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Marijuana Critics Just Don't Get It

It's the criminalization, stupid!

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

August 12, 2020



I've started to run across online articles that fret over the excessive use of marijuana by young people. (See, for instance, "America's Invisible Pot Addicts" by Annie Lowrey in TheAtlantic.com.*)

Fair enough. The argument can be made that some young people overuse marijuana - although even this concern is often based on unconscious assumptions about what constitutes the good life.

Update: May 28, 2025

The average capitalist American is constantly on the go, and so they're naturally shocked by a lifestyle that does not involve intense ambition and a constant desire to amass more material goods than one's neighbors.

Nevertheless, fair play. The overuse of marijuana is something that can be rationally discussed in a country that values rational analysis of social problems.

The problem is that as I read these articles, I can just hear the knee-jerk mental process of the average western reader saying, "Oh, dear: If this is so, we really must criminalize marijuana after all!"

And that is the whole problem of the Drug War: it gives us this knee-jerk reaction to all so-called "drug problems": that is, criminalization.

No one thought about psychoactive substances like this in the past. The knee-jerk reaction of yore following a so-called "drug death" was to denounce the way that the substance in question was used - that is, to denounce a lack of educated and informed use -- not to denounce the substance itself as somehow "bad" in and of itself without regard for the circumstances in which it was employed. That is a blatantly anti-scientific way of thinking about the world, to denounce a substance rather than the circumstances of its use. And so when it comes to the modern boogieman of "drugs," western thinking today is far more superstitious than it was in the past. It is superstitious because it attributes to amoral substances (aka "drugs") the goodness and badness that actually resides only in the way in which such substances are used.

Take the drug MDMA 1 . That drug basically brought about "peace, love and understanding" on British dance floors during the 1980s, during the rave scene, until it was criminalized after one - count 'em - ONE well-publicized death in 1995. One!

That response was about as counterproductive and unscientific as can be, especially from a country that purports to value a rational approach to problem solving. First, it ignored the glaring fact that the death in question was caused by a lack of honest information and research about drugs: not by drugs themselves. (Had Leah Betts been made aware of the proper hydration requirements for using E in a high-stress environment, she would be alive today.) Second, by banning Ecstasy, the Drug Warrior ushered in a wave of crack and Fentanyl use that quickly turned the British rave venues into shooting galleries that required the intervention of ex-special soldier forces to keep the peace.

Plants are under no requirement to meet FDA safety standards.

-Brian Quass, the Drug War Philosopher.


Result: the knee-jerk mindset of the Drug Warrior ushered in far more death and violence than ever, all in response to a self-created problem involving one of the safest drugs in the world.


This highlights the unspoken truth about the Drug War: it causes all of the problems that it claims to fix. It caused the death of Leah Betts by E, since it suppressed research of such substances and criminalized them, making them available only from doubtful sources. It brought about the end of a peaceful dance scene, from which British society (and even the world) could have learned much, and ushered in the violence and death that the Drug Warrior claims to be fighting.

The Drug War is even responsible for the overuse of marijuana, to the extent that we agree this is a real problem. The Drug War criminalizes thousands of plants that can help bring about a sense of peace of mind and transcendence, including cocaine , opium , and hundreds of psychedelic plants that have been shown to conduce to personal insight and self-understanding when used advisedly (i.e., by educated people in a free country). Why are we surprised when this lopsided legalization 2 of one solitary psychoactive plant results in excessive use of that one particular plant? (especially in a world where superstitious Drug Warriors keep shouting "drugs, drugs, drugs" at the top of their hypocritical lungs, thus bringing the use of psychoactive substances front-and-center in the minds of young people who might have otherwise ignored the topic entirely).

If the world were to criminalize all but one sports car, car lovers would flock to car dealerships in order to buy that one particular model of sports car. If we as a society find this problematic, the answer is to open the car market to all models, not to fret over the problems caused by this one model that we have grudgingly allowed out on the sales floor.

So, let's be honest, not just about marijuana, but about all drugs. Let's be honest enough to say that a drug like "E" can help bring about peace and harmony, even if it is politically incorrect to say so (even if the British government prefers gun violence 3 to such honesty). Let's be honest enough to say that cocaine 4 5 and opium 6 can be used responsibly if education is available for that purpose. (Sigmund Freud and Benjamin Franklin could have told us as much). Let's be honest enough to say that properly guided psychedelic use can help us fight addiction and get a new and better outlook on life. (The anecdotal evidence of this fact dates back to prehistory and the Vedic religion.)

