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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?


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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




Drug warriors are too selfish and short-sighted to fight real problems, so they blame everything on drugs.

I've found that almost no one in the medical establishment has a clue about the endless positive uses that there would be for drugs in a world in which we decided to use them as wisely as possible for human benefit.

New article in Scientific American: "New hope for pain relief," that ignores the fact that we have outlawed the time-honored panacea. Scientists want a drug that won't run the risk of inspiring us.

The December Scientific American features a story called "The New Nuclear Age," about a trillion-dollar plan to add 100s of ICBM's to 5 states, which an SA editorial calls "kick me" signs. This Neanderthal plan comes from pols who think that compassion-boosting drugs are evil!

"The Legislature deliberately determines to distrust the very people who are legally responsible for the physical well-being of the nation, and puts them under the thumb of the police, as if they were potential criminals." -- Aleister Crowley on drug laws

"Like Christians burning mosques and temples to spread the word of Jesus, modem drugabuseologists burn crops to spread the use of alcohol." -- Ceremonial Chemistry, p. 48

The "acceptable risk" for psychoactive drugs can only be decided by the user, based on what they prioritize in life. Science just assumes that all users should want to live forever, self-fulfilled or not.

Psychedelic retreats tell us how scientific they are. But science is the problem. Science today insists that we ignore all obvious benefits of drugs.

John Halpern wrote a book about opium, subtitled "the ancient flower that poisoned our world." What nonsense! Bad laws and ignorance poison our world, NOT FLOWERS!

The scheduling system is a huge lie designed to give an aura of "science" to America's colonialist disdain for indigenous medicines, from opium, to coca, to shrooms.


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






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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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