How to Unite Drug War Opponents of all Ethnicities
Open letter to Sean McAllister, drug policy reform lawyer
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
April 23, 2020
Dear Sean Mcallister,
I just watched your presentation on the MAPS1 Webinar and enjoyed it greatly. When you have a moment, I have some ideas for you about the strategy of drug decriminalization.
You say that it's difficult to find a single unifying motive around which a variety of folks can come together to fight in favor of psychedelic decriminalization. I think there are two main reasons why that problem exists.
1) Drug-law reformers fail to understand (and therefore to adequately publicize) the enormous shortcomings of the current pill-mill approach to modern psychiatry. Those who really understand these shortcomings (especially those, like myself, who have been victims of them) consider psychedelic legalization to be a moral imperative! What shortcomings? Well, one in eight 2 male Americans are addicted to anti-depressant SSRIs and one in four females - an addiction problem that the hypocritical Drug Warrior ignores, as do most psychiatrists. And, as Julie Holland reports, many of these antidepressants 3 are harder to kick than heroin 4. These Big Pharma meds turn the individual user into a lifelong patient who has to take these pills every day of their life, which is expensive and demoralizing - but results in just so many annuities for uber-rich Big Pharma . What's more, Robert Whitaker has shown that these drugs actually cause the chemical imbalances that they purport to fix! And now they're being marketed to toddlers!!!
The failure of decrim advocates to point these things out makes me fear that they're afraid to criticize Big Pharma and the American Psychiatric Association. But if these things were known and publicized - along with the psychotherapeutic promise of psychedelics and the fact that they're non-addictive - then there should be a vast community of interested parties lined up to push through psychedelic legalization in order to unhook America and empower folks who are otherwise being turned into "eternal patients." But first someone's got to speak up to the American public and tell them that the psychiatric emperor is wearing no clothes - despite the fact that many doctors have appeared on shows like Oprah over the years (under the pay of Big Pharma ) to suggest otherwise. But if we pretend that psychiatry as it exists now is just fine, then few people are going to get excited about legalizing exotic-sounding drugs that can replace the status quo.
2) There is another reason why the psychedelic decriminalization project does not attract more benefactors. That is because this approach ignores the root problem behind ALL drug laws, both in regard to psychedelics, cocaine and opium 5 , etc. The original sin of the Drug War is that, beginning in 1914, it began criminalizing Mother Nature's plants. I believe that this can and must be construed as a violation of the natural law upon which this nation was founded. Surely, Thomas Jefferson never for a moment thought that government had the right to give or withhold access to specific plants based on political considerations. I can think of no more obvious fundamental right than our right to what John Locke referred to as "the use of the earth and all that lies therein." By failing to make this point, and arguing for piecemeal legalization of certain plants instead, we are basically conceding that government does have the right to interfere with our access to Mother Nature's plants in the first place. We just want to carve out a few exceptions to that rule. But if we wish to unite all reformers with a common goal, we need to argue for the re-legalization 6 of Mother Nature's plants, period, full stop - for which I've even created a bumper sticker on my website, AbolishTheDEA.com: "END DRUG WAR SHARIA - RE-LEGALIZE PLANTS."
Besides violating natural law, the Drug War is a violation of the separation of church and state. Why? Because laws that prohibit the use of plant medicines represent the enforcement of Christian Science with respect to emotional healing. Again, this line of argument is one that can be advanced in regard to both psychedelics and cocaine 78 , etc., and thus it is an approach that could bring together the otherwise culturally separated parties. Once we recognize the common denominator in all drug-war problems - the original sin of criminalizing plants - we reformers can all come together under one banner to denounce the DEA with one synchronized voice.
A comment about peyote and justice. I am sympathetic with those Native Americans who fear for the peyote supply. That said, as I understand it, their interest is in peyote that comes from specific traditional locations, such as southern Texas - and I do not believe that they would be materially injured if peyote were grown elsewhere and then used by non-Native Americans. In any case, I trust and hope that there is a way to respect all parties without using the icky expedient of embracing the intolerant and racist drug law itself. That's kind of like "finding some good" in the "three-fifths law" and embracing it for specific cases. In my opinion, we should be ending drug laws (which are really "plant laws"), rather than seeing how we can accommodate them to our own purposes, whatever our end goals might be.
