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Dragnet meets the Drug War

Just the propaganda, ma'am. Just the propaganda.

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

December 22, 2018



Click audio above to listen to the dramatic story!


This is the city, Los Angeles California. A quiet town full of hard-working Americans who still know the meaning of the word "obey." That said, there are always a few renegades who attempt to improve their lives through the unsanctioned use of natural substances such as poppies and mushrooms. That's where I come in, guns a-blazin'. My name is Friday and I carry a Sig Sauer 556 Classic SWAT rifle with a 30-round magazine and a Viridian laser sight.

Wednesday, June 21, 1 p.m.

FRIDAY: We had just gotten the call here at DEA HQ. It seems some octogenarian hippy from the north side was using psychoactive plants to improve her spiritual life. Claims she's in a "blue funk" and wants to see behind the so-called "veil of Maya" before she dies.

I decided to pay grandma a visit, see if I could talk some sense into her - or better yet, catch her red-handed with the goodies and thus shut her away for life, lest young people everywhere should infer from her ongoing freedom that they too can use natural plants and fungus in just any way that they see fit. (Humph!) After all, it's not like our Founding Fathers relied on anything more than grit and determination to make it in the world, blue funk or no blue funk.

FRANK: Say, Joe, didn't Benjamin Franklin use opium 1 ?

FRIDAY: Just the propaganda, Frank. Just the propaganda.

1:35 p.m.

FRIDAY: I had pictured this aged flower child smoldering away in some dilapidated bungalow near the Los Angeles River Basin, annoying her low-class neighbors with the reek of her oversized bong decorated with Amazonian rain gods. To my surprise, however, I encountered the surprisingly recherche crone in the midst of high-class respectability, in her very own 6-bedroom mansion on Ivarene Avenue in the Hollywood 2 Hills, tastefully appointed with mid-century décor and modern art, complete with private bath, solarium and even a billiard room.

"Hubba-hubba, " I says to Frank. "Crime seems to be paying here, huh, Frank? It's about time that we put a stop to that - the more so in that this place could easily net 6 million dollars for law enforcement when it's put up for auction after we throw old grandma into the hoosegow."

So thinking, I addressed the beldame as follows:

FRIDAY: You do realize, ma'am, that it's illegal to use plants and fungi as you see fit?

WOMAN: Oh, I'm sorry, I thought I lived in a free country.

FRIDAY: Not since the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914.

FRANK: Hey, she's got a mushroom, Joe, just to her right!

FRIDAY: Step away from the mushroom, ma'am!

WOMAN: But—

FRIDAY: All right, you asked for it, Janis Joplin! Now I have to throw you on the ground and threaten you with immediate death if you so much as move an inch!

WOMAN: WHY?

FRIDAY: Because... Because... Oh, how the hell do I know: it's just standard DEA procedure in these cases!

WOMAN: I was just trying to improve my mind!

FRIDAY: Yeah, ma'am, well, have you ever stopped to think what it would be like if EVERYBODY were to try to improve their mind like you?

WOMAN: Um... the world would be a better place?

FRIDAY: No! The world would be full of criminals!

FRANK: Well said, Joe.

FRIDAY: You know what, Frank?

FRANK: What's that, Joe?

FRIDAY: If everybody had her attitude, the world would be full of broken doors.

FRANK: How's that, Joe?

FRIDAY: Because the DEA would be obliged to perform a traditional SWAT raid on every single house in America, kicking in doors as we go.

FRANK: Hey, not a bad idea: sounds like there'd be a lot of valuable overtime in that arrangement.

FRIDAY: You took the bullets right out of my gun, Frank.

[Frank and Friday chuckle as "Janis Joplin" is violently hauled off to the already-overcrowded federal penitentiary system behind the credit roll]

On October 29, trial was held in the district court of Los Angeles County.

The old crone was found guilty of conspiring to obtain psilocybin mushrooms for the express purpose of improving her life. The Judge sentenced her to 25 years in the slammer, as a lesson to anyone who still thinks that Mother Nature's pharmacopoeia is actually open to the public. (Humph!)













Notes for essay entitled Dragnet meets the Drug War: Just the propaganda, ma'am. Just the propaganda.:

1: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
2: Blast-off for Planet Hypocrisy! DWP (up)




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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




Americans think that fighting drugs is more important than freedom. We have already given up on the fourth amendment. Nor is the right to religion honored for those who believe in indigenous medicines. Pols are now trying to end free speech about drugs as well.

This is the problem with trusting science to tell us about drugs. Science means reductive materialism, whereas psychoactive drug use is all about mind and the human being as a whole. We need pharmacologically savvy shaman to guide us, not scientists.

I don't believe in the materialist paradigm upon which SSRIs were created, according to which humans are interchangeable chemical robots amenable to the same treatment for human sadness. Let me use laughing gas and MDMA and coca and let the materialists use SSRIs.

If we can go overseas to burn poppy plants, then Islamic countries should be free to come to the United States to burn our grape vines.

Prohibition turned habituation into addiction by creating a wide variety of problems for users, including potential arrest, tainted or absent drug supply, and extreme stigmatization.

All drugs have potential positive uses for somebody, at some dose, in some circumstance, alone or in combination. To decide in advance that a drug is completely useless is an offense to reason and to human liberty.

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.

Drug prohibition is a crime against humanity.

@HKSExecEd The use of Ecstasy brought UNPRECEDENTED peace and love to the British dance floors in the 1990s. When are political scientists going to acknowledge the potential for such substances to pull our species back from the brink of nuclear annihilation?

Amphetamines are "meds" when they help kids think more clearly but they are "drugs" when they help adults think more clearly. That shows you just how bewildered Americans are when it comes to drugs.


Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






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Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

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