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Kevin Sabet and Drug War 2.0



by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher



October 23, 2022



evin Sabet reminds me of those cops in "Naked Gun" who inadvertently force bystanders off the edge of a cliff in an effort to protect them from potential danger. He sees problems with marijuana with wide-opened eyes and yet he's blind to the gargantuan damage being done by the Drug War ideology that he himself represents. He wants us to "follow the science," not realizing that American science has been censored for over a century now by the Drug War ideology of substance demonization. That's why all the academic articles about the government-defined category called "drugs" concern only abuse and misuse, without any reference to the fact that psychoactive medicines have inspired entire religions, given Plato his view of the afterlife, and formed the very basis of the long-lasting Inca society. That's why magazines like the Atlantic publish articles about depression and Alzheimer's without even mentioning the fact that the Drug War has outlawed all the substances that might help us end those scourges. Indeed, depression could end overnight in America if we re-legalized the coca leaf -- and school shootings would be reduced drastically by legalizing the empathogen called MDMA, something that the mendacious DEA was on the verge of doing in 1985 until they vetoed the advice of their own counsel and criminalized the substance in order to protect their jobs, thanks to which they have denied godsend medicine for PTSD to America's "wounded warriors" for the last 37 years.

If you want to "follow the science," then the first step is to free science from drug-war censorship. But of course in reality, even "following the science" is not enough. Folks use psychoactive substances to help them achieve self-actualization in life, and for many of us, self-actualization trumps safety. The "good life" for a real human being is one in which they achieve their most heartfelt goals, whereas the "good life" for the scientist is one that maximizes safety in the abstract. If we merely "followed the science" about the statistically super-dangerous sport of free-climbing, we would criminalize the activity at once. But we do not do so. Why not? Because we recognize that the personal fulfillment of the climber trumps safety considerations. But when it comes to psychoactive medicines, Kevin wants safety to trump all else, in which case it follows that we must consider users criminal if they dare to follow their dreams.

But my real beef with Kevin is that the omnipresence of marijuana today is a direct result of the Drug War itself, the Drug War that he wants to salvage by making the scheduling system more honest (something that's never going to happen in a country that sells Big Pharma meds like lemonade on prime-time television). But like all Drug Warriors, the only stakeholder he sees when it comes to substance legalization are uneducated white American youths (who are uneducated precisely because the Drug War spends money on arresting rather than teaching, on demonizing rather than creating safe use practices, which is clear from the fact that we have a drug ENFORCEMENT agency instead of a drug EDUCATION agency in America). Kevin has no interest in the other stakeholders: the Mexican children who have been orphaned by the civil war that the Drug War has created in Mexico, the scientists who are censored by the Drug War ideology of substance demonization, the 1 in 4 American women who are hooked on the Big Pharma pill mill, the opioid crisis caused by a Drug War which incentivizes dealers to sell whatever's ready to hand without regard for safety, and above all the millions who suffer in silence around the globe today because America has decided that we should fear psychoactive substances rather than learn how to use them as safely as possible.

The answer is too obvious for Washington insiders like Kevin to see: we need to get government out of the business of criminalizing Mother Nature in the first place. We need to teach, not arrest. For the Drug War causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some. The billions that we give to the army and law enforcement for cracking black heads in America and shooting Latinos south of our border should be channeled instead into education: real education, I mean, that teaches us the ups and downs of all drugs, including those of the anti-depressants upon which 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life. Most importantly, however, we need to recognize the original sin of the Drug War in outlawing Mother Nature's medicines in the first place, for as citizens of Planet Earth, we all have a natural right to the plants and fungi that grow at our very feet. Just ask Thomas Jefferson, whose ghost was spinning in his grave when the mendacious DEA stomped onto Monticello in 1987 and confiscated the Founding Father's poppy plants in violation of the natural law upon which he had founded America.




The Links Police




Pull over to the side of the Web page. You just scrolled by an important link without stopping, viz:

Why Kevin Sabet is Wrong: It's no surprise that Jimmy Carter gives Kevin Sabet rave reviews, for his politics are rooted in the past
How the Atlantic Supports the Drug War: The Atlantic ignores the drug war and the thousands of plants that it puts off-limits to scientific research
What Obama got wrong about drugs: Drugs are far more than a scientific issue

Related tweet: October 24, 2022



Rishi says he never takes drugs. No aspirin then? No coffee? Or does he just means "drugs" that politicians have concluded have no good uses -- like, say, the coca plant which Peruvian Indians used safely for millennia?


Related tweet: June 10, 2023

Check out these prohibitionists who whine about the popularity of weed. It's like they outlawed steak and pork and then they complained about the popularity of chicken. I'd be more than happy to diversify my medicine cabinet once these clowns stop outlawing mother nature.




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Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs

If our loved ones should experience severe depression and visit an emergency room for treatment, they will be started on a regime of dependence-causing Big Pharma drugs. They will not be given any drugs that elate and inspire.
This hysterical reaction to rare negative events actually creates more rare negative events. This is why the DEA publicizes "drug problems," because by making them well known, they make the problems more prevalent and can thereby justify their huge budget.
This is the problem with trusting science to tell us about drugs. Science means reductive materialism, whereas psychoactive drug use is all about mind and the human being as a whole. We need pharmacologically savvy shaman to guide us, not scientists.
Laughing gas is the substance that gave William James his philosophy of reality. He concluded from its use that what we perceive is just a fraction of reality writ large. Yet his alma mater (Harvard) does not even MENTION laughing gas in their bio of the man.
Your drug war has caused the disappearance of over 60,000 Mexicans over the last 20 years. It has turned inner cities into shooting galleries. It has turned America into a penal colony. It has destroyed the 4th amendment and put bureaucrats in charge of deciding if our religions are "sincere."
"Abuse" is a funny term because it implies that there's a right way to use "drugs," which is something that the drug warriors deny. To the contrary, they make the anti-scientific claim that "drugs" are not good for anybody for any reason at any dose.
Opium is a godsend, as folks like Galen, Avicenna and Paracelsus knew. The drug war has facilitated a nightmare by outlawing peaceable use at home and making safe use almost impossible.
One merely has to look at any issue of Psychology Today to see articles in which the author reckons without the Drug War, in which they pretend that banned substances do not exist and so fail to incorporate any topic-related insights that might otherwise come from user reports.
Musk and co. want to make us more robot-like with AI, when they should be trying to make us more human-like with sacred medicine. Only humans can gain creativity from plant medicine. All AI can do is harvest the knowledge that eventually results from that creativity.
I could tell my psychiatrist EXACTLY what would "cure" my depression, even without getting addicted, but everything involved is illegal. It has to be. Otherwise I would have no need of the psychiatrist.
More Tweets



The latest hits from Drug War Records, featuring Freddie and the Fearmongers!


1. Requiem for the Fourth Amendment



2. There's No Place Like Home (until the DEA gets through with it)



3. O Say Can You See (what the Drug War's done to you and me)






front cover of Drug War Comic Book

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, Kevin Sabet and Drug War 2.0 published on October 23, 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)