an open letter to Steven Urquhart, founder of the Divine Assembly
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
October 24, 2024
ear Steve:
I enjoyed your video on psilocybin and TDA (the Divine Assembly1).
You mentioned at one point that the Salt Lake City Police Chief indicated that he had a lot of other things to focus on than arresting mushroom users. This sounds very enlightened, except that he probably means that he is busy cracking heads over OTHER drugs like opiates and cocaine. This is why I like to say that
the Drug War is a make-work program for law enforcement...
and the "mulligan" that is currently being given to psychedelic use does not change that fact, especially since the police are acting (or withholding action) for practical reasons, not constitutional or common sense reasons, not, that is, based on any pro-human principles. This "mulligan" can also be considered racist, as you yourself acknowledge, since such leniency as you receive would surely not be extended to minority communities who had not surrounded their drug use with noble allusions to human freedom and for whom the amassing of a cadre of stand-by lawyers was completely out of the question economically speaking.
So while it's great that the police are not going to go after YOU and your followers for using mushrooms, it should be remembered that this is only because they are going after thousands of other drug users, based on America's warped idea that bureaucrats and scientists can tell us if a psychoactive drug has positive effects. But this is wrong. It is what philosophers call a category error to put a materialist in charge of opining on the utility and importance of drugs that expand consciousness and increase spirituality. As James Fadiman believes, it is human experience ("citizen science") that determines efficacy of such substances, not the reductionist evaluation that a modern teetotaling and skeptical Dr. Spock of Star Trek might make by looking under a microscope2.
So are we really going to sit back calmly as the FDA tells us that MDMA is not worth the risks, a substance that could help us prevent school shootings by helping hotheads experience empathy? In so ruling, the FDA is not making a scientific judgement; they are deciding instead upon what we should value as free citizens of a democracy, namely 100% safety in preference to peace, love and understanding. But that's a bureaucratic conclusion based on the Drug War ideology of substance demonization. It shows how far out of touch the scientific community is when it comes to psychoactive medicines: they are, in fact, dogmatically blind to any and all absolutely obvious benefits of use. And needless to say, this obsession for 100% safety is extremely hypocritical, coming from an agency that believes in the power of brain-damaging shock therapy3 and the psychedelic pill mill upon which 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life -- the same FDA that approves drugs whose side effects as advertised on prime-time TV include DEATH ITSELF!
If the police chief wanted to help, he would stop cracking down on ALL drug use and encourage education and regulated supply. We've tried punishment for 100+ years now, and where has it gotten us? We are no longer a free country thanks to drug law, which has destroyed the 4th amendment and is eating away at the first amendment. Before 1914, Americans used opium peaceably in their own homes; thanks to the Drug War, kids are now using opiates in the street. Where do we want them to go next? To Mars!? Nor are they dying because of opiates. Drug warriors are challenged when it comes to the idea of subtlety, but overdoses are being caused today by uncertain and contaminated drug supply, not by drug use per se. There was no national overdose crisis when one was allowed to use regulated product at home.
Indeed, the downsides of the Drug War are just too huge to be seen. It throws millions of minorities in jail, and it takes no pundit to tell us that this would have a major effect on our national elections where presidents win by a handful of votes.
Moreover, as Heather Ann Thompson wrote in The Atlantic in 2014:
"Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist."
Today, we have no-go zones in every major (and some minor) American cities -- and everyone knows that there are major cities in every Latin American country that are impassable thanks to the Drug War. Why do we continue with the Drug War, then? Easy. By willful blindness to the facts. The mass media no longer even connects the Drug War with inner city violence and Mexican civil wars. Just read most any story about inner-city violence from a media conglomerate and you'll see all sorts of quotes from puzzled people asking: "Why are these places so damn violent?" 456
But it's important to the powers that be that we never associate this dystopia with the Drug War, even though we know that liquor prohibition created the Mafia as we know it today, and so the hydra-headed downsides of prohibition should be perfectly understandable to everybody. (Of course, the Drug War is the epitome of "denial" -- and so Drug Warriors are always eager to blame all the downsides of prohibition on drugs themselves -- creating a vicious circle that keeps our prisons packed with minorities.)
