while causing inner-city violence and creating drug cartels around the world
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
April 25, 2020
t's easy to slam law-and-order conservatives for their part in fomenting the anti-nature Drug War. They're hypocritical for starters. They want to keep the taps flowing at their local bar while they hand out life sentences for those who choose to relax using other naturally sourced substances, many of which have been used responsibly by other cultures for thousands of years. They're so bent on making alcohol the drug of choice, that they even have the nationalistic arrogance to send troops overseas and burn plants that pose a threat to the liquor industry. And then we wonder why the US is hated overseas. Imagine an Islamic country entering the United States with the express purpose of shutting down our alcohol producers and burning the plants that constitute their raw materials. That is precisely what the US does, morally speaking, when it enters other countries to shut down plants that process the coca leaf and the poppy.
But conservatives are only half the problem. The tyrannous Drug War is fomented equally by the worried parents of America, who fret that their children will become slaves to "drugs" should the Drug War be abandoned. This fear is so misplaced that one scarcely knows where to begin in addressing it. But address it we must, since the laws that are promulgated by these Chicken Little parents have a body count: starting with the thousands killed every day in the name of a brutal Drug War overseas, and the endless stream of innocent bystanders killed in inner cities -- all because America has elevated common law over natural law and criminalized plants, a step that would have made the garden-loving Thomas Jefferson spin in his grave, just as he surely did, in fact, in 1987 when the DEA stomped onto Monticello and confiscated his poppy plants.
First of all, let's be honest and use the term "psychoactive plants" for "drugs," since {^"drugs" is really just a pejorative epithet for the medicinal bounty of Mother Nature.}{
Secondly, there was no epidemic of childhood addictions prior to the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914. A law against opium was enacted in that year, not because it would protect youngsters, but rather because it gave racist politicians a socially acceptable way to express their disdain for the Chinese with whom they associated the poppy plant, just as they associated Mexicans with marijuana and blacks with cocaine. Both of those latter two stereotypes would motivate future disingenuous hand-wringing about "drugs" by sixties and seventies racists, culminating in the creation of Richard Nixon's corrupt DEA in 1973, by a president whose drug policy was overtly designed to punish his political opponents, Timothy Leary first and foremost, and then anyone who might so much as give such a rebel the time of day.
And so Americans were expelled from the psychotherapeutic Garden of Eden in the twentieth century, as the American government claimed the unprecedented right to dole out or withhold the psychoactive plant medicines of Mother Nature as it saw fit, a power grab that even God Himself had never contemplated, being happy for his own part to outlaw only one solitary tree from among the myriad plants of his worldwide nursery.
The result is that we now childishly see threats everywhere we turn in Mother Nature, failing to realize that the problem -- to the extent that there is a problem other than in the scheming minds of racists -- is behavior, not plants.
Thirdly, it is enormously selfish, and even racist, to criminalize plants based on a merely theoretical threat that they pose to young people. Why? First, because it ignores the fate of those young people who are already being killed in inner cities around the world thanks to the violence that naturally arises under prohibition. Secondly because our draconian drug laws force millions of Americans (and billions worldwide) to go without powerful psychoactive plant medicines, given that such heavy-handed legislation outlaws mere research of cancer- and depression-fighting godsends, let alone the actual use of such medicine, all out of a fear that white young people might become addicted to some plant medicine or other.
Wake up, white America: 1 out of 4 women, mainly Caucasian, are addicted to Big Pharma meds even as we speak. Why not wring your hands over that grim fact and re-legalize nature's bounty, none of which is more habit-forming than the SSRIs that are being popped like candy everywhere you look.
In the name of the sick and suffering around the world, and in the name of inner city minorities and racial justice, we must return to the days when we cracked down on bad behavior alone - rather than manufacturing violence out of whole cloth by punishing Americans for the pre-crime of merely possessing plant medicines of which our scheming politicians disapprove.
Three notes, if you please, Brian.
1) Of course "drugs" can increasingly refer to wonderful medicines like MDMA, which aren't, strictly speaking, manmade. But Brian considers the outlawing of plant medicine to be so obviously wrong that he sometimes limits his definition of "drugs" to make this point clear (for even hardened Drug Warriors have to be a little uncomfortable, at some level, with the idea that we are outlawing plant medicine -- and telling folks like Thomas Jefferson which plants they're allowed to grow in their gardens). Of course, even the phrase "plant medicines" is problematic because it doesn't not technically include fungi, but Brian's trusting that most readers will not task him for what, after all, is a largely pedantic distinction. Still, Brian is taking no chances. In his latest essays, one does find an increased use of the term "botanicals" to refer to the psychoactive bounty of Mother Nature in its totality.
