and everyone else who stands up to the drug war at the risk of losing their own freedom
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
October 16, 2024
Here is my response to an article entitled "FREE DULF. NO MORE DYING. NO MORE DRUG WAR 2024," published by the Drug User Solidarity Committee on the Drug War Decoded-Canada website.1
Thanks and best wishes to Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx... and to everyone else who stands up to the hateful Drug War at the risk of their own freedom.
The Drug War is anti-democratic. The proof is extant.
It has destroyed the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution (which used to bar unreasonable search). It outlaws religions that rely on entheogenic ritual. It is a makework program for law enforcement that throws millions of minorities in jail every year, thereby handing elections to tyrants. And Drug Warriors are not done yet with their assault on democratic freedoms. In early 2024, Oregon politicians floated a plan to outlaw free speech when it comes to drugs.
Drug warriors would prefer that drug users die than to provide them with regulated product. They would prefer nuclear armageddon 2345 to a world in which people use entheogens to promote world peace.
America's Food & Drug Administration embraces the same warped priorities.
It disapproves of drugs that could prevent suicide 6 and school shootings. Meanwhile it approves of Big Pharma 78 "meds" whose side effects include death itself 9 . This is the same FDA which approves of brain-damaging shock therapy, the same FDA which endorses the psychiatric pill mill and the same FDA which has no problem with the fact that 1 in 4 American women are chemically dependent on antidepressants 10 for life.
But the media and politicians keep running a full-court press against common sense and simple humanity.
Thank God for folks like Jeremy and Eris who dare to push back!
Author's Follow-up: October 16, 2024
Drug prohibition is a very strange puppy. First America decided to end liquor prohibition once and for all with the 21st amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But then those same Americans began outlawing every even potentially popular psychoactive alternative to liquor, many of them time-honored, some of them long considered panaceas, and none of them as dangerous as alcohol itself.
So Americans love prohibition -- they just want to make one big fat exception for liquor when it comes to prohibition enforcement.
If politicians wanted to outlaw coffee, a bunch of Kevin Sabets would come forward and start writing books designed to scare us off the drink by cherry-picking negative facts from scientific studies.
If I have no right to mother nature's bounty, then I surely have no right to manmade guns. If hysterical fearmongering justifies the eradication of the Fourth Amendment, then the Second Amendment should go as well.
In fact, there are times when it is clearly WRONG to deny kids drugs (whatever the law may say). If your child is obsessed with school massacres, he or she is an excellent candidate for using empathogenic meds ASAP -- or do we prefer even school shootings to drug use???
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.
To understand why the western world is blind to the benefits of "drugs," read "The Concept of Nature" by Whitehead. He unveils the scientific schizophrenia of the west, according to which the "real" world is invisible to us while our perceptions are mere "secondary" qualities.
Morphine can provide a vivid appreciation of mother nature in properly disposed minds. That should be seen as a benefit. Instead, dogma tells us that we must hate morphine for any use.
Drug prohibition is a crime against humanity.
The Drug War is based on two HUGE lies: 1) that prohibition has no downsides, & 2) that drug use has no upsides.
Americans love to hate heroin. But there is no rational reason why folks should not use heroin daily in a world in which we consider it their medical duty to use antidepressants daily.
Drugs that sharpen the mind should be thoroughly investigated for their potential to help dementia victims. Instead, we prefer to demonize these drugs as useless. That's anti-scientific and anti-patient.
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