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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)








Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




We've got to take the fight TO the drug warriors by starting to hold them legally responsible for having spread "Big Lies" about "drugs." Anyone involved in producing the "brain frying" PSA of the 1980s should be put on trial for willfully spreading a toxic lie.

Rather than protesting prohibition as a crackdown on academic freedom, today's scientists are collaborating with the drug war by promoting shock therapy and SSRIs, thereby profiting from the monopoly that the drug war gives them in selling mind and mood medicine.

Attempts to improve one's mind and mood are not crimes. The attempt to stop people from doing so is the crime.

As great as it is, "Synthetic Panics" by Philip Jenkins was only tolerated by academia because it did not mention drugs in the title and it contains no explicit opinions about drugs. As a result, many drug law reformers still don't know the book exists.

Two weeks ago, a guy told me that most psychiatrists believe ECT is great. I thought he was joking! I've since come to realize that he was telling the truth: that is just how screwed up the healthcare system is today thanks to drug war ideology and purblind materialism.

Any self-respecting mycologist should denounce the criminalization of mushrooms.

All of our problems with opioids and opiates could have been avoided had the busybody Chicken Littles in America left well enough alone and let folks continue to smoke regulated opium peaceably in their own homes.

"Chemical means of peering into the contents of the inner mind have been universally prized as divine exordia in man’s quest for the beyond... before the coarseness of utilitarian minds reduced them to the status of 'dope'." -- Eric Hendrickson

Before anyone receives shock therapy -- or the right to assisted suicide -- they should have the option to start using opium or cocaine daily -- in fact, any drug that makes them feel that life is worth living again.

As such, "we" are important. The sun is just a chaos of particles that "we" have selected out of the rest of the raw data and declared "This we shall call the sun!" "We" make this universe. Consciousness is fundamental.


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

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