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How Science News Reckons Without the Drug War



by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher





January 28, 2023

a Letter to the Editor at Science News

Science News continues to reckon without the Drug War. We live in an age in which we have outlawed almost all the psychoactive medicines with which humankind has improved its mood in the past. And yet the magazine continues to publish articles about human psychology without even mentioning this fact.

Of course, Science News can be forgiven, in a way, for when it comes to psychology, they are writing about a field which itself has failed to acknowledge the very existence of the Drug War, let alone the many ways in which its ideology of substance demonization limits our concept of how we might best treat mood and mind problems.

Take your January 28 article about human flourishing. Author Sujata Gupta tells us that "positive psychologists tend to believe that anyone can flourish." If all drugs were legal, as has been the status quo of humanity until 1914, this statement could be judged on its own terms; but in the age of the Drug War, such a statement represents a tacit endorsement of the belief of Mary Baker Eddy, that we do not need drugs - indeed, that drugs are so superfluous to human happiness that prominent psychologists need not even acknowledge their existence, much less the fact that they have been outlawed by one's own government. This silence on the part of psychologists is both disappointing and anti-scientific, for in outlawing time-honored psychoactive medicine, the government has effectively dictated the direction in which psychologists are allowed to go when seeking answers to psychological issues, namely, in a direction that conforms with the anti-drug prejudices of Christian Science.

In the same article, psychologist Oksana Yakushko tells us that she is "troubled by the sociopolitical implications of selling this positive psychology ideology in a world where human beings are consistently abused, traumatized and stressed because they are not white, wealthy, able-bodied, Western, heterosexual, etc." One thing that does not seem to trouble her, however, is the fact that the Drug War has outlawed all the medicines which could obviate the need for this self-help positive psychology in the first place.

Did HG Wells and Jules Verne need to learn how to flourish in the abstract in order to write great stories? No, they relied on the inspirational power of coca wine. Did the Peruvian Indians need to learn how to flourish in the abstract in order to survive for millennia as a unique culture? No. They found social cohesion and inner strength through the daily chewing of the coca leaf.

The Drug War exists and continues to outlaw psychoactive medicine to this day. Until Science News recognizes that fact in its articles, it is going to continue giving its readers the false impression that today's modern psychologists are working from a natural baseline.



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Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs

If NIDA covered all drugs (not just politically ostracized drugs), they'd produce articles like this: "Aspirin continues to kill hundreds." "Penicillin misuse approaching crisis levels." "More bad news about Tylenol and liver damage." "Study revives cancer fears from caffeine."
In the 19th century, author Richard Middleton wrote how poets would get together to use opium "in a series of magnificent quarterly carouses."
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.
Materialist puritans do not want to create any drug that elates. So they go on a fool's errand to find reductionist cures for "depression itself," as if the vast array of human sadness could (or should) be treated with a one-size-fits-all readjustment of brain chemicals.
What is the end game of the drug warrior? A world in which no one wants drugs? That's not science. It's the drug-hating religion of Christian Science. You know, the American religion that outsources its Inquisition to drug-testing labs.
To put it another way: in a sane world, we would learn to strategically fight drugs with drugs.
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. That's why drug warriors want to outlaw free speech, to hide such facts.
Some fat cat should treat the entire Supreme Court to a vacation at San Jose del Pacifico in Mexico, where they can partake of the magic mushroom in a ceremony led by a Zapotec guide.
Someone tweeted that fears about a Christian Science theocracy are "baseless." Tell that to my uncle who was lobotomized because they outlawed meds that could cheer him up -- tell that to myself, a chronic depressive who could be cheered up in an instant with outlawed meds.
Now the US is bashing the Honduran president for working with "drug cartels." Why don't we just be honest and say why we're REALLY upset with the guy? Drugs is just the excuse, as always, now what's the real reason? Stop using the drug war to disguise American foreign policy.
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You have been reading an article entitled, How Science News Reckons Without the Drug War published on January 28, 2023 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)