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Drug Warriors can go to Hell

a little well-intentioned feedback from a victim of America's war on mind medicine

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

May 12, 2022



Editor's Comments:

May 28, 2025

female editor holding pencil


Don't look at me, I told the Herr Philosopher that he should delete this post. But he told me, "Ellen" he said -- my name is Ellen -- "Ellen," he said, "this post should rather remain online as testimony to the fact that I, too, am human, that I, too, am subject to mercurial moods, for..." and here he raised his right index finger into the air by way of emphasis, "...I come from a race that has been noted, time out of mind, for vigour of fancy and ardour of passion." I was like, wow! What can one say to THAT? Of course, I later realized that Brian was just facetiously quoting the opening to "Eleonora" by Edgar Allan Poe, but his response really impressed me at the time -- I figured for the moment that he actually did come from a race of tempestuous visionaries. Why not? But you had to be there, I guess, confronted as I was by his lofty forehead and his scintillating orbs. "Those eyes! Those large, those shining, those divine orbs! They became to me twin stars of Leda, and I to them devoutest of astrologers." Or so I thought at the time. It later occurred to me that the boss was just joking, however -- except for the bit about his simple humanity, of course. I think the Human League said it best: Brian is only human, born to make mistakes, in light of which bombshell I ask the reader to place the most generous possible construction on the perhaps somewhat unhinged harangue that follows.

DISCUSSION QUESTION:

Is the term "unhinged harangue" redundant? Why or why not?


--------


Dear Drug Warrior:

You've made me live my whole life without godsend medicine that grows at my very feet. You've made sure that newly discovered godsends for depression like MDMA 1 and nitrous oxide are unavailable to me. You've forced me to rely on the psychiatric pill mill 2 with its expensive and ineffective meds that cause chemical dependency, thanks to which I have to take these mind-numbing pills every day of my life for the rest of my life. You have overthrown natural law by denying me the freely given bounty of Mother Nature and established America as a drug-hating Christian Science republic, completely ignorant of the fact that psychoactive medicines spawned entire religions, that Benjamin Franklin enjoyed opium 3 , that HG Wells enjoyed coca wine, and that Plato's views of the afterlife were inspired by the psychedelic mysteries at Eleusis.

You've ensured, in short, that I've been unnecessarily depressed my entire life thanks to your unprecedented hubris in outlawing godsend medicines.

But wait, there's more: while screwing me over royally like this, you have created a world of violence out of whole cloth, including civil wars overseas and thousands of deaths a year in the States, with almost 800 a year in Chicago alone -- all caused by the prohibition of substances about which you lie lie lie, insisting against all evidence that they can only be used for evil.

No, you are the evil, Drug Warrior -- you and your anti-patient, anti-nature, anti-scientific war against Godsend medicines.

And what has your Drug War accomplished? There were no young people dying on our streets when opiates were legal. It took drug prohibition to accomplish that. How? By refusing to teach safe use, refusing to regulate product as to quantity and quality, and refusing to re-legalize the endless alternative substances that could keep using from obsessing about one substance in the first place.

Oh, did I mention that you have stolen elections for fascist conservatives like Trump because you wrote your hateful unconstitutional anti-medicine laws with an eye toward disfranchising millions of minorities?

I think what I'm trying to say here, Drug Warrior, is, um... Oh, yes here's what I'm driving at: Go to hell!









Notes for essay entitled Drug Warriors can go to Hell: a little well-intentioned feedback from a victim of America's war on mind medicine:

1: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
2: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
3: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




Videos about science and psilocybin are funny. They show nerds trying to catch up with common sense.

Wade Davis wrote in Rolling Stone that cocaine was outlawed because 400 people consumed toxic doses worldwide. SO WHAT?! 178,000 people die from alcohol every year in America alone.

Even prohibition haters have their own list of drugs that they feel should be outlawed. They're missing the point. We should not drugs "up or down" any more than we should judge penicillin or aspirin in that way.

Brits have a right to die, but they do not have the right to use drugs that might make them want to live. Bad policy is indicated by absurd outcomes, and this is but one of the many absurd outcomes that the policy of prohibition foists upon the world.

The drug war is the defeatist doctrine that we will never be able to use psychoactive drugs wisely. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy because the government does everything it can to make drug use dangerous.

"Arrest made in Matthew Perry death." Oh, yeah? Did they arrest the drug warriors who prioritized propaganda over education?

If drug warriors were serious about saving lives, they'd outlaw guns, cars, and all pleasure trips to Mars.

Richard Evans Schultes seems to have originated the harebrained idea (since used by the US Supreme Court to suppress new religions) that you have no right to use drugs in a religious ritual if you did not grow up in a society that had such practices. What tyrannical idiocy!

Drug Warriors will publicize all sorts of drug use -- but they will never publicize sane and positive drug use. Drug Warrior dogma holds that such use is impossible -- and, indeed, the drug war does all it can to turn that prejudice into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Antidepressants might be fine in a world where drugs were legal. Then it would actually be possible to get off them by using drugs that have inspired entire religions. In the age of prohibition, however, an antidepressant prescription is usually a life sentence.


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






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Book Cover

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Book Cover

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Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

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