Until the Drug Warrior is open to this kind of real-world honesty, I'm going to be suspicious of their criticism of marijuana, thinking to myself, "Great, now they're out to take away the one bit of mental freedom that they've grudgingly provided me, when the real question is: why are they limiting my choice of freedom to this one single solitary substance in the first place? If that substance is problematic, give me some alternatives: don't yield to the Drug Warrior's knee-jerk temptation to criminalize the market entirely."

POSTSCRIPT: Check out the irony of the title of Annie Lowrey's piece mentioned above: "America's Invisible Pot Addicts": this from a reporter whose articles ignore the great addiction of our time: the fact that 1 in 4 American women are addicted to Big Pharma meds (source: Julie Holland). Given this huge blind spot on Annie's part, the reader can't help but assume that her article on pot addicts has been written to further some political or social ideology about drugs rather than to spread the unvarnished truth about what's actually happening viz. addiction in the real world.



Related tweet: October 19, 2022



Response to Kevin Sabet's tweet regarding Obama's original plan to make marijuana a schedule I drug:

It's a violation of natural law for government to affirm marijuana as illegal. It's like saying that the sun or the rain is illegal. Plants are under no requirement to meet FDA safety standards.




October 19, 2022


-
Here's a comment that Brian sent to Kevin after responding to his tweet (see above)


The government has no right to "affirm" that a plant is illegal. That's a violation of natural law. (See John Locke regarding our right to the use of the land "and all that lies therein.") Yes, we need to tell the truth about marijuana, but we need to tell the truth about ALL DRUGS -- including the mind-numbing anti-depressants upon which 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Who is going to write a book about that dystopia, a real-life Stepford Wives? Not the Drug Warriors!!!!!!!!!!!!

I invite you to read my views on these matters:
https://www.abolishthedea.com/majoring_in_drug_war_philosophy.php


Brian Quass
The Drug War Philosopher

PS If you want to be more helpful, teach how marijuana can be used as wisely as possible; don't aid and abet the Drug Warriors by falling into their game of demonizing substances: teach wise use!!!!!!!!!! The Drug War is a demonization campaign and the enforcement of Christian Science with respect to psychoactive medicine. There are no such things as drugs as defined by the Drug Warrior, since there are no substances that have no good uses, ever, for anyone. Even Botox and cyanide have reasonable uses. Moreover, psychoactive meds have inspired entire religions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




October 19, 2022



Brian couldn't help himself, he launched a second barrage five minutes later. (This is why I tell Brian not to read tweets at the end of a busy day.)



The DEA made marijuana deadly in the '80s by spraying it with paraquat, a weed killer that causes Parkinson's Disease.

Your work gives great solace to those who are Nazifying the language over drugs, causing civil wars overseas, killing thousands of inner-city blacks each year, denying morphine 7 to kids in hospice. censoring scientists who cannot study drugs that might cure Alzheimer's. Your book stokes the fire of substance demonization that has turned the world into a police state and eggs on the DEA who raided Monticello 8 in 1987 in violation of natural law. PLEASE!!! Stop demonizing, start teaching. Your Drug War has created a psychiatric pill mill 9 to which 1 in 4 women are addicted and upon which I've been a "junkie" my entire life. I've yet to see any author wring their hands about MY fate. No, I'm paying lifetime annuities to Big Pharma stockholders.


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.



Author's Follow-up:

May 28, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




In re-reading this five-year-old essay of mine, I feel that I was too accommodating "by half" (as the Brits would say) toward the prohibitionist mindset. The fearmongering about "pot addicts" is rich coming from an author who ignores the biggest dependence-causing dystopia of all time: the fact that 1 in 4 American women are dependent on Big Pharma drugs for life10. Besides, if "pot" can be described as addictive, then so can antidepressant use11. But it matters little, in any case, because there is little difference from the user's point of view between addiction and dependence. Psychiatrists seem to think that it is fine to be dependent on drugs but it is evil to be addicted to them, probably because the downsides of dependency do not bother psychiatrists: the dependent user who goes without an habitually used drug will merely wish they were dead, silently, behind closed doors -- no muss, no fuss for the doctor -- whereas an addict may actually pester the doctor for relief.

But let me express my scruples about Annie Lowrey's piece in the following metaphorical analogy.

