an open letter to Bennett Haeberle of NBC 5 Chicago
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 3, 2025
The media regularly puts on show trials for psychoactive substances, to suggest that they are a threat to American young people, with the implication being that said substances have no positive uses whatsoever and can only be used for a cheap thrill. Lies, lies, lies. The ultimate goal of such yellow journalism is to egg on the prohibitionists to crack down ever further on the few remaining freedoms that Americans still possess when it comes to drug use.
The poster child for such biased articles is the January 2025 hatchet piece on the NBC 5 website entitled "The loophole that allows an illegal, dangerous drug to be delivered to your door,1" an article in which the reporters completely ignore all glaringly obvious benefits of N2O, to say nothing of historical use of the drug and the fact that William James urged philosophers to inhale N2O in order to investigate the nature of ultimate reality.
All such hatchet jobs are based on two demonstrably false assumptions: 1) that there are no upsides to drug use, and 2) that there are no downsides to drug prohibition.
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Dear Bennett Haeberle,
Your article about Laughing Gas2 illustrates all that is wrong with our Drug War mentality. You consider only the worst possible uses of laughing gas 3 , never mentioning its obvious benefits. The gas has been used safely by a wide variety of people, from Humphry Davy to Robert Southey to Oliver Wendell Holmes. Davy saw great therapeutic potential in its ability to elate and inspire. William James told us that philosophers must study the states produced by such substances to learn about the nature of human consciousness and ultimate reality. And yet your article says nothing about common-sense therapy or the philosophy of William James. Nitrous oxide can inspire glimpses of heaven and yet you say nothing about its obvious potential role in preventing suicide. Instead, your article is written to make us fear the substance rather than to understand it.
Drug prohibition is the problem 4 , Bennett, not drugs. The problem is our failure to educate about substance use. We already live in a police state thanks to drug law: why is NBC 5 determined to make matters even worse?
Kids were not dying in the streets from opiates when opiates were legal in America. It took prohibition to accomplish that. When are prohibitionists going to start accepting their responsibility for the young people whom they have killed? How? By refusing to teach safe use, refusing to regulate product, and refusing to re-legalize a long list of opiate alternatives?
Laughing gas kits should be available for the severely depressed, just as epi pens are made available to those with severe depression. Instead, America would rather that the depressed commit suicide 5 than use drugs. America would prefer that the depressed undergo brain-damaging shock therapy than to use drugs.
Until the media stops putting on show trials for drugs -- and holding them to wildly different safety standards than those for Big Pharma 67 or alcohol -- then America will be living in the Dark Ages.
You guys are not saving anybody. You are causing suicides by demonizing all the substances that could be wisely used to make people want to live. Your reportage ultimately causes suicides by removing all inspiring drugs from the market and refusing to teach or regulate. The Hindu religion was created thanks to the use of a drug that inspired and elated. You guys are committed to demonizing all drugs that inspire and elate. It is not enough for you to merely outlaw use -- you insist on closing all the loopholes as well -- to make sure that use becomes as dangerous, unregulated and uninformed as possible. But like all Drug Warriors, you never take responsibility for all the suffering that you thereby bring about. You seem to feel that if you do not report on the downsides of prohibition, then those downsides do not exist.
I am a philosopher, and I protest on behalf of William James, whose proposed research you guys are helping to outlaw by your fear mongering about substance use.
Please stop putting substances on show trials for crimes that alcohol commits every day. Drugs can be used safely. Any drug can be rendered dangerous, however, when we place a premium on ignorance and prohibition.
Please stop demonizing substances based on the fact that they can be misused by Americans whom we refuse to educate about drugs.
Your MO is too predictable:
1) Find young people who have misused a drug thanks to our refusal to educate about safe use.
2) Pull at the heartstrings by writing about the poor little white kids who have been thrown into harm's way.
3) Write articles in an attempt to have all "loopholes" closed -- so that drug prohibition thrives and so our young people remain as ignorant as possible about safe drug use.
4) Then refuse to take responsibility for the downsides of the drug prohibition to which you have contributed: the outlawing of free research, the unnecessary suicides, the unnecessary drive-by shootings, the un-necessary electroshock therapy, the destruction of the rule of law in Latin America, and the mass incarceration 8 of minorities which has led to the election of tyrants and brought an end to democracy in America.
5) Above all, never mention the potential upsides of drug use or the many obvious downsides of drug prohibition.
Enough! Please, let's have no more show trials for psychoactive substances!
Think you can handle a horse? So did Christopher Reeves. The fact is, NOBODY can handle a horse. This message brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.
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.
The sad fact is that America regularly arrests people whose only crime is that they are keeping performance anxiety at bay... in such a way that psychiatrists are not getting THEIR cut.
When Americans "obtain their majority" and wish to partake of drugs safely, they should be paired with older adults who have done just that. Instead, we introduce them to "drug abusers" in prerecorded morality plays to reinforce our biased notions that drug use is wrong.
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.
Science knows nothing of the human spirit and of the hopes and dreams of humankind. Science cannot tell us whether a given drug risk is worthwhile given the human need for creativity and passion in their life. Science has no expertise in making such philosophical judgements.
The DEA outlawed MDMA in 1985, thereby depriving soldiers of a godsend treatment for PTSD. Apparently, the DEA staff slept well at night in the early 2000s as American soldiers were having their lives destroyed by IEDs.
Anytime you hear that a psychoactive drug has not been proven to be effective, it's a lie. People can make such claims only by dogmatically ignoring all the glaringly obvious signs of efficacy.
The drug war is a big scare campaign to teach us to distrust mother nature and to rely on pharmaceuticals instead.
After watching my mother suffer because of the drug war, I hate to hear people tell me that the problem is drugs. WRONG! That's a western colonialist viewpoint. God loved his creation (see Genesis). He did not make trash. We need to use entheogenic medicines wisely.
Think you can handle a horse? So did Christopher Reeves. The fact is, NOBODY can handle a horse. This message brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.
