Drug Dealers as Modern Witches

Homepage of the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass

Drug Dealers as Modern Witches

an open letter to Ronald Hutton, author of 'The Witch: A History of Fear from Ancient Times to the Present'

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

December 18, 2024

"The witches of medieval Europe induced inebriation with a great variety of brews, most of which had at least one of the Nightshades as a psychoactive constituent." --Richard Schultes, from Plants of the Gods: Origins of hallucinogenic use, p. 5 ¹

Dear Mr. Hutton,

I thoroughly enjoyed your book entitled "The Witch: A History of Fear from Ancient Times to the Present.²" However, I would like to suggest a new area of research which seems to have been ignored by researchers in your field thus far.

We moderns preen ourselves on being "above" the silly beliefs of the past, and so we tell the South Africans (for instance) that their beliefs in magical spells are foolish, and this, I think, makes sense. We recognize that the South Africans have been brought up to believe a certain way and we feel that they are in need of re-education. And this, too, makes sense.

However, before we conclude triumphantly that we modern westerners have no blind spots when it comes to common sense, I feel we should ask the question:

"Are there any superstitions that we modern westerners have accepted uncritically since childhood? Are there areas in which we ourselves could benefit from re-education?"

I believe that the answer is a clear yes. We have been taught from childhood to hold the following superstitious belief of the Drug Warrior: that substances called 'drugs' can be evil and that they can have no positive uses, for anybody, anywhere, ever.

"I shall show that "Dangerous drugs,” addicts, and pushers are the scapegoats of our modern, secular, therapeutically imbued societies; and that the ritual persecution of these pharmacological and human agents must be seen against the historical backdrop of the ritual persecution of other scapegoats, such as witches, Jews, and madmen. " --Thomas Szasz, Ceremonial Chemistry: the ritual persecution of drugs, addicts, and pushers ³

The very use of the term "drugs" (in its modern acceptation) is superstitious, because it presupposes a qualitative difference between "psychoactive substances that have the approval of government" (which we call "meds") and those that do not (which we call - or rather denigrate as - drugs).

In reality, there are simply psychoactive substances. To describe some of them as "drugs" (as the term is used today) is the same as calling strike breakers "scabs" - It is not a neutral practice but rather an attempt to impose a certain anti-scientific view on those substances, as being so far beyond the pale that they cannot even be studied in academia without a special dispensation from government.

We are superstitious on this subject for the same reason that many native people are superstitious about magicians and witches: we were educated to feel a certain way about the world.

In our case, we were taught as children to reject "drugs" without asking questions and then told in public service announcements that "drugs" fried the brain - which makes no sense considering that the judgmental epithet "drugs" covers a gamut of substances, some of which improve concentration and, as we now know, even grow new neurons in the brain (see, for instance, "Psychedelic Medicine" by Richard Louis Miller ⁴). We were shielded from all talk about positive uses of "drugs," in all media, including movies , wherein "drugs" are either depicted as causes of sorrow and despair or else are used by irresponsible people, in a way that we are meant to laugh at but to condemn at the same time.

Our very history is censored to conform to Drug War prejudices. And so we seldom read of the fact that Ben Franklin used opium ⁵ , let alone Marcus Aurelius, or that Sigmund Freud used cocaine ⁶ ⁷. Nor do most people learn of the psychedelic-fueled Eleusinian Mysteries ⁸ nor of the fact that the Vedic and hence the Hindu religion were inspired by a drug, namely Soma.

All movies on such subjects emphasize drug use gone bad, failing to note, of course, that prohibition itself does everything it can to make drug use dangerous by failing to ensure safe product while refusing to teach safe use, under the anti-scientific notion that ignorance is the best policy to keep our kids safe.

The censorship of history is happening in real-time as well. The DEA stomped onto Monticello in 1987 to confiscate Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants in violation of everything he stood for as a founding father. And yet the guardians of his estate, The Jefferson Foundation, refuse to even mention the raid to the throngs of visitors who pay close to $100 per person to visit Monticello ⁹ ¹⁰.

You mention the word "drugs" in the modern sense only once in your book, and then to associate it with the deadly substances that native people purchase from local magicians for the purpose of killing enemies.

