bird icon for twitter bird icon for twitter


Open Letter to Congressman Ben Cline, asking him to abolish the criminal DEA

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

July 2, 2020



Please tell the DEA to stop criminalizing research into godsend medicines. My mother has symptoms of dementia, and so many psychoactive plants show great promise in treating and even reversing it. Yet the CRIMINAL DEA criminalizes research on almost all such psychoactive substances. This is the same agency that poisoned Americans in the 1980s with Paraquat sprayed on marijuana. Paraquat has since been shown to cause Parkinson's Disease. So the DEA not only lies about substances that could possibly cure Alzheimer's disease, but they purposefully poison their own people (Americans) with CHEMICAL WEAPONS. ABOLISH the hateful DEA -- the anti-minority DEA -- the anti-nature DEA -- the anti-RESEARCH DEA -- and let my mother have peace in her final years. AND PUT FORMER DEA CHIEF JOHN C LAWN ON TRIAL for crimes against humanity1 for using chemical weapons against his own people.




May 9, 2022
The DEA has been lying about plant medicine in its so-called "scheduling" system since its creation in 1973, and yet to my knowledge, Brian is the only one who has ever called for the DEA to be criminally charged for this deceit -- the only one -- and yet it is a deceit which has caused endless anguish to billions around the world. American soldiers have had to go without a godsend treatment for PTSD for almost 40 years now after the DEA went against the advice of its own counsel to criminalize MDMA 2 in 1985. This deceit has also condemned Brian himself to a lifetime dependency on Big Pharma 3 4 meds. The fact that only one American, Brian, has ever asked for this crime to be punished demonstrates how bamboozled Americans have become about the politically created boogieman called "drugs," and it's no surprise -- given that we are all indoctrinated from childhood (in special classes organized by the teddy bear-toting local police force) to fear and loathe naturally occurring psychoactive substances, rather than to learn everything we can about them. Merely to start learning about prohibited substances is heresy these days because we're asked to hate substances that have been politically labeled as "drugs," not to understand them.

Politicians created the whole category of "drugs" insomuch as that term means "substances which are to be hated, feared and criminalized rather than studied and understood." In doing so, politicians created the drug problem. By constantly screaming "DRUGS!" they sent the following message to kids: "Hey, kids! Whatever you do, don't use these particular substances that we are screaming bloody hell about!" Well, of course, the rebellious kids pricked up their ears: "What? There are cool substances out there that our parents don't want us to use. Where can I find some of THOSE!?"

Then the politicians point to this obsession with drugs that they themselves have created and say, "See, we need a Drug War!" And don't hold your breath waiting to hear about responsible use of hated substances, like the fact that HG Wells and Jules Verne used coca wine when writing their famous stories, or that Marcus Aurelius and Benjamin Franklin enjoyed opium 5 , etc. The drug-war narrative is all about typically clueless white kids misusing the substances about which the Drug War enforces ignorance by law, literally censoring scientists from learning about the godsend medicines of which pharmacologically clueless politicians disapprove.

While the Drug Warrior "protects" white American kids with lies and half-truths about "drugs," they travel overseas to fight the drug cartels that America has created out of whole cloth with its unconstitutional war on godsend plant medicine.

They think that if they can save one Caucasian child from drug abuse, then the Drug War will be worth it, failing to realize that their Drug War is responsible for thousands of inner-city deaths every year in America due to gun violence 6 -- the violence that naturally follows prohibition. Over 800 blacks were killed this way in 2021 in Chicago alone and yet the Drug Warrior prides themselves for scaring white kids away from making a bad decision -- which is the only kind of decision that they can make about drugs in a Drug War society in which we prioritize fear over facts and incarceration 7 over education.




Notes:

1: Drug Prohibition is a crime against humantiy DWP (up)
2: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
3: How Drug Company Money Is Undermining Science Seife, Charles, Scientific American, 2012 (up)
4: Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of The FDA’s Drug Division Budget? LaMartinna, John, Forbes, 2022 (up)
5: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
6: Firearm Violence in the United States Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Johns Hopkins University (up)
7: Inner-City Violence in the Age of Mass Incarceration Thompson, Heather Ann, The Atlantic, 2014 (up)


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 don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.

Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the drug war ideology of substance demonization.



