Discussion Questions for Studying Drug Prohibition in Schools and Universities
for teachers and professors who dare to use them
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
August 9, 2025
Welcome, teachers and professors!
Here's an idea: let's actually teach about the social, political, psychological and scientific issues raised by drug prohibition, AKA the unprecedented wholesale outlawing of psychoactive medicines worldwide.
To help get you started, here are a variety of discussion topics for your class to investigate -- openly and freely, as if freedom of thought actually mattered!
1) The Drug War has given Big Pharma a monopoly on mind and mood medicine. Cui bono? (Who stands to profit?)
Americans have been taught to hate Mother Nature's plant medicines and to trust in Big Pharma 'meds' instead, many of which turn the depressed into patients for life with extreme chemical dependency.
2) Critics of so-called Big Government tool around in automobiles with license plates reading "Don't Tread on Me." And yet these same "rebels" usually have no problem with the government using drug prohibition to determine how and how much a citizen can think and feel in life. Discuss the blind hypocrisy at work here.
Conservatives and gun lovers demand to be free from government -- except they want the government to control their access to pain relief and their ability to relax and concentrate, etc. etc. etc.
3) The very existence of the drug-using deity Xochipilli, the Aztec "Prince of the Flowers," demonstrates the imperialist nature of drug prohibition and suggests why outlawing drugs is an act of religious intolerance. Discuss.......
Here is the god that the DEA says you cannot worship. Xōchipilli, the Aztec god of beauty, youth, love, passion, sex, arts, song, music, dance, painting... and yes, drug-inspired ecstasy!
4) God said that his creation was "good" and yet our Christian Drug Warriors believe that Mother Nature is a Drug King Pin. Discuss the telling irony of this glaring contradiction.
God said that his creations were good, but Drug Warriors beg to differ.
5) Discuss how books and movies 12 avoid all depictions of beneficial drug use. Explain how this massive and thorough censorship (most of it self-censorship) has given America a warped view of the kinds of substances that indigenous peoples have always used for human benefit.
Don't think your life has been censored? Look for books about wise and beneficial drug use in your local library!
6) William James said the following about what we today would call "altered states": "No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded." But disregard them we must thanks to drug prohibition. Discuss.
James told us to study altered states with substances like nitrous oxide to learn about reality, but the FDA wants it outlawed. The DWP (Brian Q) is the only philosopher who protested outlawing N20 on behalf of academic freedom.
7) Consider the following outrage reported in "Drug Warriors and Their Prey" by Richard Louis Miller. Why have stories like the following failed to become cause célèbres for opponents of drug prohibition? ""Rev. Accelyne Williams, a slender 75-year-old man, spent his final moments doubled over, vomiting, his hands bound behind his back with a tight strip of plastic, totally confused about what was happening to him. ... He had literally been scared to death by shouting, storming anti-drug troops." No drugs were found."
The death in 1994 of 75-year-old Rev. Accelyne Williams thanks to a SWAT raid at the wrong address should have been a wake-up call about the inhumanity of drug law -- but it's business as usual for unrepentant prohibitionists.
8) Discuss the following quotation from "Our Right to Drugs" by Thomas Szasz: "The principal role of medical, and especially psychiatric, professionals in the administration and enforcement of this system of chemical statism is to act as double agents-- helping politicians to impose their will on the people by defining self-medication3 as a disease, and helping the people to bear their privations by supplying them with drugs."
Self-medicating is just a pejorative term for taking care of one's own psychological health. Doctors demonize the practice for obvious financial reasons.
9) Explain how drug prohibition may be seen as the enforcement of a sort of Christian Science Sharia.
Forty-nine thousand Americans kill themselves every year, mainly because America has demonized and/or outlawed everything that could cheer them up, like laughing gas and cocaine, which Freud knew was a cure for depression.
10) Explain how media censorship shapes our views about drug use.
Freud knew that cocaine was a godsend for the depressed. But doctors saw it as a threat to their bottom line and so they studied only the rare misuse of the drug.
11) Discuss the philosophical similarity between saying "Fentanyl 4 bad!" and "Fire kills!" (Hint: both statements superstitiously demonize dangerous substances rather than encouraging us to use them as wisely as possible for the benefit of actual human beings.
Saying things like 'Fentanyl kills' is like saying 'Fire bad'. Such statements would have us fear dangerous substances rather than learn how to use them for human benefit.
12) Discuss the cruelty of detox in a world in which all drugs that could make the withdrawal process both "bearable" and successful have been outlawed. Discuss the following telling irony: that one is considered an "addictive type" merely because they bridle at the niggardliness of the modern legal pharmacopoeia.
Detox is the modern equivalent of bloodletting. We torture the patient because we refuse to give them drugs that would cheer them up and help them, psychologically speaking, to get off unwanted substances.
13) Discuss the fact that the Drug War has turned 1 in 4 American women into patients for life by giving Big Pharma a monopoly on providing dependence-causing mind and mood medicine. Cui bono? Who benefits from this unprecedented -- and yet seemingly invisible -- pharmacological dystopia?
Drug prohibition turns depressed Americans into demoralized wards of the healthcare state by shunting them off onto dependence-causing meds.
14) Discuss the ghoulish implications of legalizing doctor-assisted suicide 5 in a country that denies us all medicines that might make us want to live.
Americans have been taught to superstitiously believe that drugs are bad. Drugs are not bad or good. They are inanimate objects. Their widespread misuse tells us something about society, not about drugs.
