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


How the Drug War Punishes the Elderly



by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher




April 1, 2020

re the elderly depressed? America wouldn't have it any other way.

How many readers know of an elderly friend or loved one wasting away in a nursing home? Let me see a show of hands.

Now, how many people know that this is a tragedy created by the Drug War?

Mother Nature's pharmacopeia contains a world of psychoactive substances that can be used in a strategic manner by a pharmacologically savvy empath to not only elevate mood, but to give the treated individual a new perspective on life, while encouraging the growth of new neurons in the brain.

But Drug Warrior America wants none of this. Why? Because they hold a masochistic Christian Science view that says it is somehow wrong to use psychoactive substances in this fashion, a view that's supported, unfortunately, by a breed of scientism that treats the human body as an interchangeable widget (a robotically functioning Newtonian animal) for which we must find one-size-fits-all "cures" that can be marketed in pill form by any psychiatrist with a prescription pad.

The result: as much as we Americans wring our hands about the suffering of the elderly, we wouldn't have it any other way. The Drug War mentality has fostered in us a knee-jerk association between psychoactive substances and hedonism, and we use that as an excuse to willfully ignore the myriad utopian scenarios whereby such substances could, in the hands of a pharmacologically savvy shaman, give the depressed elderly new hope and even help them make their peace with death.

In this sense, drug law sharia is a godsend to modern psychiatrists because it gives them the perfect excuse for doing such a poor job in treating the elderly. If we confront these psychiatrists with the utopian possibilities inherent in nature's pharmacy, they have only to respond that all the substances that could be used in that fashion are illegal. And so drug law sharia keeps an entire new treatment paradigm at bay, leaving psychiatrists with nothing but a handful of heavily marketed addictive pharmaceuticals wherewith to treat severe emotional deficits - and then we have the gall to ask where the opioid crisis comes from. {^The opioid crisis results from the fact that we have outlawed all of the non-addictive substances that can powerfully affect mood, leaving those who seek self-transcendence with few choices except for the highly addictive ones offered by Big Pharma.}{

It should come as no surprise that the Drug War leads to such hideous outcomes, since the Drug War is anti-scientific by design. It represents the triumph of politics over science, propaganda over logic, common law over natural law, and if the casualties of that doctrine include the depressed elderly, then so be it. America really wouldn't have it any other way. After all, pharmacologically informed shamanism can't be neatly fit into a capitalist format that can enrich shareholders. Besides, it would involve ending the Drug War, which is the goose that lays the golden eggs for law enforcement and the corrections industry. And it would keep America from intervening in the country of its choice by playing the "narcotics" card, saying in effect: "You are dealing in plants that pose a threat to Big Liquor, therefore we can remove you from office."

And so the honest Drug Warrior would stand by the side of the depressed loved one and say: "Sorry, Mama, we'd like to make you feel better by ending the Drug War, but then America would no longer have an excuse to intervene in countries of whose politics we disapprove!"

Author's Follow-up: August 21, 2022



Speaking of anti-elderly, the Drug War ideology of substance demonization teaches us that it's morally right to "take the elderly off of life support" should they request it, and yet it's morally wrong to allow them to use morphine in order to painlessly leave the world. This is the twisted morality of the Drug War, which is equally anti-children. Why? Not just because of all the drug-war orphans that America's imperialist Drug War leaves behind in South America, but because some countries refuse to give children in hospices morphine, under the twisted Drug Warrior belief that it's better to let children suffer than to give them dirty evil "drugs." This is Christian Science with a vengeance, supported by state governments in fealty to damnable Drug War superstition.


August 21, 2022

Brian should also add that the above-mentioned goose is laying golden eggs by the dozen for the healthcare industry, which, beginning in 1914, was slowly but surely given a complete monopoly not just for treating physical ills, but for treating mental states as well, thereby turning countless Americans into demoralized wards of the healthcare state, including the 1 in 4 American women who are hooked on Big Pharma meds for life. How did this come about? Because the Drug War was to eventually outlaw almost all effective psychoactive medicines in the world. And yet pundits today scratch their head and wonder why there are so many depressed and anxious. The answer is easy: an overreaching state has run interference between human beings and the botanical medicine that grows all around them. And so America is now simultaneously the most depressed nation in the world and the one that pops the most pills. Another one of the seemingly endless Pyrrhic victories for America's unprecedented political war on inanimate substances.




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


Next essay: The Drug War as a Make-Work Program for Law Enforcement
Previous essay: The DEA's War on Alzheimer's Research

More Essays Here




Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs

Ketamine is like any other drug. It has good uses for certain people in certain situations. Nowadays, people insist that a drug be okay in every situation for everybody (especially American teens) before they will say that it's okay. That's crazy and anti-scientific.
The Drug War is based on a huge number of misconceptions and prejudices. Obviously it's about power and racism too. It's all of the above. But every time I don't mention one specifically, someone makes out that I'm a moron. Gotta love Twitter.
I know. I'm on SNRIs. But SSRIs and SNRIs are both made with materialist presumptions in mind: that the best way to change people is with a surgical strike at one-size-fits-all chemistry. That's the opposite of the shamanic holism that I favor.
The DEA conceives of "drugs" as only justifiable in some time-honored ritual format, but since when are bureaucrats experts on religion? I believe, with the Vedic people and William James, in the importance of altered states. To outlaw such states is to outlaw my religion.
Alcohol is a drug in liquid form. If drug warriors want to punish people who use drugs, they should start punishing themselves.
Someday those books about weird state laws will be full of factoids like: "In Alabama, you could be jailed for 20 years for conspiring to eat a mushroom."
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.
Musk and co. want to make us more robot-like with AI, when they should be trying to make us more human-like with sacred medicine. Only humans can gain creativity from plant medicine. All AI can do is harvest the knowledge that eventually results from that creativity.
Many articles in science mags need this disclaimer: "Author has declined to consider the insights gained from drug-induced states on this topic out of fealty to Christian Science orthodoxy." They don't do this because they know readers already assume that drugs will be ignored.
Our tolerance for freedom wanes in proportion as we consider "drugs" to be demonic. This is the dark side behind the new ostensibly comic genre about Cocaine Bears and such. It shows that Americans are superstitious about drugs in a way that Neanderthals would have understood.
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 Punishes the Elderly published on April 1, 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)