It is the year 2100 and our demagogue leader has outlawed all food but gruel. You hate gruel and are hoping that the absurd food policy will change. So you open today's newspaper, hoping to find op-ed pieces by pundits who are pushing back against the outrageous status quo of food prohibition. Instead of finding any principled pushback against food prohibition, however, you find an article with the headline: "Gruel Addicts," in which the author makes hay out of the fact that some people overdo it when it comes to the consumption of the plebian porridge. And you think to yourself: "Well, that's hardly a surprise, that they should eat too much gruel, in light of the fact that our government has outlawed everything else!" You are frustrated because the author of the piece is blaming gruel, the one food that is still legal, for problems caused by food prohibition itself. It's as if the politically correct author were writing with the goal of making you starve entirely, physically speaking, by seeing to it that we outlaw ALL foods -- just as the weed-basher in our current legal environment is writing with the goal of making you starve entirely, psychologically speaking, by seeing to it that we outlaw ALL drugs.

I draw these conclusions because the prohibitionist mindset believes that it is "one strike, you're out" when it comes to downsides. We have a seemingly limitless risk tolerance for dangerous hobbies like mountain climbing, parkour, and parachuting -- not to mention smoking and drinking -- but when it comes to drug use, we have no risk tolerance whatsoever. To the contrary, we have the following selfish and superstitious belief: namely, that a substance that can be problematic when used by a white American young person at one dose for one reason, must not be used by anyone at any dose for any reason.

Finally, a word about the downsides of dependency. Psychiatrists see no downsides to dependency because they are in the driver's seat viz. their depressed patients. They have a job for life thanks to the drug-dependent status of their clients. If these doctors would take a moment to consider the status quo from the point of view of their clients, however, they would see things differently. They would realize that this dependency on Big Pharma 12 13 drugs turns their clients into patients for life, which is a disempowering outcome by definition, one that humiliates their clients and never lets them forget their subservient and sickly status14. This warped status quo may be fine for hypochondriacs and masochists, but it eventually gets "old" for any self-respecting psychiatric outpatient -- we might even say that this power imbalance gets old in direct proportion as the patients themselves get old. The older they become, the more they find themselves humiliated by their reliance on the medical state. They begin to feel like the Ancient Mariner, forced to sail into Healthcare Harbor every three months of their lives to repeat their life stories to strangers less than half their age, all for the privilege of being allowed to purchase yet another in a long series of expensive and underperforming prescriptions.

This is one of my many motivations for getting off Effexor15 entirely, to renounce my long-standing status as eternal patient, a goal which, I am happy to say, is now going to plan, despite a few initial missteps on my part. Unfortunately, however, I cannot discuss the deets of my drug-aided withdrawal process since we all know that to talk favorably about demonized substances is to "give medical advice," right? Oh, yes, of course. And for medical advice, we need to see our doctors, right? In other words, we need to see the guys who got us started on dependence-causing drugs in the first place -- on drugs for which dependency was considered to be a feature, not a bug.16

Of course, this unspoken law against giving medical advice online is just a way of shutting down free speech about drugs. Purveyors of privileged drugs like alcohol never abide by that law. Take The Jim Beam whiskey company for example: they give medical advice every day of the week in their primetime television ads, which tell young people that they can become relaxed and sociable by taking generous pulls on a whiskey bottle17.

Three closing thoughts:

1) There will always be casualties of freedom. We accept this well-known and common-sense fact in evaluating every dangerous activity in the world... except for drug use. When it comes to drugs, our childish attitude toward risk is simply "one strike, you're out."

2) If we really take exception to the lifestyles of the pot-obsessed, we would teach them how to use other drugs that promote the user outcomes that our modern Tartuffes would consider more "meet and seemly" than weed-smoking. But then Drug Warriors of Annie's stamp are not out to encourage a diversity of experiences. They are out to end all drug-aided mind improvement by judging drugs based only on the analysis of misuse and abuse -- and a subjective analysis at that, like that found in the op-ed pieces of the Annie Lowreys of the world, pundits who have set themselves up as high-and-mighty judges, to announce to the world that "they are not amused" when it comes to this or that outcome of drug use. This, indeed, is a national pastime for modern pundits: to advise us of the latest ways in which demonized substances can be misused, according to the pundit's own definition of that term. Such pundits ignore the following inconvenient truth: namely, that our society refuses "on principle" to educate people as to safe use. Based on what principle, you ask? Answer: Based on the warped idea that ignorance and fear is better than knowledge when it comes to psychoactive medicines.