15) America holds drug use to a safety standard that we hold for no other activity on planet Earth -- and it is a hypocritical standard at that. We ignore the 178,000 alcohol-related deaths a year, but ban MDMA 6 if it can theoretically pose a problem for a single white young person (a single white young person whom we have refused to educate about safe drug use). Discuss this mother of all hypocrisies.
If America used the same safety standards for all risky activities that we set for drug use, there would be no deer hunting, no free diving, no mountain climbing -- and no car driving or beer drinking.
16) Discuss the following quotation from "Our Right to Drugs" by Thomas Szasz: "One of the most tragic and publicly least understood side effects of the War on Drugs is that so many sick Americans suffering from painful illnesses are systematically deprived of adequate doses of painkilling drugs because of physicians' well-founded fears of prescribing so-called controlled substances."
Most hospitals in India no longer carry morphine thanks to the Drug War. Fearmonger Americans have so demonized the drug that it is too expensive and difficult to administer, even to children in hospice care.
17) The American healthcare establishment would rather that chronically depressed individuals have their brains damaged with shock therapy than to allow them to use any of the many medicines that could make shock therapy unnecessary. Discuss this bizarre state of affairs and how it makes the medical establishment's former reliance on leeches seem like genius by comparison.
Drug prohibition literally fries the brain. The FDA encourages brain-damaging shock therapy for the severely depressed while our government refuses to let us use godsend medicines that could cheer us up in a trice, and without brain damage!
18) American young people were not dying on the streets when opiates were legal in America. It took drug prohibition to accomplish that. Discuss some of the many other downsides to outlawing godsend substances.
The Anti-Opium Society of the UK promoted the claim of an American missionary that the drug killed 2 million Chinese a year. A complete lie! Nightly opium smokers in China were healthier and lived longer than nightly alcohol drinkers.
19) Ronald Reagan's DEA stomped onto Monticello 7 in 1987 and confiscated Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants in violation of everything that he stood for, politically speaking. Discuss this pusillanimous betrayal, bearing in mind that the Thomas Jefferson Foundation actually facilitated the raid, thereby betraying the very man whom they are supposed to be celebrating. (Of course, they have refused to talk about the raid ever since, proving that even they, in their heart of hearts, know that they were wretches for thus betraying their benefactor.)
Ronald Reagan's DEA raided Thomas Jefferson's Monticello estate in 1987, with the help of the Jefferson Foundation! The garden-loving Jefferson would have been horrified that American government had devolved into a plant-demonizing republic!
20) One in four American women are dependent on Big Pharma 89 meds for life. And yet Americans are completely blind to the existence of this mass pharmacological dystopia. Explain.
One in four American women are patients for life thanks to drug prohibition. In order to keep them safe from drugs, America has shunted them off on 'meds' that are almost impossible to kick -- far, far harder than heroin!
21) Resolved: that we need to TREAT human sadness, not cure it. We need to treat it with running, jogging, meditating, traveling, socializing, praying, attending churches, joining clubs... and yes, taking beneficial drugs when helpful for us as a unique individual -- drugs that work based on the best-use practices of actual successful drug users. Discuss.
The Drug War turned 1 in 8 Americans (and 1 in 4 American women) into drug users for life -- on dependence-causing Big Pharma meds. My own doc told me that Venlafaxine, for instance has a 95% recidivism rate for long-term users! 95%!
22) The use of ecstasy brought about UNPRECEDENTED peace, love and understanding on the British dance floor in the 1990s, and yet Drug Warriors never saw this as a drug benefit -- even though we live in a world that is on the brink of nuclear annihilation thanks to hatred of "the other." Explain what this blindness to enormous drug benefits tells us about the perverse mindset of the Drug Warrior.
Ecstasy brought about UNPRECEDENTED peace to British dance floors in the 1990s. Instead of praising the drug, however, MP's cracked down on it, after which the dance floors erupted with alcohol-fueled violence.
If you're looking for an anti-Christ, just look for an American presidential politician who has taught us to hate our enemies. Gee, now, who could that be, huh? According to Trump, Jesus was just a chump. Winning comes before anything at all in his sick view of life.
It is a truism to say that we cannot change the world and that therefore we have to change ourselves -- but the drug war outlaws even this latter option.
The MindMed company (makers of LSD Lite) tell us that euphoria and visions are "adverse effects": that's not science, that's an arid materialist philosophy that does not believe in spiritual transcendence.
We need to stop using the fact that people like opiates as an excuse to launch a crackdown on inner cities. We need to re-legalize popular meds, teach safe use, and come up with common sense ways to combat addictions by using drugs to fight drugs.
It is a crime against humanity to withhold cocaine from the depressed and those with impaired cognition.
Imagine the Vedic people shortly after they have discovered soma. Everyone's ecstatic -- except for one oddball. "I'm not sure about these experiences," says he. "I think we need to start dissecting the brains of our departed adherents to see what's REALLY going on in there."
Pundits tell us that there are medical reasons not to "snort" cocaine. So what? There are medical reasons not to drive a car: you may have an accident. The question is: does cocaine use or car driving make sense in a given case! Details matter!
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.
Don't the Oregon prohibitionists realize that all the thousands of deaths from opiates is so much blood on their hands?
We throw people out of jobs for using "drugs," we praise them for using "meds." The categories are imaginary, made up by politicians who want to demonize certain substances, but not cigs or beer.
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