In ending, I would like to share with you my number-one strategy for deconstructing the propaganda of the Drug Warrior: simply take Drug War statements and replace the word "drugs" with "plants." For instance, when Trump says that he wants to execute drug dealers (a statement that sadly seems to resonate with many Americans) re-write the sentence as: "Trump wants to execute those who deal in Mother Nature's plants." That sounds a lot less reasonable, yet that's what the Drug War really is: it's a war on plants (complete with philosophical links to the burning of plant-using witches and the Conquistadors' disdain for plant-centric religion). But the Drug Warrior knows that sounds silly. That's why they always replace the word "plants" with the pejorative and baggage-laden term "drugs."
Meanwhile, I invite you to visit my website, abolishthedea.com, and spread the word about its existence, if you believe in what I'm doing. I have about zero visitors per day because I neither advertise nor accept advertisements! But I am hoping to publish a book with my content later this year!
Best wishes, thanks, and stay well....
Ballard Quass
Abolishthedea.com
PS I believe the Drug War in the west dates back to Emperor Theodosius in 392 CE when he abolished the psychedelic-fueled Eleusinian Mysteries (after almost 2,000 consecutive years of overawing participants such as Plato, Cicero and Plutarch). Why? Because the Emperor (quite tellingly) considered the obviously compelling ritual to be a threat to Christianity9. I believe that the modern Drug War is waged for the same philosophical reason, to protect Christianity from a perceived metaphysical threat - and also for financial reasons: to support the Corrections Industry, Big Pharma , psychiatry, Big Liquor, and law enforcement - and finally to win elections for conservatives by removing leftists from the voting rolls (after arresting them for felony drug charges). Incidentally, that's another grievance on which all drug reformers can unite: the recognition that the Drug War strategically steals elections for Drug Warriors by removing thousands of Drug War opponents from the voting rolls.
PPS Better yet, put the Drug Warriors on the defensive for once. Demand that the DEA not simply be abolished, but call for a trial to prosecute those who have knowingly lied about medical godsends for 40+ years, along with DEA Chiefs like John C. Lawn, who have knowingly poisoned marijuana users with Paraquat, a weed killer that has been found to cause Parkinson's Disease. If the Drug War is an actual war, then John C. Lawn is a war criminal, who knowingly poisoned Americans, knowingly endangering their lives and ultimately punishing a misdemeanor with the potential infliction of a catastrophic illness.
NOTE: Another way to interest a wider audience in psychedelics: Highlight their ability to facilitate the growth of neurons and then perform intense clinical trials with them on Alzheimer's 10 patients. Impoverished ethnicities may think of psychedelic "trips" as a luxury, but surely they don't feel that way about preserving and restoring the memory capacity of their elderly parents.
NOTE 2: When Americans encounter unjust laws, they never do the right thing: seek to change the law in question. Instead, they seek to amend the law in order to help out certain interest groups. That's why the tax system in the US is such a mess. No one has the guts or energy to change the worse-than-byzantine nightmare that it's become. And so homeowners demand changes that will help them, investors request changes that will help them, corporations request changes that will help them -- and so the system becomes more byzantine every year.
This is why we hear talk of inequity in the fight against the Drug War. One group wants to focus on this drug, the other on that. But just like in the tax example, both sides ignore the one unifying approach that the situation cries out for. Only by rejecting the Drug War itself on first principles 11 , as a violation of natural law, can we bring about a strategy that will unite all the stakeholders: including that often overlooked and totally "unleveraged" demographic: those who go without adequate medical treatment thanks to the DEA's lies about Mother Nature's medicines.
So the anti-Drug War movement shoots itself in the foot. Its lack unity is all down to the fact that they are not focusing on the principal evil of the Drug War, namely the fact that it unjustly criminalizes Mother Nature's plants and is thus a violation of natural law. Once you rule out fighting back on this the principal ground of complaint, you're left with only piecemeal protests that attack facets of the Drug War based on parochial interests. This go-slow, selfish approach to fighting injustice is a recipe for overall failure. Until all parties recognize that the Drug War is flawed root and branch, they will remain divided and achieve only partial victories.
Author's Follow-up:
May 16, 2025
How naive of me! Americans really do believe in the distinction between "meds" and "drugs" -- and they really do believe that science has got conditions like depression "sorted," as the Brits would say.
This is why progress is so glacial, because no one is willing to fight back on the basis of common sense and first principles. Americans believe in the materialist approach to mood medicine. They fail to realize that this materialist approach turns scientists into Drug War collaborators, by encouraging them to ignore all the glaringly obvious benefits of drug use.
And so no one makes the following complaints.
1) The Drug War outlaws freedom of research and has outrageously censored science so that drug benefits are never mentioned.
2) The Drug War outlaws religion insofar as the Hindu religion owes its existence to a drug that inspired and elated.
