an open letter to UNODC, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
August 29, 2024
There are no drugs of abuse. There are bad laws and social policies (like a refusal to educate) that make drugs dangerous.
Thousands of young people were not dying in the streets when opium 1 was legal in America. They're dying in the streets now from opiates because prohibition limits their ability to find safe drugs with known dosages, while promoting fear instead of knowledge.
These deaths were all preventable -- and they were all caused by DRUG WARRIORS!
End the Drug War: get out of the business of ruining people's lives because they are trying to use time-honored medicines!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Start educating, stop arresting!
Start regulating, rather than demanding that everyone in the world stop using indigenous godsends!!! DRUG WARRIORS are as biased and insane as Francisco Pizarro when it comes to drug policy. They are in complete denial: they blame all the downsides of prohibition on "drugs" themselves.
No wonder. They don't want to accept the sad truth: that THEY are responsible for the thousands of deaths of young people on American streets.
Scientists cannot tell us if psychoactive drugs are worth the risk any more than they can tell us if free climbing is worth the risk, or horseback riding or target practice or parkour.
I don't have a problem with CBD. But I find that many people like it for the wrong reasons: they assume there is something slightly "dirty" about getting high and that all "cures" should be effected via direct materialist causes, not holistically a la time-honored tribal use.
It is a violation of religious liberty to outlaw substances that inspire and elate. The Hindu religion was inspired by just such a drug.
After over a hundred years of prohibition, America has developed a kind of faux science in which despised substances are completely ignored. This is why Sci Am is making a new argument for shock therapy in 2023, because they ignore all the stuff that OBVIOUSLY cheers one up.
Oregon's drug policy is incoherent and cruel. The rich and healthy spend $4,000 a week on psilocybin. The poor and chemically dependent are thrown in jail, unless they're on SSRIs, in which case they're congratulated for "taking their meds."
Think you can handle a horse? So did Christopher Reeves. The fact is, NOBODY can handle a horse. This message brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.
The reasons that people use drugs are psychologically obvious. Academics gaslight us on this topic and invent new diseases to explain away our desire to live large.
I personally hate beets and I could make a health argument against their legality. Beets can kill for those allergic to them. Sure, it's a rare condition, but since when has that stopped a prohibitionist from screaming bloody murder?
The Thomas Jefferson Foundation is a drug war collaborator. They helped the DEA confiscate Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants in 1987.
If MAPS wants to make progress with MDMA they should start "calling out" the FDA for judging holistic medicines by materialist standards, which means ignoring all glaringly obvious benefits.
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