reflections on my month-long trip to The Crossroads of the Americas
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
February 28, 2026
During our stifling walk through Taboga Island on a typical summer day in Panama in February 2026, our resident tour guide brought us to the oceanside house of Francisco Pizarro, where the Conquistador lived the good life with the help of his encomienda of 150 indigenous slaves before setting off to conquer Peru, not once, but twice. I was startled to learn that a house with such a name even existed on the so-called "Island of Flowers," let alone that it was located on a street that unapologetically boasted the same controversial name. My astonishment only grew when our guide informed our small group of day trippers that the house is still in the hands of Pizarro's descendants to this very day. "What?", I thought to myself. "Did not the indigenous people of Peru successfully demand the removal of the equestrian statue of Pizarro from the Lima capital in 2003? Why is this house and street tolerated by the Mestizo population of the island, given their tangible connections with the peoples whom the Spaniard decimated for nepotic gain, the encomiendas thus generated being shared with his three equally ruthless brothers?"
Welcome sign entering Agua Fria, first town in Darien Province when heading east on Route 1. The real welcome is a kilometer ahead when the Gestapo -- er, Panama police -- sniff about your car for the Divine Plant of the Inca.
I highlight this part of my recent month-long stay in Panama because Francisco Pizarro is the very "type" of the modern Drug Warrior. He is the type of the modern westerner, who, like a bull in a China shop, interferes in the lives of strangers about which he prides himself on knowing nothing whatsoever, in a self-righteous attempt to make the locals conform to his own ways of "being in the world": a world in which the only acceptable drugs are tobacco and alcohol and the only acceptable religion is Christianity. Moreover, the answers to the above questions tell us a lot about the ongoing unwillingness of modern westerners to learn from the past when it comes to our colonial impulses, of which drug prohibition is the modern exemplar par excellence. Take that Lima statue, for instance. Subsequent research reveals that the bronze statue by American sculptor Charles Cary Rumsey was actually reintroduced into the Lima Capital in 2025, indicating that the war between interpretations of history is ongoing and that westerners and indigenous peoples are still at odds over the lessons that should be drawn from that history.
He we are 'welcomed' to the Darien Province by Panamanian police officers, nosing about for any evidence of the Divine Plant of the Incas. This is the kind of Gestapo checkpoint that drug prohibition has brought to the 'democratic' world.
Nor was this the only occasion on which I was reminded of colonialist drug policies in Panama. Our travels on the country's very limited highway system brought us to at least a half a dozen checkpoints where, like everybody else, we were eyed with de rigueur suspicion by Panamanian Police as being potential carriers of contraband, with the subtext always being the potential that we were carrying the divine plant of the Inca. Such stops remind me of how the Drug War has turned all interaction with police into potential conflicts -- because the police are officially obliged to be prudish snoops who always have the unspoken goal of "catching us out" when it comes to our use of medicines of which politicians disapprove, and above all our use of cocaine, which must be fiercely suppressed by the west for multiple reasons, none of which have anything to do with human health. To the contrary, the west outlaws cocaine in order to: 1, maintain government control over mind and mood medicine; 2, provide an excuse for invading Latin American countries at will; and 3, "justify" police brutality and otherwise busybody tactics in the name of suppressing the use of the divine plant of the Inca and its thoroughly demonized alkaloid, cocaine, which Freud himself understood to be a powerful cure for depression.
But it was not until my arrival in the Darien Province that I saw the fanatical prejudices of the drug-hating west on full display. Shortly after passing a deceptively friendly sign that welcomed us to Agua Fria, the first tiny town in the Province, our rental-car was stopped by a trio of gun-toting Panamanian cops sporting battle fatigues and sour faces, who demanded to know where we thought we were going and why. Unfortunately, my Spanish skills were not up to the task of conveying my various motivations and interests in traveling thither, ranging as they did from ecological, to historical, to ethnographical in nature. My cousin, for his part, just wanted to go to the Darien Gap so that he could say that he had done so, and I found that explanation hard to communicate to an impatient and skeptical "soldado" with a machine-gun in his hands. I wanted to say: "We just wanted to see if the stories that we had read about Gestapo police tactics in the Darien Province were really true. Now that you have answered that question for us in the affirmative, we make so bold as to bid you adieu. And now if you'll be so kind as to take that gun out of my face, we will turn around and make our three-hour trip back to our Panama City digs on Route 1. Speaking of which, this section of the so-called Pan-American Highway has long bumpy stretches of completely unpaved "tramos" every few kilometers. Has your highway department never heard of 'paving as you go?'"
Thank God I am not yet fluent in Spanish, for it is just possible that such an harangue on my part would not have gone over well with the camouflaged grumps. But I thank them nevertheless for proving my thesis, a conjecture that the rest of my Panama trip was already tending to strongly support: namely, that drug prohibition leads to the Nazification of local police forces. And what is drug prohibition anyway but the modern expression of the cavalier mindset of the war-hungry Francisco Pizarros of the world. This is why the police checkpoints in Panama depress me so, because the local population should know better than to tolerate such crackdowns, especially since they are mandated by a foreign country with a vested interest in destroying the divine plant of the Inca and re-making Panama in its own image. Like most westerners, the locals have yet to understand that drug prohibition is just western colonialism by other means, no matter how the villains of the piece rage against the strawman of "woke" narratives, as if there was something wrong with westerners learning from the mistakes of their past.
Ten Tweets
against the hateful war on US
Mayo Clinic is peddling junk. They are still promoting Venlafaxine, a drug that is harder to kick than heroin.
The proof that psychedelics work has always been extant. We are hoodwinked by scientists who convince us that efficacy has not been "proven." This is materialist denial of the obvious.
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.
Wanna show drug warriors the error of their ways? Legalize all less dangerous drugs than alcohol and then deny work to those who test positive for liquor and confiscate their property if beer cans are found on-site.
Proof that materialism is wrong is "in the pudding." It is why scientists are not calling for the use of laughing gas and MDMA by the suicidal. Because they refuse to recognize anything that's obvious. They want their cures to be demonstrated under a microscope.
Americans have learned nothing but half-truths and lies about cocaine and opium thanks to the total censorship of drug benefits.
The U.S. Congress considered the following to be a scientific fact back in 1924:
"A person taking narcotics regularly impedes evolutionary progress and tends to degenerate backwards toward the brute." -- Richmond Hobson
The press is having a field day with the Matthew Perry story. They love to have a nice occasion to demonize drugs. I wonder how many decades must pass before they realize that people are killed by ignorance and a corrupted drug supply, not by the drugs themselves.
If we cared about the elderly in 'homes', we would be bringing in shamanic empaths and curanderos from Latin America to help cheer them up and expand their mental abilities. We would also immediately decriminalize the many drugs that could help safely when used wisely.
"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
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