I, on the other hand, would say that drug dealers are the modern witches. They are service magicians providing substances that can be used for a wide array of purposes, and they are hated by the powers-that-be for both moral and economic reasons: Morally speaking, they may provide drugs that help people live a Dionysian versus an Apollonian lifestyle, and economically speaking, they pose a threat to the established medical community.

Given the centrality of substance demonization in modern society, particularly after the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, it is fair to ask, why was there no similar public policy in the past? Why were drugs not held to be the root of all evil before 20th-century America?

The answer, I believe, lies in our notion of responsibility. In the past, we held people responsible for their actions. Your very work shows as much. Even though a woman may have used "herbs" in her spells, we did not hold the herbs responsible for any negative outcomes of those spells, but rather the malevolence of the spell maker. (There are historical exceptions to this rule, but they generally involve specific substances and nothing close to the wholesale demonization of psychoactive medicines practiced by the modern west.)

Indeed, much of your own research refers to the use of "herbs" by supposed witches, but what are herbs but drugs? If we moderns do not consider them as such, it is only because our definition of the term "drugs" is not scientific and logical but rather based on how we feel about the substances in question.

So it seems to me that the question of "drugs" as related to witchcraft is invisible to researchers because they have this presumption that "herbs" are herbs and "drugs" are drugs when it comes to psychoactive substances. This is a superstition, however, not a logical or scientific fact. To say that "herbs" are not drugs is like saying that "meds" are not drugs. It is not a scientific claim but rather a superstitious one, made by a person who has been subjected to a lifelong propaganda campaign about such substances carried on by the powers-that-be.

Of course, the question might be asked: If folks were using "drugs" in witchcraft, then why do we not read about that fact? The answer may be hidden in plain sight. It is often said that witches used herbs, and herbs are drugs to the extent that they have psychoactive properties when ingested by human beings. It could be that those who reported witchcraft felt no need to go into pharmacological details or to dwell on the precise herbs used (i.e., to treat them like "drugs") because their concern was for the evil resident in the person who used them. They had no socially induced predilection to demonize the substances used in witchcraft since they reserved their censure for the person who used them, as it were, with malice aforethought.

Once "drugs" became evil in themselves, we then turned drug dealers into witches in all but name by blaming them for all the social ills for which we used to blame women that were actually known by that name. Today's drug dealer is treated like a social leper and a poisoner of children. Moreover, after being arrested, they will often consider themselves to be morally guilty, since, like the "witches" of yore, they live and breathe the ethical presumptions of the society in which they were raised, which, in their case, demonized psychoactive substances as the cause of great evil.

But what is the real crime of the drug dealers?

First of all, they would not even exist but for drug law, which incentivizes their services, financially speaking.

And what are their services?

They are offering alternatives to the medical establishment when it comes to mind and mood medicine. To say that it is wrong to do this must therefore presuppose that the modern medical establishment has all the answers when it comes to mind and mood medicine, which is demonstrably false despite self-congratulatory hype in the healthcare industry -- indeed, my entire life as a chronic depressive is testimony to the fact that materialist medicine does not have all the answers. There are drugs that could cheer me up in five minutes - but which modern medicine won't give me based on the following superstitious idea of the modern Drug Warrior:

namely, that a drug that can, even theoretically, be misused by a young white American for one reason, must not be used by anybody, anywhere, for any reasons, ever. It is, in short, plain evil.

The fact that the use of some such drugs might inspire new religions is another damning indictment of modern drug policy, showing it to be antithetical not just to a specific religion, but to the very fountainhead of religious innovation. It is obvious how such drug law would be popular among self-satisfied and intolerant practitioners of the mainstream religions of modern society.

And so the mindset of witch-hunting survives in the west in the form of the War on Drugs and the anti-scientific substance demonization for which it stands. It is no longer acceptable to be racist or anti-poor in the west, but one can concoct laws that will end up throwing minorities and the poor in jail and destroy their communities with drive-by shootings. Millions of Blacks are off the voting rolls in America today thanks to substance prohibition, and this in a country with close presidential elections.

