a list of Movies that promote the pernicious ideology of substance demonization
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
December 9, 2023
or 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 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 medications1. 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 medicine2.
Movies
that promote Drug War ideology
Four Good Days
Glenn Close plays a hypocritical and vengeful lush who seeks to get her heroin-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.
Mass Media and Drugs
The media have done all they can to support the drug war by holding the use of outlawed substances to safety standards that are never applied to any other risky activity on earth, meanwhile ignoring the fact that prohibition encourages ignorance and leads to contaminated drug supply. Thousands of American young people die each month because of unregulated supply and ignorance, not from drugs themselves.
They also support the drug war by ignoring it. Just read any article on inner-city shootings or on the extraordinary violence that is forever breaking out in South America. It's all related to the fact that America, in its arrogance, taught the world to blame plant medicines for social problems. And there was no excuse. Liquor prohibition had already created the American Mafia: and yet the media sees no connection between the drug war and the violence judging by their news coverage.
They also have a field day superstitiously blaming drugs. It used to be PCP, ICE, oxy, crack, and now it's fentanyl... Movies are now personifying these drugs in the forms of Crack Raccoons and Meth Gators. America has become so superstitious and childish about drugs that it's sad -- and the media can take much of the blame.
Chesterton might as well have been speaking about the word 'addiction' when he wrote the following: "It is useless to have exact figures if they are exact figures about an inexact phrase."
In the 19th century, poets got together to use opium "in a series of magnificent quarterly carouses" (as per author Richard Middleton). When we outlaw drugs, we outlaw free expression.
Many in the psychedelic renaissance fail to recognize that prohibition is the problem. They praise psychedelics but want to demonize others substances. That's ignorant however. No substance is bad in itself. All substances have some use at some dose for some reason.
I looked up the company: it's all about the damn stock market and money. The FDA outlaws LSD until we remove all the euphoria and the visions. That's ideology, not science. Just relegalize drugs and stop telling me how much ecstasy and insight I can have in my life!!
Scientists are not the experts on psychoactive medicines. The experts are painters and artists and spiritualists -- and anyone else who simply wants to be all they can be in life. Scientists understand nothing of such goals and aspirations.
This is why it's wrong to dismiss drugs as "good" or "bad." There are endless potential positive uses to psychoactive drugs. That's all that we should ask of them.
Attention People's magazine editorial staff:
Matthew Perry was a big boy who made his own decisions. He didn't die because of ketamine or because of evil rotten drug dealers, he died because of America's enforced ignorance about psychoactive drugs.
The Drug War is based on two HUGE lies: 1) that prohibition has no downsides, & 2) that drug use has no upsides.
We know that anticipation and mental focus and relaxation have positive benefits -- but if these traits ae facilitated by "drugs," then we pretend that these same benefits somehow are no longer "real." This is a metaphysical bias, not a logical deduction.
Science knows nothing of the human spirit and of the hopes and dreams of humankind. Science cannot tell us whether a given drug risk is worthwhile given the human need for creativity and passion in their life. Science has no expertise in making such philosophical judgements.
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 War Agitprop: a list of Movies that promote the pernicious ideology of substance demonization, published on December 9, 2023 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)
or 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 drugs, we say that they have a duty to "take their meds."
You have been reading an article entitled, Drug War Agitprop: a list of Movies that promote the pernicious ideology of substance demonization, published on December 9, 2023 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)