And what about Mexico's stance on that Drug War? Is it not hateful in the EXTREME? When President Obrador was asked about a woman who was seeking to learn the fate of the 60,000 "disappeared" in Mexico because of the Drug War, he claimed the woman was a necrophiliac7.
In other words, I submit the following, Steve:
The Drug War is wrong root and branch. It is guided by hate. It is always wrong to decide in advance that there are no positive uses for a drug -- especially when one reaches that conclusion by ignoring all historical benefits of drug use, as for instance the war on opiates is based on a very biased view of the Opium Wars, based on an American missionary's lie that the drug was killing millions in China8. Lies, lies, lies. Just like the 1980s lie that "drugs" fry the brain (as if that statement even makes sense when one fails to specify the drug in question!) Not only is that false, but opium had positive uses. The Chinese were not beating up their wives, as were the well-heeled drunks who supported the Anti-Opium movement in 19th-century England.
I am not disagreeing with you Steve, however; I am merely suggesting that you might have been even more right than you yourself believed when you stated that you were in a privileged position to advocate for change. I think it's worth remembering that the cops may be cutting the psychedelic movement slack for the wrong reasons: i.e., because they are using drugs that seemingly intelligent white mainstream males are now favoring.
Open Letters
Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.
I used to be surprised at this reticence on the part of modern drug-war pundits, until I realized that most of them are materialists. That is, most of them believe in (or claim to believe in) the psychiatric pill mill. If they happen to praise psychedelic drugs as a godsend for the depressed, they will yet tell us that such substances are only for those whose finicky body chemistries fail to respond appropriately to SSRIs and SNRIs. The fact is, however, there are thousands of medicines out there that can help with psychological issues -- and this is based on simple psychological common sense. But materialist scientists ignore common sense. That's why Dr. Robert Glatter wrote an article in Forbes magazine wondering if laughing gas could help the depressed.
As a lifelong depressive, I am embarrassed for Robert, that he has to even ask such a question. Of course laughing gas could help. Not only is laughter "the best medicine," as Readers Digest has told us for years, but looking forward to laughing is beneficial too. But materialist scientists ignore anecdote and history and tell us that THEY will be the judge of psychoactive medicines, thank you very much. And they will NOT judge such medicines by asking folks like myself if they work but rather by looking under a microscope to see if they work in the biochemical way that materialists expect.
I passed a sign that says "Trust Trump." What does that mean? Trust him to crack down on his opposition using the U.S. Army? Or trust him not to do all the anti-American things that he's saying he's going to do.
I'm looking for a United Healthcare doctor now that I'm 66 years old. When I searched my zip code and typed "alternative medicine," I got one single solitary return... for a chiropractor, no less. Some choice. Guess everyone else wants me to "keep taking my meds."
The scheduling system is a huge lie designed to give an aura of "science" to America's colonialist disdain for indigenous medicines, from opium, to coca, to shrooms.
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.
"Now, now, Sherlock, that coca preparation is not helping you a jot. Why can't you get 'high on sunshine,' like good old Watson here?" To which Sherlock replies: "But my good fellow, then I would no longer BE Sherlock Holmes."
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???
It's always wrong to demonize drugs in the abstract. That's anti-scientific. It begs so many questions and leaves suffering pain patients (and others) high and dry. No substance is bad in and of itself.
If there were no other problem with antidepressants, they would be wrong for the simple reason that they make a user dependent for life -- not as a bug (as in drugs like opium) but rather as a feature: that's how they "work," by being administered daily for a lifetime.
In 1886, coca enthusiast JJ Tschudi referred to prohibitionists as 'kickers.' He wrote: "If we were to listen to these kickers, most of us would die of hunger, for the reason that nearly everything we eat or drink has fallen under their ban."
I, for one, am actually TRYING to recommend drugs like MDMA and psilocybin as substitutes for shock therapy. In fact, I would recommend almost ANY pick-me-up drug as an alternative to knowingly damaging the human brain. That's more than the hateful DEA can say.
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, No drugs are bad in and of themselves: an open letter to Steven Urquhart, founder of the Divine Assembly, published on October 24, 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)
ear Steve:
You have been reading an article entitled, No drugs are bad in and of themselves: an open letter to Steven Urquhart, founder of the Divine Assembly, published on October 24, 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)