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Drug War Agitprop

a list of Movies that promote the pernicious ideology of substance demonization

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

December 9, 2023



For decades, screenwriters have gotten away scot-free with writing movies that promote pernicious Drug War propaganda, like the idea that it's okay to kill and disfigure folks who dare to sell medicines of which racist politicians disapprove, and that it's just fine to treat folks like dirt if and when they use such medicines -- even though, when it comes to Big Pharma 1 2 drugs, we say that they have a duty to "take their meds."

Below is an ever-growing list of movies that promote this hateful ideology that is antithetical to democracy and to a peaceful life of co-existence with our neighbors. I have to create this page because groups like Common Sense refuse to flag movies for drug-war propaganda. To the contrary, they flag movies for containing even talk about drugs, as if viewers need to be warned that a movie would not pass muster with Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the drug-hating religion of Christian Science.

Groups that flag drug use in movies should also flag the use of aspirin -- since the word "drugs," when used rationally, entails all medications3. The fact that Common Sense does not flag "aspirin" shows that they're not really worried about drugs per se, but rather about psychoactive substances that can improve and expand mind and mentation. They're scared, in short, of precisely the kinds of medicines that tribal peoples have always used for spiritual and psychological reasons -- the same tribal peoples that we drug-hating westerns have decimated and cheated out of their land.

Not content to destroy them physically, we now use Drug War ideology to discredit and vilify their nature-friendly philosophy of life, which held the heretical view that the mind is a kingdom that can and should be expanded with the help of psychoactive medicine4.

movies


that promote Drug War ideology



Four Good Days


Glenn Close plays a hypocritical and vengeful lush who seeks to get her heroin 5-using daughter to seek treatment -- in other words, to pay $3000 for a cot and a shot of Naltrexone. It, of course, never occurs to Glenn's character, Dev, to let her daughter use legally with regulated supply and to re-legalize the hundreds of alternatives that would help her get off of heroin if desired onto a less problematic substance -- all without the gnashing of teeth called for by puritan ideology.

I say Glenn is a "lush" because: no sooner does her daughter pluck her last nerve than Glenn is off to the refrigerator to throw back a liberal helping of house wine. I say Glenn is "vengeful" because she shouts "That guy should be shot!" when she sees a teenage "drug dealer" -- the same teenager whom prohibition has massively incentivized to sell drugs. One wonders if Glenn shouldn't be thrown on a cot and forced to go liquor free, after listening to the relevant moralistic lectures from her own daughter.


Do you know of a movie that promotes the hateful ideology of the Drug War. (I know, I know: you're spoiled for choice, right?) Please let me know and I'll add them to this list of shame. Email: quasss@quass.com subject: Drug War movies 6 7 8 9 .












Notes:

1: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
2: LaMattina, John. n.d. “Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of the FDA’s Drug Division Budget?” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2022/09/22/why-is-biopharma-paying-75-of-the-fdas-drug-division-budget/. (up)
3: Common Nonsense from Common Sense Media DWP (up)
4: Just Say Yes to Mother Nature's Pharmacy DWP (up)
5: Hall, Wayne, and Megan Weier. 2016. “Lee Robins’ Studies of Heroin Use among US Vietnam Veterans.” Addiction 112 (1): 176–80. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.13584. (up)
6: Glenn Close but no cigar DWP (up)
7: Running with the torture loving DEA DWP (up)
8: Blast-off for Planet Hypocrisy! DWP (up)
9: Drug War Quotes in TV and Movies DWP (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




Wonder how America got to the point where we let the Executive Branch arrest judges? Look no further than the Drug War, which, since the 1970s, has demonized Constitutional protections as impediments to justice.

Assisted suicide cannot be discussed meaningfully without discussing the drug prohibition that renders it necessary in the first place.

This is why America is creeping toward authoritarianism -- because of the prohibitionists' ability to get away with everything by blaming "drugs."

Both physical and psychological addiction can be successfully fought when we relegalize the pharmacopoeia and start to fight drugs with drugs. But prohibitionists do not want to end addiction, they want to scare us with it.

If opium and cocaine were legal again in America, the healthcare industry would suddenly have to undergo extensive downsizing, as Americans were once again put in charge of their own health.

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 homicidal drug is booze. There's more violence on a Saturday night in a neighborhood tavern than there has been in the whole 20-year history of LSD." -- Timothy Leary

There are times when it is clearly WRONG to deny kids drugs (whatever the law may say). If your child is obsessed with school massacres, he or she is an excellent candidate for using empathogenic meds ASAP -- or do we prefer even school shootings to drug use???

Opium and cocaine have a vast host of potential rational uses -- yet we all have to pretend otherwise in the age of the Drug War.

Well, today's Oregon vote scuttles any ideas I might have entertained about retiring in Oregon.


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






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Copyright 2025, Brian Ballard Quass Contact: quass@quass.com

tombstone for American Democracy, 1776-2024, RIP (up)