Not Using is Always Safer?
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
April 27, 2021
At the risk of getting banned, I would like to respectfully disagree with the final sentence in the r/Drugs Reddit description, which reads: "Not using is always safer."
This is a misleading oversimplification, which only makes sense if we tacitly agree with the hypocritical Drug Warrior definition of the word "drugs," as evil substances that cannot be used for good purposes. But this demonization of amoral substances is an American invention. No one thought this way about "drugs" in the past.
If Ancient Egyptians were told that "not using is always safer," Pharaoh Ramses III would have replied: "Nonsense. When I have a toothache, I'm going to use opium as usual!"
If you had told Freud that not using cocaine was safer, he would have replied: "Safer than what? If I don't use cocaine to help me rise above my depression, I will not achieve self-fulfillment in life. I might then commit suicide. How safe is that, exactly?"
American fighter pilots have been given amphetamines before long missions precisely in order to KEEP them safe by keeping them as alert as possible. Would the pilots have been "safer" in that case if they had "just said no"?
I understand what the author meant when he or she typed "Not using is always safer," and no doubt SOMETHING like that needs to be said on a Reddit named after the politically-confused term called "drugs." I merely suggest that they find a more accurate way to say it. Because it is simply not true that "not using is always safer." That is just one of hundreds of Drug War myths by which Americans have been bamboozled over the last 100+ years of substance demonization.
That statement is not always true in the real world and makes sense only if we adopt the jaundiced religious view of Christian Science with respect to psychoactive substances, for it wasn't our scientists or our philosophers who first told us to say "no" to drugs, it was Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Christian Science religion. She believed drugs were not safe, of course, but only because using them imperiled our ability to find salvation the "right" way, namely through the religious figure known as Jesus Christ.
I'd like to add one follow-up:
The Ecstasy-fueled Rave scene was the most peaceful phenomenon in British history, where Blacks, Whites, Indians, etc. came together under one roof to dance. It couldn't have been safer. But Drug Warriors don't care about safety. They judge a person by the contents of their digestive system, not by the way that they actually behave. And so E was demonized and banned. And what was the result? Overnight, the rave scene became the most dangerous phenomenon in British history, full of guns and violence. Why? Because "users" turned to anger-facilitating drugs like alcohol. Rave venues suddenly had to be policed by Special Forces troops. Special Forces troops! So Drug Warriors don't really care about safety, they care about keeping people from obtaining states of mind of which politicians do not approve.
The Drug Warrior will scream that a single solitary dancer had died from E. Yes, but why did Leah Betts die? Because the Drug Warrior had demonized Ecstasy to the point where its scientific study was not even possible and therefore safe guidelines could not be developed to remind such ravers that they needed to keep hydrated while dancing.
The outlawing of cocaine alone has caused more deaths than any other drug law in American history and is even now spreading death, tyranny and destruction in Mexico and the Philippines. No, the Drug War is not about safety. The Drug War is about the American ability to control its people's thoughts, to prop up Big Pharma and Big Liquor, and to interfere in other countries at will, under the pretext of fighting the politically created boogieman called "drugs."
If we really believed that "not using" was always safer, we would all become Christian Scientists and ban alcohol and tobacco and even prosecute the psychiatric profession for addicting 1-in-4 American women to Big Pharma meds. But when we say such things, we aren't being sincere. We simply want to convince people of the patently false idea that substances somehow become unsafe the moment that they are demonized by politicians. That, of course, is just Drug War propaganda.
If Drug Warriors cared about safety, they would prevent future mass shootings by treating hateful people with ecstasy, thereby teaching them how to literally "feel" for their fellow human beings. But such obvious ideas never occur to a Drug War society. And why not? Because Drug Warriors are not interested in actual safety but rather in the ongoing demonization of substances of which politicians do not approve. And so alcohol can kill thousands daily and we don't bat an eyelash. But if "E" brings about mere world peace and only kills those who have not been taught to use it wisely, we declare war on "E" and tell the world that "not using it is always safer." (Guns kill 50,000-plus every year in America.)
Is it safer to do without alcohol? A consideration of Mediterranean diets would tell us no. We can't declare substances unsafe simply because they've been demonized by politicians. Safety cannot be judged in the abstract. It must be considered with regard to the context of actual use. Health is a balance of factors, not a thing in itself.
Author's Follow-up: August 30, 2022
Only fancy. I indited that apparently somewhat insightful broadside a whole year and a half ago now. Wow. "Not too shabby," as my editorial assistant would have it. If I regret any thing about that capricious sally, it's the fact that I may have not put my case forcefully enough. For I would go so far as to say that not only is it GOOD to use "drugs" (hear me now and believe me later...) but it's RIGHT, PROPER AND NECESSARY to use drugs if the world is to survive. Why? Because The only way to teach most human beings to love each other is by counseling them for that purpose while simultaneously dosing them with empathogens, i.e., godsend medicines such as MDMA and psilocybin.
Yes, there are medicines called empathogens (a subset of the useful group of entheogens) that can make us literally feel compassion for "the other," an ability which, let's face it, our species could definitely use some help with cultivating. Until we accept that proffered balm of empathogenic medicine, we will continue to have wars and rumors of wars.
With apologies to Thomas More, though, a utopia can be described in just one simple English half sentence: a world in which unthinking hatred is outlawed and punished by a stint of compassion therapy using the best entheogenic medicines available, such as MDMA and psilocybin.
That's why I call for a new world: one in which substances are legal but unreasoning hatred is a crime. In my world, no one's allowed to work at Burger King (let alone have their finger on a nuclear trigger) if they are filled with hate. Having hateful hearts is a luxury that the world cannot afford in the nuclear age. Outlaw hate and give free but informed access to those who seek transcendence with previously demonized substances.
Okay, this may not turn the world into hearts and roses, but it does have a real chance of ending school shootings and making the use of nuclear weapons truly unthinkable in the hearts of humanity.
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Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs
Anytime you hear that a psychoactive drug has not been proven to be effective, it's a lie. People can make such claims only by dogmatically ignoring all the glaringly obvious signs of efficacy.
When folks banned opium, they did not just ban a drug: they banned the philosophical and artistic insights that the drug has been known to inspire in writers like Poe, Lovecraft and De Quincey.
This is why the foes of suicide are doing absolutely nothing to get laughing gas into the hands of those who could benefit from it. Laughing is subjective after all. In the western tradition, we need a "REAL" cure to depression.
Even when laudanum was legal in the UK, pharmacists were serving as moral adjudicators, deciding for whom they should fill such prescriptions. That's not a pharmacist's role. We need an ABC-like set-up in which the cashier does not pry into my motives for buying a substance.
In the board game "Sky Team," you collect "coffees" to improve your flying skills. Funny how the use of any other brain-focusing "drug" in real life is considered to be an obvious sign of impairment.
Scientists are responsible for endless incarcerations in America. Why? Because they fail to denounce the DEA lie that psychoactive substances have no positive medical uses. This is so obviously wrong that only an academic in an Ivory Tower could believe it.
I'm grateful to the folks who are coming out of the woodwork at the last minute to deface their own properties with "Trump 2024" signs. Now I'll know who to thank should Trump get elected and sell us out to Putin.
Had we really wanted to "help" users, we would have used the endless godsends of Mother Nature and related synthetics to provide spirit-lifting alternatives to problem use. But no one wanted to treat users as normal humans. They wanted to pathologize and moralize their use.
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.
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.
More Tweets
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, Not Using is Always Safer? published on April 27, 2021 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)