How black comedies have become reality in Drug-War North America
What the case of Claire Brosseau tells us about the evils of drug prohibition
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
February 13, 2025
In the 1987 movie "Heathers," the school counselor at Westerburg High speaks the following deadpan advice to Veronica, a rich white student who is depressed because of the ups-and-downs of teenager politics:
"Whether to kill yourself," quoth Pauline, "is one of the most important decisions a teenager has to make."
This was a hilarious line in 1987, because it was understood by the viewer as a patently absurd line, something that a counselor would never say to a depressed student. Fast forward 40 years, however, and this line takes on a grim new meaning when we are now talking about providing medically assisted suicide for the depressed while yet refusing to let the depressed use the drugs that could make them want to live. How can it be that no one recognizes this monstrosity -- this height of Christian Science PERFIDY even.
In 'Heathers,' the counselor warns Veronica: "Whether to kill yourself is one of the most important decisions a teenager has to make.' This advice has gone mainstream now that we have legalized assisted suicide without re-legalizing drugs.
I used to be forgiving for psychiatrists who refrained from standing up for their patients' right to godsend medicine, but now we live in a world in which that failure to provide healing is leading DIRECTLY TO STATE-ASSISTED DEATH!!
This is the bizarre dystopia that we have come to by following the drug-war ideology of substance demonization to its logically absurd conclusion: namely, to the point that we think it is actually better to be dead than to use the substances that the western world has demonized as "drugs."
Why am I the only one in the world who is calling this to the attention of the pundits -- and the Stephanie Nolens of the world who write articles on this subject while completely ignoring what it tells us about America's deadly attitude toward drugs1 -- and yet Stephanie Nolen is the New York Times healthcare reporter? Since when has unnecessary suicide become healthy, Stephanie?
We were already well on the road to this path because our doctors have long advocated brain-damaging shock therapy for the depressed while refusing to fight for the right of their patients to use substances that improve mentation and actually create new neurons in the brain -- all without damaging that organ. I simply cannot believe that I am the only one who recognizes this problem, wherefore I am determined to create a new non-profit organization called Depressed Patients for the end of Drug Prohibition -- the policy that now invites us to kill ourselves with the help of the state - but not to use drugs that might make us want to live!
The UN of today is in an odd position regarding drugs: they want to praise indigenous societies while yet outlawing the drugs that helped create them.
We need to start thinking of drug-related deaths like we do about car accidents: They're terrible, and yet they should move us to make driving safer, not to outlaw driving. To think otherwise is to swallow the drug war lie that "drugs" can have no positive uses.
Opium is a godsend, as folks like Galen, Avicenna and Paracelsus knew. The drug war has facilitated a nightmare by outlawing peaceable use at home and making safe use almost impossible.
Americans are starting to think that psychedelics may be an exception to the rule that drugs are evil -- but drugs have never been evil. The evil resides in how we think, talk and legislate about drugs.
That's why we damage the brains of the depressed with shock therapy rather than let them use coca or opium. That's why many regions allow folks to kill themselves but not to take drugs that would make them want to live. The Drug War is a perversion of social priorities.
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.
It's amazing. Drug law is outlawing science -- and yet so few complain. Drug law tells us what mushrooms we can collect, for God's sake. Is that not straight-up insane? Or are Americans so used to being treated as children that they accept this corrupt status quo?
The drug war outlaws everything that could help both prevent addiction and treat it. And then they justify the war on drugs by scaring people with the specter of addiction. They NEED addiction to keep the drug war going.
Materialist scientists are drug war collaborators. They are more than happy to have their fight against idealism rigged by drug law, which outlaws precisely those substances whose use serves to cast their materialism into question.
Opium could be a godsend for talk therapy. It can help the user step outside themselves and view their problems from novel viewpoints.
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