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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'

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher







December 18, 2024

ear Mr. Hutton,

I thoroughly enjoyed your book entitled "The Witch: A History of Fear from Ancient Times to the Present.1" 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.

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 Miller2). 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, let alone Marcus Aurelius, or that Sigmund Freud used cocaine. Nor do most people learn of the psychedelic-fueled Eleusinian Mysteries 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 Monticello3.

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 Gibbon4). 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, 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.


Fearmongering






The drug war is the ultimate case of fearmongering. And yet academics and historians fail to recognize it as such. They will protest eloquently against the outrages of the witch hunts of yore, but they are blind to the witch hunts of the present. What is a drug dealer but a modern service magician, someone who sells psychoactive medicine designed to effect personal ends for the user? They are simply providing an alternative to materialistic medicine, which ignores common sense and so ignores the glaringly obvious value of such substances.

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    • Open Letters






    Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.

    I don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.

    Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the drug war ideology of substance demonization.



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    • Notes:

    1 Hutton, Ronald, The Witch: A History of Fear from Ancient Times to the Present, Yale Press, 2017 (up)
    2 Miller, Richard Louis, Psychedelic Medicine: The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, and Ayahuasca Kindle , Park Street Press, New York, 2017 (up)
    3 How the DEA Scrubbed Thomas Jefferson's Monticello Poppy Garden from Public Memory, alternet.org, 2010 (up)
    4 Gibbons, Alex, DMT Trip Reports - Experience What It’s Like Taking 5 Meo Dimethyltrptamine, 2020 (up)


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    front cover of Drug War Comic Book

    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, 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', published on December 18, 2024 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)