How Google censors pushback against drug prohibition
What happens when a profit-driven monopoly controls the public narrative on controversial social issues
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
April 30, 2026
I have been consoling myself lately over my online invisibility by thinking of my essays as so many manuscripts in a bottle, so many instalments in a diary written initially for myself, but with the hope that it might someday inspire others. This perspective not only helps me to cope with my online ostracization, but it helps me to live like a saint as well, insofar as the transcendent viewpoint has historically counseled human beings to speak truth without expectation of either gain or praise, but rather merely because it was the truth. Of course, I have never fully lived up to that lofty goal. I often get the feeling of "why bother" when I see zero statistical progress in my attempts at online proselytization. I have to keep reminding myself that I am writing a sort of diary and that I can only have faith that it will someday make a difference to somebody but myself. "Yeah, that's it," I tell myself, mentally mimicking the whining voice of Rico, the petty hoodlum played by Edgar G. Robinson in his 1931 breakthrough hit called Little Caesar. "It's a diary, see? Yeeeeah."
That is a noble attempt at stoicism on my part, and yet I am only human. When I looked at my Google stats three days ago and found that there were none -- actually zero -- hits -- indeed, zero pages indexed for my site... well, let's just say that I found my philosophical attitude truly put to the test. My site has been around for eight years, after all, and it now seems that it has disappeared entirely from Google. The good news is: I quickly submitted a new sitemap in response to this so-far unexplained catastrophe. The bad news is that Google has already processed 47 of those 800 essays on that sitemap, apparently determining that they are not even worth listing. It seems, upon investigation, that Google favors "consensus" content written by acknowledged "experts" in their field and dislikes controversy, especially on the subject of drugs. To make matters worse, Google's algorithm writers, like most Americans, do not know the difference between philosophical arguments and rants.
I was suddenly getting a much better idea of the true size of the Goliath I was battling. Google algorithms dislike everything I am trying to do: they don't like philosophy, except when it comes from published professors; they don't like views about drugs, except when they come from politically correct academics; and they don't like new ideas and approaches, for the simple reason that, by definition, such ideas are not popular with -- or even known by -- the general public. The system, in short, was rigged to favor the drug prohibitionist mindset and to silence new ideas that do not come from board-certified "experts." And so my essays are really being treated as simple diaries, in good earnest, and I am forced to either accept that humbling reality with good grace or to despair. It is not just movers-and-shakers who deny me any standing in the drugs debate, the very infrastructure of the Web is against me. It is not just my imagination, I truly am being marginalized.
When I queried AI about this biased status quo, I got a lecture on the free-market system. I was told that Google was a private business, thank me very much, and that they can set whatever rules they please. So there!
And so we see the problem with the Google monopoly. Because they have a lion's share of the search market, they can control the dialogue in America and censor at will, with absolutely zero accountability.
This is yet another reason why the drug demonization ideology is evil: it has changed the ground rules about what one is even allowed to say in America. Drug prohibition is the philosophical problem par excellence of our times, and yet I am almost alone in holding it responsible for the problems that it causes. Then again, I would scarcely know if others share my views, since the pages of those who do so are also subject to non-indexing on Google.
This is the problem with algorithms: they're only as good as the assumptions upon which they are based. And what are the assumptions that Google makes about psychoactive drug use? They assume that medical professionals are the experts, the same "pros" that do not see any valuable in medicines that past cultures considered to be panaceas, that do not see any benefit in laughing gas for the depressed, and that do not see any problem in turning the depressed into wards of the healthcare state by keeping them on dependence-causing meds, while yet failing to protest the drug prohibition that outlaws everything else!
By the way, the argument that Google is a private company rings hollow when they control the narrative by having the lion's share of search traffic. As such, they have tremendous control about what views get heard... which is why they should be broken up as the most obvious of monopolies, no matter how convenient they have made life for us. American democracy is dying in proportion as Big Data makes things easier and easier for us.
Key Takeaways:
Google favors consensus content.
Google algorithms favor prohibitionist mindset and bury new ideas.
Google keeps non-consensus views non-indexed, silenced, with absolutely no right of appeal.
Algorithms are only as good as the assumptions upon which they are based.
Google search algorithms are based on the idea that scientists are the experts on psychoactive medicine, the same scientists who do not see how laughing gas could help the depressed and who deny the power of time-honored panaceas.
I'm told that science is completely unbiased today. I guess I'll have to go back and reassess my doubts about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
Hollywood presents cocaine as a drug of killers. In reality, strategic cocaine use by an educated person can lead to great mental power, especially as just one part of a pharmacologically balanced diet.
Cop and detective shows are loaded with subtle drug war propaganda, including lines like, "She had a history of drug use, so..." The implication being that anyone who uses substances that politicians hate cannot be trusted.
Michael Pollan is the Leona Helmsley of the Drug War. He uses outlawed drugs freely while failing to support the re-legalization of Mother Nature. Drug laws are apparently for the little people.
Don't the Oregon prohibitionists realize that all the thousands of deaths from opiates is so much blood on their hands?
This is why I call the drug war 'fanatical Christian Science.' People would rather have grandpa die than to let him use laughing gas or coca or opium or MDMA, etc. etc.
America legalizes alcohol and then outlaws all the drugs that could help prevent and cure alcoholism.
In the 19th century, author Richard Middleton wrote how poets would get together to use opium "in a series of magnificent quarterly carouses."
America's "health" system was always screaming at me about the threat of drug dependency. Then what did it do? It put me on the most dependence-causing drugs of all time: SSRIs and SNRIs.
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!
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