Connecting the dots between drug prohibition and disease mongering
an open letter to UVA Professor Joseph Davis, author of 'How Medicalization Lost Its Way'
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
May 23, 2026
Everywhere I look, I find that modern Americans reckon without drug prohibition. The enemies of inner-city gun violence ignore the fact that drug prohibition first brought guns to the 'hood.1 The enemies of Alzheimer's disease ignore the fact that drug prohibition outlaws drugs that drastically improve concentration, some of which can actually grow new neurons in the brain2. Our scientists who study depression ignore the fact that drug prohibition outlaws a wide variety of substances that could inspire and elate the depressed in real-time3. And our philosophers ignore the fact that drug prohibition outlaws the use of substances that could clarify or qualify the Categories of Immanuel Kant, insofar as those categories were created under the assumption of a one-size-fits-all consciousness, a premise which has since been called into question by the use of nitrous oxide by William James.4
"One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. " --William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study In Human Nature5
Today I found yet another subject on which American understanding is woefully enfeebled by our refusal to connect the dots between drug prohibition and modern problems. The topic du jour is the subject of medicalization, sometimes referred to as disease mongering, or the attempt to view every potentially problematic human behavior imaginable as pathological in the medical sense of that word and therefore as requiring the intervention of psychiatry and Big Pharma. I have been wading through academic papers on such topics today-- or at least through the freely available abstracts of such papers -- and have yet to find one that draws the obvious connection between drug prohibition and medicalization. Surely, the connection is obvious, however. When the government outlaws panaceas, they create unnecessary health problems, and it is common capitalistic sense that the medical industry and pharmaceutical companies will "step up to the plate" to address these problems in the most lucrative way possible. And how do you do that if you are in the healthcare business? You "discover" that the downsides of drug prohibition -- unnecessary depression, unnecessary anxiety, a feeling of disempowerment in life -- are actually medical problems! Who knew?!
The fact is that the topic of medicalization cannot be discussed advisedly without discussing the drug prohibition which empowers it.
Here's a letter I sent to UVA Professor Joseph Davis on the subject after reading his informative article entitled "How Medicalization Lost Its Way."6
Good afternoon, Professor Davis.
I enjoyed reading your article on medicalization.
At one point in that article, you ask the question, with what should we replace medicalization in cases where it is inappropriate?
I would answer that we should replace it with drug re-legalization, thereby allowing individuals to take care of their own health using time-honored medicines.
I am a 67-year-old male who has been turned into a ward of the healthcare state by the dependence-causing and underperforming meds of Big Pharma. And I was placed on those meds four decades ago only because drug prohibition had given a monopoly to the medical field when it came to dispensing psychoactive substances -- and, of course, drug prohibition gave Big Pharma a monopoly on creating such medicines. I would not have been depressed over the last four decades if I had had access merely to the plant medicines of Mother Nature, like opium and coca, to say nothing of laughing gas and the phenethylamines synthesized by Alexander Shulgin. Instead, my depression has been entirely medicalized as a result of drug prohibition, which, as I see it, has outlawed my right to heal. I am an unsung victim of drug prohibition because the depressed are never considered stakeholders in the debate over drug law.
You also refer to the elitist nature of criticizing only Big Pharma, but I don't see such criticism as elitist when it comes from a person in my situation. Big Pharma has a monopoly on mind and mood medicine, after all -- so it is not a free choice that I make when I purchase their meds. In fact, it's now against my choice. I have tried in vain to get off dependence-causing Effexor, which I have found is far harder to kick than heroin, at least in a world in which we have outlawed all drugs that could help a withdrawing person to "stay the course."
I hope that you find these comments interesting. Thanks again for the interesting read.
