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In Defense of Opium

Open letter to Marco Margaritoff

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher




July 12, 2023

The following comment is in response to "A Disturbing Look Inside The Victorian Opium Dens That Launched The First Modern War On Drugs" by Marco Margaritoff on All's That Interesting, October 17, 2021. The article was disturbing for me, but not for the reason that Marco believed it would be.

The DEA stomped onto Monticello in 1987 and confiscated Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants in violation of the natural law upon which he founded America. As John Locke states in his Two Treatises on Government, the bounty of nature is the heritage of the human race. It does not belong to government to parcel out or withhold, let alone to make us urinate to prove that we have had nothing to do with mother nature. But racist fearmongers outlawed opium in 1914, which set the precedent for government to use drug laws to attack minorities. It's a huge billion-dollar scam that provides the DEA with jobs for life and makes the depressed and anxious go without godsends -- this in a nation in which 1 in 4 women are dependent on mind-numbing big pharma meds for life. The Drug War has infantilized Americans about drugs, giving them teddy bears in grade school for dissing them, even though "drugs" like soma have inspired entire religions, coca was divine to the Inca, and opium was loved by Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. The government never had a right to outlaw nature -- and look at the whirlwind we have reaped by doing so. We have destroyed the rule of law in Latin America and created entire no-go zones in inner-city neighborhoods. Instead of talking about safe use, we have fomented fear and an unsafe drug supply, leading to the invention of drugs that are thousands of times more risky than opium. It's called the iron law of prohibition: crackdowns lead to more lethal drugs. 35,000 people die each year in car accidents, but we don't need a war on cars. A fraction of that amount die from "drugs," but we don't need a war on drugs. To the contrary, almost all drug deaths are a result of prohibition and the fact that it corrupts drug supply and encourages fear and ignorance over knowledge about safe use.

The real den of iniquity was Congress in 1914.

*openletter*




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Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs

Someone tweeted that fears about a Christian Science theocracy are "baseless." Tell that to my uncle who was lobotomized because they outlawed meds that could cheer him up -- tell that to myself, a chronic depressive who could be cheered up in an instant with outlawed meds.
The worst form of government is not communism, socialism or even unbridled capitalism. The worst form of government is a Christian Science Theocracy, in which the government controls how much you are allowed to think and feel in life.
Scientists are not the experts on psychoactive medicines. The experts are painters and artists and spiritualists -- and anyone else who simply wants to be all they can be in life. Scientists understand nothing of such goals and aspirations.
Today's Washington Post reports that "opioid pills shipped" DROPPED 45% between 2011 and 2019..... while fatal overdoses ROSE TO RECORD LEVELS! Prohibition is PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE.
Getting off some drugs could actually be fun and instructive, by using a variety of other drugs to keep one's mind off the withdrawal process. But America believes that getting off a drug should be a big moral battle.
Critics tell me that drugs have nothing to offer us. What? Not only are they being psychologically naive and completely ahistorical, but they are forgetting that the term "drugs" is no more objective than the term "scabs." Both are meant to defame the things that they connote.
Today's drug laws tell us that we must respect the historical use of sacred medicines, while denying us our personal right to use them unless our ancestors did so. That's a meta-injustice! It negatively affects the way that we are allowed to experience our world!
Trump is the prototypical drug warrior. He knows that he can destroy American freedoms by fearmongering. He has seen it work with the Drug War, which got rid of the 4th Amendment, religious freedom and is now going after free speech.
The drug war tells us that certain drugs have no potential uses and then turns that into a self-fulfilling prophecy by outlawing these drugs. This is insanely anti-scientific and anti-progress. We should never give up on looking for positive uses for ANY substance.
Most prohibitionists think that they merely have to use the word "drugs" to win an argument. Like: "Oh, so you're in favor of DRUGS then, are you?" You can just see them sneering as they type. That's because the word "drugs" is like the word "scab": it's a loaded political term.
More Tweets






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You have been reading an article entitled, In Defense of Opium: Open letter to Marco Margaritoff, published on July 12, 2023 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)