2) The author is not yet entirely clear on whether drug law outlaws plants per se or merely the psychoactive substances that they contain. However, in some ways, it makes little difference. When the DEA stomped onto Monticello in 1987, they confiscated Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants. They didn't "go anal" and merely extract all the "drugs" therefrom.
3) An attentive reader (should such a one ever be so good as to eye these admittedly delightful effusions of mine!)... An attentive reader, I say, will ask: "What do you mean Brian doesn't know the exact status of plant legality??? It's the age of the Internet: why doesn't he look it up?"
The answer is that Brian (bless him) is very sensitive on the subject of drug prohibition. Frankly, it pisses him off (for starters because it led him to a lifetime of dependence on expensive Big Pharma meds, thereby turning him into an eternal patient). Merely researching such a topic will bring him in contact with addle-brained drug-war ideas (usually implied, but sometimes stated explicitly) that will pluck Brian's last nerve and goad him into spending the next two hours at least crafting a biting refutation of the same. This is a problem, because Brian's time is limited. So he can't just "pop on the Internet" any time he pleases and look up a drug-war-related fact. He has to wait for a time when his schedule will permit of him concocting a spot-on rejoinder to the seemingly endless list of drug-war misconceptions.
Why does no one talk about empathogens for preventing atrocities? Because they'd rather hate drugs than use them for the benefit of humanity. They don't want to solve problems, they prefer hatred.
I'd like to become a guinea pig for researchers to test the ability of psychoactive drugs to make aging as psychologically healthy as possible. If such drugs cannot completely ward off decrepitude, they can surely make it more palatable. The catch? Researchers have to be free.
This is why "rock stars" use drugs: not just for performance anxiety (which, BTW, is a completely UNDERSTANDABLE reason for drug use), but because they want to fully experience the music, even tho' they may be currently short on money and being hassled by creditors, etc.
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.
They drive to their drug tests in pickup trucks with license plates that read "Don't tread on me." Yeah, right. "Don't tread on me: Just tell me how and how much I'm allowed to think and feel in this life. And please let me know what plants I can access."
If anyone manages to die during an ayahuasca ceremony, it is considered a knockdown argument against "drugs." If anyone dies during a hunting club get-together, it is considered the victim's own damn fault. The Drug War is the triumph of hypocritical idiocy.
People are talking about re-scheduling psilocybin, but they miss the point. We need to DE-schedule everything. It's anti-scientific to conclude in advance that any drug has no uses -- and it's a lie too, of course. End drug scheduling altogether! It's childish and wrong.
The Shipiba have learned to heal human beings physically, psychologically and spiritually with what they call "onanyati," plant allies and guides, such as Bobinsana, which "envelops seekers in a cocoon of love." You know: what the DEA would call "junk."
They still don't seem to get it. The drug war is a whole wrong way of looking at the world. It tells us that substances can be judged "up" or "down," which is anti-scientific and blinds us to endless beneficial uses.
I have yet to find one psychiatrist who acknowledges the demoralizing power of being turned into a patient for life. They never list that as a potential downside of antidepressant use.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, How Fretting Drug Warriors Block Medical Progress: while causing inner-city violence and creating drug cartels around the world, published on April 25, 2020 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
t's easy to slam law-and-order conservatives for their part in fomenting the anti-nature Drug War. They're hypocritical for starters. They want to keep the taps flowing at their local bar while they hand out life sentences for those who choose to relax using other naturally sourced substances, many of which have been used responsibly by other cultures for thousands of years. They're so bent on making alcohol the drug of choice, that they even have the nationalistic arrogance to send troops overseas and burn plants that pose a threat to the liquor industry. And then we wonder why the US is hated overseas. Imagine an Islamic country entering the United States with the express purpose of shutting down our alcohol producers and burning the plants that constitute their raw materials. That is precisely what the US does, morally speaking, when it enters other countries to shut down plants that process the coca leaf and the poppy.
You have been reading an article entitled, How Fretting Drug Warriors Block Medical Progress: while causing inner-city violence and creating drug cartels around the world, published on April 25, 2020 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)