The question that speaks volumes about drug war hypocrisy
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
October 10, 2022
t's odd that folks in a supposedly drug-hating country like America keep asking the question: "Have you taken your meds?"
This one phrase speaks bundles about the disingenuous nature of the hypocritically defined War on Drugs. It tells us that we don't really want folks to say no to drugs, but we want them to say YES to what we consider to be the RIGHT drugs. We want people to trudge around moping so that they don't bother us, but we don't want them living large, exuberantly fulfilling their dreams in life, and thus potentially annoying us.
When we ask someone if they have taken their meds, we are really asking them if they have taken their tranquilizers. As a rule, the "meds" in question are billed as anti-depressants, but the key outcome of use, in the minds of the question poser, is the tranquilizing effect that such substances have on irritating friends and acquaintances..
But then psychiatry has a long history of creating "cures," not for the benefit of the drug takers, but for the benefit of those who have to deal with them on a daily basis. That's why the procedure of lobotomy garnered a Nobel Prize, not because the victims of that mind-numbing procedure were raving about the way that it improved their lives, but rather because the caretakers and the nurses were happy that they could get on with their work without listening to the constant blather of a noisy patient population.
This politically created distinction between "meds" and "drugs" allows us to sneer at substances that have inspired entire religions (they're just "drugs" after all) while happily signing off on noxious Big Pharma "meds" that have turned 1 in 4 American women into patients for life, while yet not "curing" the depression for which the drug was supposedly being taken.
This is why we need a philosophy of the Drug War, because until these basic drug-war premises are identified and challenged, America is always going to be on the brink of criminalizing or re-criminalizing godsend medicine, thereby ignoring not only logic and science, but also the history of humanity, in which entire religions have been inspired by the very substances that we dogmatically demonize today as "drugs."
Author's Follow-up: October 23, 2023
As ethnobotanist Richard Schultes reminds us: all tribal people have used psychoactive substances for inspiration and healing. It's interesting that America has no sooner decimated such people, when it launches a campaign to criminalize their outlook on life. Do you agree with them that mother nature is good? If you act on your belief, beware, for then Cro-Magnons like Daryl Gates and William Bennett will seek to have you shot or beheaded, without so much as blushing at the inherent barbarity of that advice. This insanity is explicable only under the assumption that the Drug War is a kind of negative religion, which, of course, is exactly what Nietzsche would be saying right now if he were on the scene to behold the demagogue blather of the Drug Warrior. Nietzsche knew, after all, that the death of God would entail the adoption of a stricter Christian morality than ever, albeit at a deep enough subconscious level so that our modern zealots could live with themselves, unconscious of the fact that they were just manifesting the intolerance of a full-scale religious inquisition in opposition to the perennial holistic philosophy of humankind.
We westerners have "just said no" to pain relief, mood elevation and religious insight.
The UK just legalized assisted dying. This means that you can use drugs to kill a person, but you still can't use drugs to make that person want to live.
The front page of every mycology club page should feature a protest of drug laws that make the study of mycology illegal in the case of certain shrooms. But no one protests. Their silence makes them drug war collaborators because it serves to normalize prohibition.
Someone tweeted that fears about a Christian Science theocracy are "baseless." Tell that to my uncle who was lobotomized because they outlawed meds that could cheer him up -- tell that to myself, a chronic depressive who could be cheered up in an instant with outlawed meds.
"Users" can be kept out of the workforce by the extrajudicial process of drug testing; they can have their baby taken from them, their house, their property -- all because they do not share the intoxiphobic attitude of America.
What attracts me about "drug dealers" is that they are NOT interested in prying into my private life. What a relief! With psychiatry, you are probed for pathological behavior on every office visit. You are a child. To the "drug dealer," I am an adult at least.
What bothers me about AI is that everyone's so excited to see what computers can do, while no one's excited to see what the human mind can do, since we refuse to improve it with mind-enhancing drugs.
Jim Hogshire described sleep cures that make physical withdrawal from opium close to pain-free. As for "psychological addiction," there are hundreds of elating drugs that could be used to keep the ex-user's mind from morbidly focusing on a drug whose use has become problematic for them.
Most substance withdrawal would be EASY if drugs were re-legalized and we could use any substance we wanted to mitigate negative psychological effects.
Folks point to the seemingly endless drugs that can be synthesized today and say it's a reason for prohibition. To the contrary, it's the reason why prohibition is madness. It results in an endless game of militaristic whack-a-mole at the expense of democratic freedoms.
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, Did You Take Your Meds?: The question that speaks volumes about drug war hypocrisy, published on October 10, 2022 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)
t's odd that folks in a supposedly drug-hating country like America keep asking the question: "Have you taken your meds?" 
As ethnobotanist Richard Schultes reminds us: all tribal people have used psychoactive substances for inspiration and healing. It's interesting that America has no sooner decimated such people, when it launches a campaign to criminalize their outlook on life. Do you agree with them that mother nature is good? If you act on your belief, beware, for then Cro-Magnons like Daryl Gates and William Bennett will seek to have you shot or beheaded, without so much as blushing at the inherent barbarity of that advice. This insanity is explicable only under the assumption that the Drug War is a kind of negative religion, which, of course, is exactly what Nietzsche would be saying right now if he were on the scene to behold the demagogue blather of the Drug Warrior. Nietzsche knew, after all, that the death of God would entail the adoption of a stricter Christian morality than ever, albeit at a deep enough subconscious level so that our modern zealots could live with themselves, unconscious of the fact that they were just manifesting the intolerance of a full-scale religious inquisition in opposition to the perennial holistic philosophy of humankind.
You have been reading an article entitled, Did You Take Your Meds?: The question that speaks volumes about drug war hypocrisy, published on October 10, 2022 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)
