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Jim Beam and Drugs



by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher







November 21, 2024

erhaps you've seen those Jim Beam commercials on TV and streaming media: a crowd of lively young people are seen responsibly lugging around bottles of Jim Beam bourbon while living a joyous life.

I have two very different reactions to that ad.

I am struck at first by the hypocrisy of selling Jim Beam like it was apple pie while living in an age in which drugs like opium and coca and peyote (etc.) are demonized as the devil incarnate. Nor do I believe that drugs, alcohol included, should be advertised in this way, by appealing to the emotions of young people. But at the same time, this ad depicts the way that I believe we should be taught to feel about ALL mind-affecting drugs that are used for relaxation and for having a good time: they can be used responsibly -- and those who do not do so are the oddballs, the ones who are irresponsible and/or who lack the necessary education -- the education that we should provide rather than arresting them.

Mass Media and Drugs






The media have done all they can to support the drug war by holding the use of outlawed substances to safety standards that are never applied to any other risky activity on earth, meanwhile ignoring the fact that prohibition encourages ignorance and leads to contaminated drug supply. Thousands of American young people die each month because of unregulated supply and ignorance, not from drugs themselves.

They also support the drug war by ignoring it. Just read any article on inner-city shootings or on the extraordinary violence that is forever breaking out in South America. It's all related to the fact that America, in its arrogance, taught the world to blame plant medicines for social problems. And there was no excuse. Liquor prohibition had already created the American Mafia: and yet the media sees no connection between the drug war and the violence judging by their news coverage.

They also have a field day superstitiously blaming drugs. It used to be PCP, ICE, oxy, crack, and now it's fentanyl... Movies are now personifying these drugs in the forms of Crack Raccoons and Meth Gators. America has become so superstitious and childish about drugs that it's sad -- and the media can take much of the blame.

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  • Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide
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  • How National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of coca
  • How Scientific American reckons without the drug war
  • How the Atlantic Supports the Drug War
  • How the Atlantic Supports the Drug War Part II
  • Introduction to the Drug War Philosopher Website at AbolishTheDEA.com
  • Jim Beam and Drugs
  • Matthew Perry and the Drug War Ghouls
  • More Weed Bashing at the Washington Post
  • Movie Warnings from Uncommon Sense
  • Open Letter to Lisa Ling
  • Open Letter to Variety Critic Owen Glieberman
  • Science News Continues to Ignore the Drug War
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  • The Runner: Racist Drug War Agitprop
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  • Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war lies
  • Unscientific American: the hypocritical materialism of Elon Musk
  • Weed Bashing at WTOP.COM




  • Next essay: The Inhumanity of Drug Prohibition
    Previous essay: MDMA and Depression
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    Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs

    Drug warriors do not seem to see any irony in the fact that their outlawing of opium eventually resulted in an "opioid crisis." The message is clear: people want transcendence. If we don't let them find it safely, they will find it dangerously.
    Americans heap hypocritical praise on Walt Whitman. What they don't realize is that many of us could be "Walt Whitman for a Day" with the wise use of psychoactive drugs. To the properly predisposed, morphine gives a DEEP appreciation of Mother Nature.
    I think we should start taking names. All politicians and government officials who work to keep godsends like psilocybin from the public should be held to account for crimes against humanity when the drug war finally ends.
    The confusion arises because materialists insist that every psychological problem is actually a physical problem, hence the disease-mongering of the DSM. This is antithetical to the shamanic approach, which sees people holistically, as people, not patients.
    Prohibition turned habituation into addiction by creating a wide variety of problems for users, including potential arrest, tainted or absent drug supply, and extreme stigmatization.
    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.
    Let's pass a constitutional amendment to remove Kansas from the Union, and any other state where the racist politicians leverage the drug war to crack down on minorities.
    People groan about "profiling," but why is profiling even a "thing"? There would be little or no profiling of blacks if the Drug War did not exist.
    The whole drug war is based on the anti-American idea that the way to avoid problems is to lie and prevaricate and persuade people not to ask questions.
    It's just plain totalitarian nonsense to outlaw mother nature and to outlaw moods and mental states thru drug law. These truths can't be said enough by us "little people" because the people in power are simply not saying them.
    More Tweets






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    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, Jim Beam and Drugs published on November 21, 2024 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)