There are no killer drugs. Even the highly toxic Botox can be used safely and for the benefit of humanity in the proper doses. The "killer" here is ignorance, not fentanyl: ignorance combined with substance prohibition that incentivizes dealers to find and sell the most addictive substances that happen to be "ready to hand," without regard for drug safety or substance purity. A fentanyl crisis would be unimaginable in a country where psychoactive plant medicine (all of it being far less addictive than fentanyl) was legal and people were taught how to use it as safely as possible.
Second, in a sane world, a story about fentanyl deaths would feature photographs of health and education experts, not law enforcement. But then the Drug War has never been about health: it's been about repressing minorities. It's no coincidence that the first drug law in 1914 banned the use of opium, for that was a time of anti-Chinese sentiment stoked by demagogue politicians. Just so, the outlawing of the coca plant was originally a response to anti-Black sentiment, the outlawing of marijuana was anti-Mexican, and the outlawing of psychedelics was anti-Hippies.
Drug war ideology combined with substance prohibition has caused civil wars overseas, forced children in hospice to suffer rather than giving them morphine, and forced us to let our elderly parents die by "taking them off life support" rather than letting them drift off to a peaceful death, again with morphine. It has censored scientists who can not legally investigate potential cures for Alhzeimer's and autism, and it has forced billions around the globe to go without godsend medicine for depression (like the Peruvian's 'divine coca leaf' and MDMA) instead shunting them off onto Big Pharma 'meds' that cause a chemical dependency, thanks to which 1 in 4 American women must take Big Pharma pills every morning of their life.
Meanwhile, it has turned our inner cities into shooting galleries. Why? Because prohibition creates armed gangs out of whole cloth in poor neighborhoods (a fact that even Drug Warriors know full well from America's disastrous experiment with liquor prohibition, which created the American Mafia as we know it today). That's why there were 800 black deaths in Chicago alone in 2021: because substance prohibition encouraged inner-city gangs to arm themselves to the teeth. So, thank you very much, law enforcement: for nothing, that is.
It's an outrage that law enforcement is now using the problems that they themselves have created to call for yet another "crackdown" on minority drug dealers. We should rather be cracking down on racist politicians who want us to fear substances rather than to understand them. We should crack down on politicians who want to demonize mother nature's psychoactive pharmacy while yet giving a big fat Mulligan to the two deadliest drugs of all, tobacco and alcohol, which together cause half a million deaths per year in America.
Again, fentanyl is not the problem: neither is coca nor opium.
The problem is prohibition combined with ignorance -- the ignorance that the Drug War knowingly promotes. In fact, Joe Biden's Office of National Drug Control Policy has a charter that bars them from even considering safe use of demonized substances, since their goal is spreading drug-war propaganda, not keeping Americans healthy and safe. In other words it is government policy to keep Americans ignorant about psychoactive substances so that we can continue superstitiously making "drugs" the scapegoat for all of America's social problems. Conservatives love this, of course, because it allows them to spend government money on law enforcement and the military, rather than on education for the poor. What both liberals and conservatives fail to notice, however -- or at least fail to admit -- is that the Drug War causes all of the problems that it purports to solve -- and then some.
August 27, 2022
Of course, the Wichita Falls News is another one of the "faux local" newspapers. It's actually owned by Gannett Corporation, who bought it from Scripps, who bought it from Harte-Hanks. We should note also that Brian attempted to post this as a comment, but the Gannett corporation will only accept comments from those who have a Facebook account. So I guess that if Brian wants to diss the idea of Facebook membership in a comment, he has to join Facebook in order to do so.
Author's Follow-up: September 7, 2022
After causing the drug problem in the first place, folks like Joe Biden are now claiming credit for fighting it by confiscating huge quantities of Fentanyl. This is, of course, a fool's way to solve a problem. You could get rid of Fentanyl overnight and there would be another "devil drug" around the corner to take its place. This is precisely why the DEA and the entire DRUG WAR ESTABLISHMENT love this approach to "fighting drugs," because they have jobs for life when it comes to fighting this boogieman that the government itself has created.
It's the approach that's wrong. We should be fighting ignorance, not drugs. Instead, we're demonizing substances and teaching kids the lie that nature's psychoactive medicines can be used only for evil. What absolute rot. There are no substances on earth that are evil, none in the world that need to be banned. All substances need to be understood however in order to ensure safe use, and Joe Biden and his Drug Warriors are determined to keep us fearing boogieman substances like Fentanyl rather than understanding them.