Brian
PS It is my belief that the subject of medicalization should be discussed in light of drug prohibition. In fact, I would argue that drug prohibition has created the environment in which medicalization can flourish. The way I see it, doctors first fought to outlaw time-honored panaceas like opium and cocaine, then they started creating "illnesses" out of all of the problems created by that drug prohibition. I am not saying that life would be idyllic without drug prohibition -- I would point out, however, that no one has ever sat down and methodically attempted to create safe use protocols for a wide variety of psychoactive drugs based on best practices and historical experience and psychological common sense. This is because we have placed biochemical determinists in charge of mind and mood medicine, which I maintain was always a category error.
AFTERWORD
Of course, I've been here before. I have spent the last four months trying to convince our supposed champions of the depressed that assisted suicide for the depressed cannot be discussed ethically without discussing the drug prohibition that outlaws drugs that could help make these people wish to live.7 Maddeningly, I can get nobody to agree with me, that's just how effectively drug propaganda and censorship have convinced Americans that drugs really do have no positive uses whatsoever -- or that if they do, that fact must be proven by Dr. Spock in a lab coat and not by common sense, anecdote or history.
From what I've seen, the organizations that set themselves up as the saviors of the med-dependent depressed are never interested in the true freedom of the depressed, otherwise they would be advocating an end to the drug prohibition that outlaws their right to heal. Instead, they are interested in selling vitamins, or workout routines, or meditation classes, or they will charge you $200 for hour-long virtual therapy sessions to help you through antidepressant withdrawal -- or else they are proselytizing on behalf of a Christian Science lifestyle (which seems to be the case with Mad in America) -- or some combination of the above.
The depressed are suffering because of drug prohibition, and until we connect those dots, we are really just using the pill-mill dystopia to further our own goals, however noble our intentions may be. These sites for the med-dependent attempt to dethrone psychiatrists as the experts in our cases, but they only do so so that they can enthrone the organization leaders as the experts for us instead. They just don't get it. We do not need experts to tell us what we should do: we need the restoration of our basic right to take care of our own health as we see fit: we need an end to drug prohibition.
Key Takeaways:
Americans reckon without drug prohibition.
Drug prohibition outlaws the philosophy of William James.
Medicalization cannot be understood without discussing the drug prohibition which empowers it.
We should replace medicalization with drug re-legalization, thereby allowing human beings to take care of their own psychological health.
Human sadness has been medicalized in America.
It was a category error to place scientists in charge of mind and mood medicine.
The med-dependent need an end to drug prohibition, not just vitamins, or meditation, or advice about tapering, or lectures about the joys of a Christian Science sobriety.
I should have added to that last post: "I in no way want to glorify or condone drug demonization."
"When two men who have been in an aggressive mood toward each other take part in the ritual, one is able to say to the other, 'Come, let us drink, for there is something between us.' " re: the Mayan use of the balche drink in Encyc of Psych Plants, by Ratsch & Hofmann
We deal with "drug" risks differently than any other risk. Aspirin kills thousands every year. The death rate from free climbing is huge. But it's only with "drug use" that we demand zero deaths (a policy which ironically causes far more deaths than necessary).
If America cannot exist without outlawing drugs, then there is something wrong with America, not with drugs.
"Judging" psychoactive drugs is hard. Dosage counts. Expectations count. Setting counts. In Harvey Rosenfeld's book about the Spanish-American War, a volunteer wrote of his visit to an "opium den": "I took about four puffs and that was enough. All of us were sick for a week."
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
Wonder how America got to the point where we let the Executive Branch arrest judges? Look no further than the Drug War, which, since the 1970s, has demonized Constitutional protections as impediments to justice.
They drive to their drug tests in pickup trucks with license plates that read "Don't tread on me." Yeah, right. "Don't tread on me: Just tell me how and how much I'm allowed to think and feel in this life. And please let me know what plants I can access."
Freud had the right idea: He noticed that cocaine use actually ended depression in his patients. Unfortunately, he was ambitious and was more interested in making a name for himself than in pushing back against the statistically challenged fear mongering of prohibitionists.
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