Radio set: Listen to Psychedelic Music Free on Drug War Radio bird icon for twitter


How the Drug War Makes Americans Stupid



by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher


March 20, 2022

he Drug War makes otherwise great thinkers stupid because they take the idea of substance prohibition as a natural baseline when they write about subjects ranging from religion to euthanasia, from war to suicide.

Take suicide, for example. That topic cannot be meaningfully discussed without at least acknowledging that America has knowingly outlawed the use of naturally occurring substances which can make life feel worth living.

So just as there are two very different ways to talk about American economics -- one that takes into account the role of China and one that does not -- there are two very different ways to talk about a subject like suicide -- one that takes into account the Drug War and one that does not.

Coca leaf could almost single-handedly end depression in America, but the know-nothing Drug Warrior conflates it with the alkaloid cocaine, which is a different drug altogether. (Even cocaine could be used safely if we educated folks rather than terrifying them about psychoactive meds.) MDMA could make psychotherapy actually work!

Sadly, this is too great a truth for America to understand. I pray that the world will survive long enough for human beings to wrap their minds around the fact that the Drug War warps our ability to deal with and understand almost every button-pushing issue under the sun.

But the ideology of substance demonization has convinced the vast majority of smart and dumb alike that banned substances cannot be used for good reasons. That's a lie, of course, but also a self-fulfilling prophecy. We only look at the bad and analyze the bad and promote the bad -- and so we reap no benefits. But that's what the Drug War is all about: demonization and criminalization over education and a search for safe and psychosocially beneficial uses -- of the plant medicines that we have outlawed in violation of the natural law upon which Thomas Jefferson founded America (the same Jefferson whose estate at Monticello was raided by the feds in 1987 during Reagan's unchallenged daylight coup against natural law).


Extra Credit

September 22, 2022

Browse through the titles of the non-fiction books you own and count how many authors have reckoned without the Drug War. Examples: a book about the problem of war and violence that fails to mention that America has outlawed all the medicines (like MDMA, the coca leaf and psilocybin) that could convince folks to actually care about their neighbors; or a book about depression that fails to mention that we've outlawed all the medical godsends that could actually eliminate sadness without rendering millions chemically dependent on big pharma meds; or a book about optimism that fails to mention how the use and anticipation of use of godsend meds can cheer folks up.

For American authors are in denial: they pretend that the Drug War does not exist. So, like the wolf of fable who couldn't reach the sour grapes, we diss what we are not allowed to access, pretending that it's not important in life. Guess it's just too hard for Americans to admit that they live in an age of censorship, in which the government is free to tell us what plant medicines we can use.




Radio set: Listen to Psychedelic Music Free on Drug War Radio bird icon for twitter


Next essay: Blowing Up Arkansas
Previous essay: Reddit: the Home Page for Grade-Schoolers

More Essays Here




Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs

I'm grateful to the folks who are coming out of the woodwork at the last minute to deface their own properties with "Trump 2024" signs. Now I'll know who to thank should Trump get elected and sell us out to Putin.
The Drug War brought guns to the "hoods," thereby incentivizing violence in the name of enormous profits. Any site featuring victims of gun violence should therefore be rebranded as a site featuring victims of the drug war. Otherwise, many people don't make the connection.
We need to stop using the fact that people like opiates as an excuse to launch a crackdown on inner cities. We need to re-legalize popular meds, teach safe use, and come up with common sense ways to combat addictions by using drugs to fight drugs.
The FDA uses reductive materialism to justify and normalize the views of Cortes and Pizarro with respect to entheogenic medicine.
When folks die in horse-related accidents, we need to be asking: who sold the victim the horse? We've got to crack down on folks who peddle this junk -- and ban books like Black Beauty that glamorize horse use.
ME: "What are you gonna give me for my depression, doc? MDMA? Laughing gas? Occasional opium smoking? Chewing of the coca leaf?" DOC: "No, I thought we'd fry your brain with shock therapy instead."
Chesterton might as well have been speaking about the word 'addiction' when he wrote the following: "It is useless to have exact figures if they are exact figures about an inexact phrase."
Drug warriors are too selfish and short-sighted to fight real problems, so they blame everything on drugs.
Even the worst forms of "abuse" can be combatted with a wise use of a wide range of psychoactive drugs, to combat both physical and psychological cravings. But drug warriors NEED addiction to be a HUGE problem. That's their golden goose.
Drug War censorship is supported by our "science" magazines, which pretend that outlawed drugs do not exist, and so write what amount to lies about the supposed intransigence of things like depression and anxiety.
More Tweets






front cover of Drug War Comic Book

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 the Drug War Makes Americans Stupid published on March 20, 2022 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)