  • Chomsky is Right
  • Chomsky's Revenge
  • David Chalmers and the Drug War
  • Finally, a drug war opponent who checks all my boxes
  • Glenn Close but no cigar
  • How the US Preventive Services Task Force Drums Up Business for Big Pharma
  • Just Say No to Surveillance Capitalism
  • Letter to Lamar Alexander
  • Noam Chomsky on Drugs
  • Open Letter to Anthony Gottlieb
  • Open Letter to Congressman Ben Cline, asking him to abolish the criminal DEA
  • Open letter to Professor Troy Glover at Waterloo University
  • Spike Lee is Bamboozled by the Drug War
  • The Invisible Mass Shootings
  • Top 10 Problems with the Drug War
  • Tweet to Alex Adams
  • Why the Drug War is far worse than a failure
  • Why the Drug War is Worse than you can Imagine
  • America's Blind Spot
  • Canadian Drug Warrior, I said Get Away
  • Common Sense Drug Withdrawal
  • Drug War Murderers
  • Drugs are not the problem
  • End the Drug War Now
  • Feedback on my first legal psilocybin session in Oregon
  • Finally, a drug war opponent who checks all my boxes
  • Freedom of Religion and the War on Drugs
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war
  • God and Drugs
  • Hello? MDMA works, already!
  • How Addiction Scientists Reckon without the Drug War
  • How National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of coca
  • How Scientific American reckons without the drug war
  • How the Drug War is Threatening Intellectual Freedom in England
  • How the Drug War Outlaws Criticism of Immanuel Kant
  • How the Monticello Foundation betrayed Jefferson's Legacy in 1987
  • How the US Preventive Services Task Force Drums Up Business for Big Pharma
  • I'll See Your Antidepressants and Raise You One Huachuma Cactus
  • Ignorance is the enemy, not Fentanyl
  • Illusions with Professor Arthur Shapiro
  • In Defense of Religious Drug Use
  • Keep Laughing Gas Legal
  • MDMA for Psychotherapy
  • My Realistic Plan for Getting off of Big Pharma Drugs and why it's so hard to implement
  • No drugs are bad in and of themselves
  • Open Letter to Addiction Specialist Gabor Mate
  • Open Letter to Anthony Gottlieb
  • Open Letter to Congressman Ben Cline, asking him to abolish the criminal DEA
  • Open Letter to Diane O'Leary
  • Open Letter to Erica Zelfand
  • Open Letter to Francis Fukuyama
  • Open letter to Kenneth Sewell
  • Open Letter to Lisa Ling
  • Open letter to Professor Troy Glover at Waterloo University
  • Open Letter to Richard Hammersley
  • Open Letter to Rick Doblin and Roland Griffiths
  • Open Letter to Roy Benaroch MD
  • Open Letter to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
  • Open Letter to the Virginia Legislature
  • Open Letter to Variety Critic Owen Glieberman
  • Open Letter to Vincent Hurley, Lecturer
  • Open Letter to Vincent Rado
  • Open letter to Wolfgang Smith
  • Predictive Policing in the Age of the Drug War
  • Prohibitionists Never Learn
  • Regulate and Educate
  • Replacing antidepressants with entheogens
  • Review of When Plants Dream
  • Science News Continues to Ignore the Drug War
  • Science News magazine continues to pretend that there is no war on drugs
  • Solquinox sounded great, until I found out I wasn't invited
  • Speaking Truth to Big Pharma
  • Teenagers and Cannabis
  • The common sense way to get off of antidepressants
  • The Criminalization of Nitrous Oxide is No Laughing Matter
  • The Depressing Truth About SSRIs
  • The Invisible Mass Shootings
  • The Menace of the Drug War
  • The problem with Modern Drug Reform Efforts
  • The Pseudoscience of Mental Health Treatment
  • There is nothing to debate: the drug war is wrong, root and branch
  • Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war lies
  • Top 10 Problems with the Drug War
  • Unscientific American
  • Using plants and fungi to get off of antidepressants
  • Vancouver Police Seek to Eradicate Safe Use
  • Weed Bashing at WTOP.COM
  • Whitehead and Psychedelics
  • Why DARE should stop telling kids to say no
  • Why Rick Doblin is Ghosting Me
  • Why the Drug War is Worse than you can Imagine
  • Why the FDA is not qualified to judge psychoactive medicine





  • Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    Science keeps telling us that godsends have not been "proven" to work. What? To say that psilocybin has not been proven to work is like saying that a hammer has not yet been proven to smash glass. Why not? Because the process has not yet been studied under a microscope.

    The FDA says that MindMed's LSD drug works. But this is the agency that has not been able to decide for decades now if coca "works," or if laughing gas "works." It's not just science going on at the FDA, it's materialist presuppositions about what constitutes evidence.

    Addiction thrives BECAUSE of prohibition, which limits drug choice and discourages education about psychoactive substances and how to use them wisely.

    No substance is bad in and of itself. Fentanyl has positive uses, at specific doses, for specific people, in specific situations. But the drug war votes substance up or down. That is hugely anti-scientific and it blocks human progress.

    Q: Where can you find almost-verbatim copies of the descriptions of religious experiences described by William James? A: In descriptions of user reports of "trips" on drugs ranging from coca to opium, from MDMA to laughing gas.

    Americans believe scientists when they say that drugs like MDMA are not proven effective. That's false. They are super effective and obviously so. It's just that science holds entheogenic medicines to the standards of reductive materialism. That's unfair and inappropriate.

    Oregon has decided to go back to the braindead plan of treating substance use as a police matter. Might as well arrest people at home since America has already spread their drug-hating Christian Science religion all over the world.

    Proof that materialism is wrong is "in the pudding." It is why scientists are not calling for the use of laughing gas and MDMA by the suicidal. Because they refuse to recognize anything that's obvious. They want their cures to be demonstrated under a microscope.

    Drug testing should flag impairment only. Any other use is a flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment.

    ECT is like euthanasia. Neither make sense in the age of prohibition.


    Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






    Cop shows as drug war propaganda
    Why the Drug War is Christian Science Sharia


    This site uses no cookies! This site features no ads!



    Thanks for visiting The Drug War Philosopher at abolishthedea.com, featuring essays against America's disgraceful drug war. Updated daily.

    Copyright 2025, Brian Ballard Quass Contact: quass@quass.com


    (up)