Educate, do not incarcerate.
Re-legalize Mother Nature's medicines so folks who are seeking self-transcendence do not have to avail themselves of the handful of more dangerous substances whose sale is incentivized by prohibition.
Extra Credit
September 22, 2022
The next time you see a bunch of self-important police officers in a press conference standing in front of a cache of bad-evil-horrible "drugs," picture them wearing KKK hoods -- because that's what the Drug War is all about, breaking the heads of minorities. That's why Chicago had 797 gun deaths in 2021 and the media simply does not care. Gannett, Sinclair, and the handful of other companies that own local and national papers refuse to point out that the Drug War created the armed gangs in inner cities in the first place, exactly as liquor prohibition created the Mafia.
That's your second extra-credit assignment: see how many newspaper articles you can find that talk about inner-city violence without even MENTIONING substance prohibition and the War on Drugs. Believe me, you'll be spoiled for choice!
Author's Follow-up: February 3, 2023
It's quite depressing to follow Twitter on this topic and see all the unnecessary suffering going on in the world because the DEA is second-guessing doctors when it comes to their prescribing of pain medication. The DEA and the politicians do not realize that when it comes to pain medication, the experience of the patient is the key issue and how they experience that pain -- not the muddled ideas of politicians as to how much pain relief they "should" be receiving according to some cut-and-paste figure determined by the gut instinct of bureaucrats -- bureaucrats whose main concern is keeping their jobs, not helping people in pain.
Author's Follow-up: May 17, 2023
It can't be said enough -- mainly because it hasn't been said at all -- that Trump became president because of the Drug War. Prohibition killed black voters and threw millions of survivors into prison -- far more than enough retired votes to swing elections for racist republicans and their legion of democrat facilitators and enablers.
Drug War Ghouls
The Drug War Ghouls get busy any time a well-known figure dies prematurely, especially when the figure in question is a rock star or actor. You can just hear them whispering childishly: "Aww! Were they on any drugs? Were they on any drugs?" The presumption behind such tittering is that drugs are evil and can only lead to death and destruction. Of course, those who hold this viewpoint always forget that the drug war does everything it can to make such outcomes of drug use a self-fulfilling prophecy by discouraging education about safe use and by ensuring corrupt and uncertain drug supply with their eternal kneejerk prohibition. This is all completely inexcusable. The drug warriors cause death. They are the villains. They are the criminals. Take the so-called opiate crisis. Young people were not dying en masse from opioids when such drugs were legal in the United States. It took prohibition to bring that about.
Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.
I don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.
Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the drug war ideology of substance demonization.
Cop and detective shows are loaded with subtle drug war propaganda, including lines like, "She had a history of drug use, so..." The implication being that anyone who uses substances that politicians hate cannot be trusted.
The 1932 movie "Scarface" starts with on-screen text calling for a crackdown on armed gangs in America. There is no mention of the fact that a decade's worth of Prohibition had created those gangs in the first place.
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.
We should be encouraging certain drug use by the elderly. Many Indigenous drugs have been shown to grow new neurons and increase neural connectivity -- to refuse to use them makes us complicit in the dementia of our loved ones!
All drugs have positive uses at some dose, for some reason, at some time -- but prohibitionists have the absurd idea that drugs can be voted up or down. This anti-scientific notion deprives the modern world of countless godsends.
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.
Now the US is bashing the Honduran president for working with "drug cartels." Why don't we just be honest and say why we're REALLY upset with the guy? Drugs is just the excuse, as always, now what's the real reason? Stop using the drug war to disguise American foreign policy.
The Drug War is the legally enforced triumph of human idiocy. We have rigged the deck so that our dunces can be right. The Drug War is a superstition. Indeed, it is THE modern superstition.
The Partnership for a Drug Free America should be put on trial for having blatantly lied to Americans in the 1980s about drugs, using our taxpayer money to do it!
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.
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, Ignorance is the enemy, not Fentanyl: open letter to Lynn Walker of the Wichita Falls Times Record News, published on August 27, 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)
ear Lynn:
You have been reading an article entitled, Ignorance is the enemy, not Fentanyl: open letter to Lynn Walker of the Wichita Falls Times Record News, published on August 27, 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)