3) The Drug War is responsible for the largest pharmacological dystopia of all time: the fact that 1 in 4 American women are dependent on Big Pharma 1213 meds for life.
What do you do when not only your opponents ignore the big issues, but so do the good guys? How do we expect the Drug War to end when we refuse to hold it responsible for all the problems that it causes?
Even freedom-loving Americans believe in the corrupt assumptions upon which that war is based: above all, they believe in the demonstrably false idea that materialist scientists are the experts when it comes to mind and mood medicine. But this is wrong. To see why, we need only consider the absurd consequences to which this category error has led us as a society: the fact that our scientists claim to find no benefits for the use of drugs that have been considered panaceas by the doctors of the past. And so we live in a world in which we would actually prefer that the depressed commit suicide 14 than to have them use the kinds of drugs that have inspired entire religions, as Soma 15 inspired the Hindu faith.
The problem is obvious. Scientists are not the experts when it comes to mind and mood medicine. It was always a category error to think so. The experts on drugs are a class of people that I call "pharmacologically savvy empaths"16. That's a profession that has yet to exist in America, but one which will be required, however, in a sane world, one in which individuals once again have sovereignty over their own mind and mood. These empaths will replace the scientists of today who can only see drugs through the passion-free lens of reductive materialism 17. For in a sane world, we will recognize the obvious: that drugs that inspire and elate actually do inspire and elate -- and that this is a good thing! It is something that we need to make happen as safely as possible for those in need, psychologically speaking. Whereas today, we simply childishly close our eyes and pretend that the kinds of substances in question here do not even exist.
This willful blindness is almost funny, did it not have so many tragic ramifications for so many people who are suffering needlessly behind closed doors and who are never considered stakeholders in America's nonsensical efforts to outlaw time-honored substances. If aliens came to earth from outer space, they would get the idea that psychoactive substances are very rare on planet earth, given the dearth of discussion about them in articles on depression and consciousness, etc.
Since writing the above essay, I have become aware of the wonderful power of phenethylamines to inspire and elate. I see, therefore, that it is not enough to re-legalize the psychoactive bounty of Mother Nature: we need to re-legalize the individual's sovereignty over their own mental states. Consider the godsend states that we are outlawing today by reading the following drug user reports from "Pihkal" by Alexander Shulgin. These are descriptions of "trips" taken on central nervous system stimulants known as phenethylamines.
"I experienced the desire to laugh hysterically at what I could only describe as the completely ridiculous state of the entire world."
"Excellent feelings, tremendous opening of insight and understanding, a real awakening."
"I acknowledged a rapture in the very act of breathing."
Such outcomes can facilitate creativity in a wide variety of common sense ways. That's the good news. The bad news is that modern drug science is all about ignoring common sense. Scientists start their drug research by ignoring all anecdote, history and common sense about drugs and then proceed to look at drugs under a microscope instead. Had this protocol been in place in 1500 BCE, there would be no Hindu religion today.
It's "convenient" for scientists that their "REAL" cures happen to be the ones that racist politicians will allow. Scientists thus normalize prohibition by pretending that outlawed substances have no therapeutic value. It's materialism collaborating with the drug war.
The so-called "herbs" that witches used were drugs, in the same way that "meds" are drugs. If academics made that connection, the study of witchcraft would shed a lot of light on the fearmongering of modern prohibitionists.
Wade Davis writes that cocaine was outlawed because 400 people consumed toxic doses worldwide. What about the 49,000 that commit suicide every year because we have outlawed drugs that could cheer them up!!!
Champions of indigenous medicines claim that their medicines are not "drugs." But they miss the bigger point: that there are NO drugs in the sense that drug warriors use that term. There are no drugs that have no positive uses whatsoever.
Big pharma drugs are designed to be hard to get off. Doctors write glowingly of "beta blockers" for anxiety, for instance, but ignore that fact that such drugs are hard -- and even dangerous -- to get off. We have outlawed all sorts of less dependence-causing alternatives.
The term "hard" is just our modern pejorative term for the kinds of drugs that doctors of yore used to call panaceas
The Partnership for a Death Free America is launching a campaign to celebrate the 50th year of Richard Nixon's War on Drugs. We need to give credit where credit's due for the mass arrest of minorities, the inner city gun violence and the civil wars that it's generated overseas.
If they're going to throw doctors in jail for prescribing too much pain medication, they should also throw them in jail for prescribing too LITTLE.
Why don't those politicians understand what hateful colonialism they are practicing? Psychedelics have been used for millennia by the tribes that the west has conquered -- now we won't even let folks talk honestly about such indigenous medicines.
There would be little or no profiling of blacks if the Drug War did not exist.
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