And so I would respectfully suggest that the topic of "drugs" merits discussion in connection with the study of witchcraft. Your book is subtitled "A History of Fear from Ancient Times to the Present," after all, and the Drug War is the ultimate example of fearmongering - a strategic fearmongering, designed to achieve political, economical and social goals that are important to the powers-that-be.

Sincerely Yours.

PS Your writing about the "little people" and "fairies" put me in mind of DMT, a substance present both in human beings and plant life. People who ingest the substance in the form of 5 Meo Dimethyltrptamine often see and interact with elf-like characters (See "DMT Trip Experiences" by Alex Gibbon ¹¹). And we have learned over the past 100 years or so that South Americans have a history of harnessing the power of DMT-containing plants for creating ostensibly informative visions peopled by various creatures.

PPS I was also thinking about the immense amount of research that you must have performed for writing this book and how I, personally, could never do so much focused work except in a world in which substances like the coca leaf were legal again. I mention this only to point out how the subject of "drugs" pops up in many unexpected places, once one permits themselves to talk freely and frankly about them and without the judgmental reticence required by the modern ideology of substance demonization.

Nor is this a frivolous aside, for it begs the question: How much meaningful research is being stifled in this way alone by the Drug Warrior: by their outlawing of all substances that help the mind focus? morphine ¹² , for instance, can inspire an almost surreal level of attention and focus in the prepared mind. So can heavily demonized "speed" and coca. America has decided by fiat that such research is not to take place, however, that the goal of protecting white young people from themselves is more important than scientific research -- those same white young people whom we refuse on principle to teach about safe use.

When we outlaw drugs, we are outlawing far more than just drugs.

Author's Follow-up:

May 02, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up

The good news is, Mr. Hutton actually responded to the email containing this essay. The bad news is, he merely thanked me for my comments and signed off. Too typical, I'm afraid. Amazing as it is, I have never yet known one single author or philosopher to respond to the substance of my comments, after having written literally hundreds of letters to the movers and shakers in various relevant fields. It is as if it is considered bad manners these days merely to bring up the subject of drug prohibition. It really feels as if the smart people have concluded that the Drug War mentality is here to stay and that their best bet is to censor themselves accordingly. And so we have a kind of faux science these days, a world in which our conclusions in fields like psychology and consciousness only make sense if we assume that drug prohibition constitutes a natural baseline for research on all topics -- even political science, wherein pundits never would consider the strategic use of empathogens to end hatred in the world and so stave off nuclear annihilation. Meanwhile, psychology mags publish monthly feel-good pieces about ending depression while yet completely ignoring the fact that drug law outlaws all substances that could do just that, and in real-time at that.

It's a world of make-believe, a world in which we are completely blind to the progress-preventing effects of our superstitious drug demonization. I say superstitious, for to say things like "Fentanyl ¹³ kills" makes no more sense than to say "Fire bad!" in the presumptuous manner of our paleolithic ancestors. Dangerous substances CAN be used wisely -- if we do not make a religion out of insisting otherwise.

This leaves a philosopher like myself in the position of Alfred North Whitehead. He found himself in a world where almost everybody but himself had this idea that nature was bifurcated into mind and matter -- and that never the twain could meet in a satisfactory manner. I face a different sort of belief in bifurcation: the idea that there are "meds" and there are "drugs" and that ne'er the twain will meet, that the two substances are radically different. The fact is, of course, that psychoactive substances are psychoactive substances, and that labels are used (or rather misused) by Drug Warriors to make us think otherwise. The goal is to whitewash dependence-causing pills created by materialist chemists while dissing the sort of time-honored holistic medicines championed historically by indigenous peoples around the world.

"The evolution of modern medicine gave us our current, bifurcated view of drugs: the good ones that treat illness and the bad ones that people use to change their minds and moods." --Jacob Sullum, from Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use, p. 251 ¹⁴

I have the same problem as Whitehead in attempting to get my points across. My outlook on the subject of drugs is just too novel from the point of view of Americans who have been brainwashed since childhood in the drug-war ideology of substance demonization-- especially via the Drug Warrior's censorship of all reports of beneficial drug use in books, magazines, TV shows ¹⁵ , and movies ¹⁶ ¹⁷ . Unless I am very thorough in countering manifold knee-jerk objections, I will say one thing on this topic and my auditors will hear another. Whitehead himself understood this danger when he made the following observation in his preface to "The Concept of Nature":

"In the presentation of a novel outlook with wide ramifications, a single line of communications from premises to conclusions is not sufficient for intelligibility. Your audience will construe whatever you say into conformity with their pre-existing outlook."

