect because folks like you were blaming every problem in the world on drugs. That Nazi grilling put me off Canada for years. I'd like to see Cory grilled for alcohol use and see how he comes thru it. I'd like to show him some drunkards in an alley going through DTs and blame their problems on alcohol proponents like Cory. For every one speed user who's "thin as a rail," I'll show him 20 graves of alcoholics.
Fortunately, for Cory, I am not like him. I do not judge substances based on their worst imaginable use. I know that that is anti-scientific. What's more I want to help alcoholics, not send them to jail. Nor do I wish to stop everyone in the world from using alcohol because Americans tend to misuse that drug.
Cory's attitude is extremely hypocritical. Prohibition causes all of the problems that folks like Cory love to blame on the political boogieman they call "drugs."
July 15, 2023 To our younger readers, bless them, the title of this essay is an allusion to the Guess Who hit of 1970 entitled "American Woman."
Open Letters
Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.
I used to be surprised at this reticence on the part of modern drug-war pundits, until I realized that most of them are materialists. That is, most of them believe in (or claim to believe in) the psychiatric pill mill. If they happen to praise psychedelic drugs as a godsend for the depressed, they will yet tell us that such substances are only for those whose finicky body chemistries fail to respond appropriately to SSRIs and SNRIs. The fact is, however, there are thousands of medicines out there that can help with psychological issues -- and this is based on simple psychological common sense. But materialist scientists ignore common sense. That's why Dr. Robert Glatter wrote an article in Forbes magazine wondering if laughing gas could help the depressed.
As a lifelong depressive, I am embarrassed for Robert, that he has to even ask such a question. Of course laughing gas could help. Not only is laughter "the best medicine," as Readers Digest has told us for years, but looking forward to laughing is beneficial too. But materialist scientists ignore anecdote and history and tell us that THEY will be the judge of psychoactive medicines, thank you very much. And they will NOT judge such medicines by asking folks like myself if they work but rather by looking under a microscope to see if they work in the biochemical way that materialists expect.
Drug warriors do not seem to see any irony in the fact that their outlawing of opium eventually resulted in an "opioid crisis." The message is clear: people want transcendence. If we don't let them find it safely, they will find it dangerously.
First America takes away the citizen's right to manage their own pain by rendering opium illegal. Then the psychiatric field treats the resultant epidemic of depression by damaging the patient's brain, i.e., by treating depressed patients with shock therapy.
Drug War censorship is supported by our "science" magazines, which pretend that outlawed drugs do not exist, and so write what amount to lies about the supposed intransigence of things like depression and anxiety.
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!
Being a lifetime patient is not the issue: that could make perfect sense in certain cases. But if I am to be "using" for life, I demand the drug of MY CHOICE, not that of Big Pharma and mainstream psychiatry, who are dogmatically deaf to the benefits of hated substances.
In Mexico, the same substance can be considered a "drug" or a "med," depending on where you are in the country. It's just another absurd result of the absurd policy of drug prohibition.
We know that anticipation and mental focus and relaxation have positive benefits -- but if these traits ae facilitated by "drugs," then we pretend that these same benefits somehow are no longer "real." This is a metaphysical bias, not a logical deduction.
UNESCO celebrates the healing practices of the Kallawaya people of South America. What hypocrisy! UNESCO supports a drug war that makes some of those practices illegal!
"Drugs" is imperialist terminology. In the smug self-righteousness of those who use it, I hear Columbus's disdain for the shroom use of the Taino people and the Spanish disdain for the coca use of the Peruvian Indians.
I have dissed MindMed's new LSD "breakthrough drug" for philosophical reasons. But we can at least hope that the approval of such a "de-fanged" LSD will prove to be a step in the slow, zigzag path toward re-legalization.
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, Canadian Drug Warrior, I said Get Away: an open letter to Cory Morgan, columnist for the Western Standard, published on July 15, 2023 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)
oday's Saturday, guys. I had planned to take a vacation from the whole topic of drugs. Unfortunately, I just took a quick peek at Twitter and saw Canadian columnist Cory Morgan spreading the same old Drug War propaganda that has militarized police forces around the world, turning American inner cities into no-go zones, and destroyed the rule of law in Latin America. 
You have been reading an article entitled, Canadian Drug Warrior, I said Get Away: an open letter to Cory Morgan, columnist for the Western Standard, published on July 15, 2023 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)