3) This attempt on the part of Drug Warriors to demonize marijuana, one of the few drugs that has started to slip through the tight sieve of drug prohibition, reminds me of a scene in "Are You Being Served?", a British sitcom from the 1970s. To be specific, I am reminded of a joke retailed by Young Mr. Grace, the elderly owner of Grace Brothers, the department store in which the action is set. The joke concerns a doctor who is evaluating the health of a patient who is covered entirely in bandages except for one eye. The doctor takes one look at the patient and says: "I don't like the look of that eye."

OBJECTIONS

Some readers will object as follows: "What is wrong with pointing out drug-aided lifestyles that some people view as problematic?"

Answer: Nothing would be wrong with this in a free and sane world, one in which we respond to accounts of drug-related deaths in the same way that we respond to accounts of deaths in automobile accidents: that is, through safety education. In such a free world, everybody would be welcome to express their ideas about what constitutes the ideal life. But we live in the age of a Drug War in which our conglomerate media censors all stories about positive drug use. In such a world, all stories about drug downsides are propaganda, even if they happen to be true in and of themselves. They are propaganda because they are part of an orchestrated campaign by the self-interested status quo to cast all drug use in a negative light -- not necessarily by lying about drug use, but simply by suppressing those stories that do not support the prohibitionist party line that outlawed substances can have no positive uses whatsoever.









Notes for essay entitled Marijuana Critics Just Don't Get It: It's the criminalization, stupid!:

1: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
2: “National Coalition for Drug Legalization.” n.d. National Coalition for Drug Legalization. https://www.nationalcoalitionfordruglegalization.org/. (up)
3: Firearm Violence in the United States Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Johns Hopkins University (up)
4: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
5: “Freud on Cocaine : Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2023. Internet Archive. 2023. https://archive.org/details/freudoncocaine0000freu/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater. (up)
6: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
7: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)
8: The Dark Side of the Monticello Foundation DWP (up)
9: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
10: Good Chemistry: The Science of Connection, from Soul to Psychedelics Holland, Julie, HarperWave, New York, 2020 (up)
11: Addiction DWP (up)
12: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
13: LaMattina, John. n.d. “Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of the FDA’s Drug Division Budget?” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2022/09/22/why-is-biopharma-paying-75-of-the-fdas-drug-division-budget/. (up)
14: How Psychiatry and the Drug War turned me into an eternal patient DWP (up)
15: How Drug Prohibition makes it impossible to get off of Effexor and other Big Pharma drugs DWP (up)
16: Mad at Mad in America DWP (up)
17: Jim Beam and Drugs DWP (up)




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Ten Tweets

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When scientists discuss suicide without mentioning the fact that their government has outlawed drugs, it is like scientists discussing deaths from bacterial infection without mentioning the fact that their government has outlawed antibiotics.

National Geo published an article entitled "Coca: a Blessing and a Curse." Coca was never a curse. Most people used it wisely, just as most people drink wisely. Doctors demonized it because it really worked and it could put them out of business. https://abolishthedea.com/sigmund_freuds_real_breakthrough_was_not_psychoanalysis.php

There are hundreds of things that we should outlaw before drugs (like horseback riding) if, as claimed, we are targeting dangerous activities. Besides, drugs are only dangerous BECAUSE of prohibition, which compromises product purity and refuses to teach safe use.

A law proposed in Colorado in February 2024 would have criminalized positive talk about drugs online. What? The world is on the brink of nuclear war because of hate-driven politics, and I can be arrested for singing the praises of empathogens?

Med-dependent patients of the world, unite -- to end drug prohibition, that is. You have nothing to lose but your prescription bottles and your status as a ward of the healthcare state.

There is more hope in dope than there is in the psychiatric pill mill.

Two of the biggest promoters of the psychedelic renaissance shuffle their feet when you ask them about substance prohibition. Michael Pollan and Rick Strassman just don't get it: prohibition kills.

If daily drug use and dependency are okay, then there's no logical or scientific reason why I can't smoke a nightly opium pipe.

If opium were legal, then most of the nostrums peddled by drug stores today would be irrelevant. (No wonder the drug war has staying power!)

A Pennsylvanian politician now wants the US Army to "fight fentanyl." The guy is anthropomorphizing a damn drug! No wonder pols don't want to spend money on education, because any educated country would laugh a superstitious guy like that right out of public office.


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