find out if your favorite movies contain drug-war propaganda
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
August 16, 2023
Here are some warning flags for moviegoers that Common Sense will never show you. They're perfectly happy for viewers to be indoctrinated by Drug War lies and propaganda -- their only concern is that the propagandists do not use a dirty word that might corrupt junior! Now, if the movie convinces them to condone torture and murder in the name of the Drug War, that's just fine. Those are all-American values these days, after all, in the age of Christian Science Sharia, aka the War on Drugs.
"RUNNING WITH THE DEVIL" -- WARNING: CONTAINS DRUG WAR AGITPROP:
Suspects are hung from meathooks and tortured, all in the name of prosecuting a war on time-honored plant medicine.
"TRADER" -- WARNING: CONTAINS DRUG WAR AGITPROP: Script toes the Drug War party line that outlawed substances are immoral, even though the substances thus demonized have endless positive uses and are infinitely less dangerous than alcohol and tobacco. (They actually badmouth LSD and even Ecstasy! Sounds like the writers received one too many teddy bears as kids for saying no to godsend medicines. It's interesting, though, the trader unabashedly swallows speed -- diverted from fake prescriptions for ADHD kids -- to improve her mind for trading. AND THAT MAKES PERFECT SENSE! But when I saw that, I said to myself: the other shoe is about to fall: they'll have to let us know that this is evil of her: and sure enough, her mysterious male friend on the other side of the phone says (only half jokingly) that he's surprised this trader woman is so immoral as to use such substances. "There," I said to myself. "I knew it. They could not just let her use drugs to improve her game: they had to point out to the kiddies that such use is WRONG!" Propaganda and BS. The only question is, was the plot written by the White House as in Clinton's time.
"THE RUNNER" -- WARNING: CONTAINS RACIST DRUG WAR FANATICISM: Detective Wall calls a black teenager a 'waste of space' and blackmails a white teenager to narc on his schoolmate. Spoiler alert: The unarmed black teenager gets killed in a ridiculously irresponsible raid on a high-school dance, for which the detective nevertheless earns a medal!
"FOUR GOOD DAYS" -- WARNING: PROMOTES SUBSTANCE DEMONIZATION: Glenn Close is a wine-guzzling mother who lectures her daughter against her heroin 1 use, hypocritically sending her to an extremely expensive "treatment" facility whose bare-bones protocol consists of dumping the 'patient' on a cot and giving them a shot of Naltrexone, without so much as one godsend medicine to help them in their suffering. The movie reinforces the bogus notion that drugs are evil and that the answer to their use is a hypocritically defined sobriety. Of course, if Glenn Close wanted to experience MORE than four good days with her daughter, she would let the kid continue using heroin until such time as she's able to use any drug in the world to veer herself off that drug if and when she so desires (preferably with the help of a pharmacologically savvy empath). But the film promotes the superstitious idea that outlawed drugs are bad in and of themselves so drugs cannot be used to fix the young lady's problems. The result? Family spats drag on in the face of endless relapses and dubious promises to reform. The good news is, the prohibition that causes these problems generates no-doubt much-needed employment for addiction mongers, those whose workload depends on the outlawing of godsend medicines.
"COPS" -- WARNING: PROMOTES DRUG WAR RACISM: Glorifies2 the mistreatment of minorities in the name of the hateful Drug War. Parents, be sure to block junior's eyes and ears whenever the cops are hassling kids for using substances of which politicians disapprove, many of which grow at our feet and have inspired entire religions in the past.
Until prohibition ends, rehab is all about enforcing a Christian Science attitude toward psychoactive medicines (with the occasional hypocritical exception of Big Pharma meds).
The Shipiba have learned to heal human beings physically, psychologically and spiritually with what they call "onanyati," plant allies and guides, such as Bobinsana, which "envelops seekers in a cocoon of love." You know: what the DEA would call "junk."
We need to stop using the fact that people like opiates as an excuse to launch a crackdown on inner cities. We need to re-legalize popular meds, teach safe use, and come up with common sense ways to combat addictions by using drugs to fight drugs.
Drug testing labs are the modern Inquisitors. We are not judged by the content of our character, but by the content of our digestive systems.
We should no more arrest drug users than we arrest people for climbing sheer rock faces or for driving a car.
In "How to Change Your Mind," Michael Pollan says psychedelic legalization would endanger young people. What? Prohibition forces users to decide for themselves which mushrooms are toxic, or to risk buying contaminated product. And that's safe, Michael?
Both physical and psychological addiction can be successfully fought when we relegalize the pharmacopoeia and start to fight drugs with drugs. But prohibitionists do not want to end addiction, they want to scare us with it.
Here's the first step in the FDA process for evaluating a psychoactive drug:
Ignore all glaringly obvious benefits.
Drug prohibition is a crime against humanity. It is the outlawing of our right to take care of our own health.
Drug prohibition has resulted in hundreds of thousands of completely unnecessary deaths thanks to totally preventable drug overdoses!
Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.