Fentanyl

Fearmongering

Notes for essay entitled Drug Dealers as Modern Witches: an open letter to Ronald Hutton, author of 'The Witch: A History of Fear from Ancient Times to the Present':

1: “Schultes, Hofmann Plants of the Gods ( Healing Arts, 2001) : Alberto Hoffman : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2015. Internet Archive. 2015. https://archive.org/details/SchultesHofmannPlantsOfTheGodsHealingArts2001. (up)
2: The Witch: A History of Fear from Ancient Times to the Present Hutton, Ronald, Yale Press, 2017 (up)
3: “Ceremonial Chemistry – Syracuse University Press.” 1974. Syr.edu. 2026. https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/1114/ceremonial-chemistry/. (up)
4: Richard Louis Miller. 2017. Psychedelic Medicine : The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, and Ayahuasca. Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press. (up)
5: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
6: “Freud on Cocaine : Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2023. Internet Archive. 2023. https://archive.org/details/freudoncocaine0000freu/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater. (up)
7: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
8: The Eleusinian Mysteries: A Gateway to the Afterlife in Greek Beliefs (up)
9: The Dark Side of the Monticello Foundation DWP (up)
10: How the DEA Scrubbed Thomas Jefferson's Monticello Poppy Garden from Public Memory alternet.org, 2010 (up)
11: DMT Trip Reports - Experience What It’s Like Taking 5 Meo Dimethyltrptamine Gibbons, Alex, 2020 (up)
12: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)
13: Fentanyl does not steal loved ones: Drug Laws Do DWP (up)
14: Sullum, Jacob. 2025. “Saying Yes by Jacob Sullum: 9781585423187 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books.” PenguinRandomhouse.com. 2025. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/288705/saying-yes-by-jacob-sullum/. (up)
15: The Dead Man DWP (up)
16: Glenn Close but no cigar DWP (up)
17: Running with the torture loving DEA DWP (up)

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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

If Fentanyl kills, then alcohol massacres. The problem is drug prohibition, not drugs.

What prohibitionists forget is that every popular but dangerous activity, from horseback riding to drug use, will have its victims. You cannot save everybody, and when you try to do so by law, you kill far more than you save, meanwhile destroying democracy in the process.

All the problems that folks associate with drugs are caused by prohibition. Thousands were not dying on the streets when opioids were legal in America. It took prohibition to bring that about.

Wade Davis wrote in Rolling Stone that cocaine was outlawed because 400 people consumed toxic doses worldwide. SO WHAT?! 178,000 people die from alcohol every year in America alone.

Even when laudanum was legal in the UK, pharmacists were serving as moral adjudicators, deciding for whom they should fill such prescriptions. That's not a pharmacist's role. We need an ABC-like set-up in which the cashier does not pry into my motives for buying a substance.

William James knew that there were substances that could elate. However, it never occurred to him that we should use such substances to prevent suicide. It seems James was blinded to this possibility by his puritanical assumptions.

If drug war logic made sense, we would outlaw endless things in addition to drugs. Because the drug war says that it's all worth it if we can save just one life -- which is generally the life of a white suburban young person, btw.

The Drug War shows us that American democracy is fundamentally flawed. Propaganda and fearmongering has persuaded Americans to give up freedoms that are clearly enunciated in the U.S. Constitution. We need a new democracy in which a Constitution actually matters.

When the FDA tells us in effect that MDMA is too dangerous to be used to prevent school shootings and to help bring about world peace, they are making political judgments, not scientific ones.

The DEA has done everything it can to keep Americans clueless about opium and poppies. The agency is a disgrace to a country that claims to value knowledge and freedom of information.

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Drug Dealers as Modern Witches

an open letter to Ronald Hutton, author of 'The Witch: A History of Fear from Ancient Times to the Present'

Author's Follow-up:

May 02, 2025

Fentanyl

Fearmongering

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

Diary of a Drug Fiend