I want credit where credit's due

Homepage of the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass

I want credit where credit's due

an open letter to posterity from the only philosopher in the world who is pointing out the full evil of drug prohibition despite being completely ignored by the mainstream

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

March 20, 2026

I do so hate to brag, but there is at point which humility becomes a kind of dishonesty. Know, therefore, that I am the only one in the world who has pointed out that assisted suicide cannot be discussed advisedly without discussing the drug prohibition that renders it necessary. There, I've said it. What's more, drug prohibition denies us the kinds of drugs that might make us want to live. Drug use inspired the Vedic religion and use of the coca leaf was -- and continues to be -- an inspiration to the Inca and their descendants. What does it say about America when I am the only one who connects these facts? And I have not sat on this stuff. I have spread the news to the movers and shakers in the assisted suicide game and no one even acknowledges my letters.

I do not say that all pain patients could necessarily be helped in this way -- but I am saying that it is evil not even to try to help them in this way, just as it would be evil to withhold medicines for "physical" purposes.

One of the main problems is that that we have placed doctors in charge of mind and mood medicine. And so the conversation on this topic is going on behind academic paywalls in the form of heavily annotated papers from folks without any skin in the game and who completely ignore the power of drugs to inspire and elate. I am not invited to the party where my fate is decided by our highly paid professionals who are dogma-bound to ignore common sense when it comes to drugs, like the obvious fact that laughing gas cheers one up and the once-obvious fact that it is better to use drugs than to die! Imagine that.

But then I am also the only one in the world who has pointed out that outlawing laughing gas is the outlawing of academic freedom. It truly seems like drug-bashing and drug-scapegoating is built into America's DNA. The irony is that so many Americans pride themselves on recognizing and denouncing colonialism when they see it, and yet by promoting drug prohibition, they are promoting pharmacological colonialism around the world, ending the time-honored use of substances that for more intelligent cultures were used wisely.

Cartoon man wearing red rob with laurels on head.

Cartoon man wearing red rob with laurels on head.

Iranians were peaceably smoking opium until the Shah of Iran outlawed the drug at the behest of America -- the same America that is now worried that Iranians are hotheads?

I write this short essay just to remind posterity: I want credit where credit's due -- assuming that the western world ever comes to its senses -- or better yet to the senses of holistic-thinking indigenous peoples -- when it comes to drugs.

PS If I'm wrong, let me know. But I have yet to hear of any philosopher but myself (or academic, for that matter) who is complaining to the FDA about their plans to outlaw laughing gas, complaining on behalf of academic freedom and the legacy of William James. In fact, the online biography for James at his alma mater of Harvard University does not even mention James' use of laughing gas, which changed his whole ideas about consciousness and the nature of reality! Likewise, I have heard of no one else pointing out the glaringly obvious fact that assisted suicide cannot be advisedly discussed without discussing the drug prohibition which keeps folks from adopting positive attitudes and hence potentially deciding to live instead of die! Let me know who's out there that is speaking up on these topics. I'd love to chat with them! I know there are plenty of enemies of drug prohibition in general, but I have yet to hear these rather obvious points being made by any of them. The laurels seem to be mine for now. And just imagine how brainwashed the world has become to make a relative dimwit like myself the leader in this field. Wow! It's flattering in a way. Thanks for hanging back, everybody, and letting an unknown contender take the lead.

Now I'll just wait for posterity to sing my praises -- assuming of course that sanity one day prevails.

Key Takeaways:

Assisted suicide cannot be discussed advisedly without discussing drug prohibition.
Drug use inspired the Vedic religion.
No one in the assisted suicide debate acknowledges the existence of outlawed substances that inspire and elate.

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

We should hold the DEA criminally responsible for withholding spirit-lifting drugs from the depressed. Responsible for what, you ask? For suicides and lobotomies, for starters.

Uruguay wants to re-legalize psilocybin mushrooms -- but only for use in a psychiatrist's office. So let me get this straight: psychiatrists are the new privileged shaman? It's a mushroom, for God's sake. Just re-legalize the damn thing and stop treating us like children.

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.

If I should die of some unusual concatenation of circumstances, I want my survivors to pass "Brian's Law," a law stating that we will no longer pass laws based on hard cases and so needlessly fill our prisons by taking common-sense discretion out of the hands of judges.

It is a crime against humanity to withhold cocaine from the depressed and those with impaired cognition.

The outlawing of coca and opium is a crime against humanity.

Classic prohibitionist gaslighting, telling me that "drugs" is a neutral term. What planet are they living on?

Countless millions suffer needlessly in silence because of America's fearmongering about drugs.

"The Oprah Winfrey Fallacy": the idea that a statistically insignificant number of cases constitutes a crisis, provided ONLY that the villain of the piece is something that racist politicians have demonized as a "drug."

John Halpern wrote a book about opium, subtitled "the ancient flower that poisoned our world." What nonsense! Bad laws and ignorance poison our world, NOT FLOWERS!

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Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

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I want credit where credit's due

an open letter to posterity from the only philosopher in the world who is pointing out the full evil of drug prohibition despite being completely ignored by the mainstream

Key Takeaways:

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

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