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Open letter to Kenneth Sewell

author of Red Star Rogue

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

June 19, 2022



Dear Mr. Sewell:

Regarding the epilogue to Red Star Rogue:

I was sorry to see that you equated the use of submarines for drug dealing with the use of submarines for launching nuclear weapons, as if there's any relationship whatsoever.

Drug prohibition causes thousands of deaths in inner cities every year (almost 800 in Chicago alone in 2021) because prohibition has created drug gangs out of whole cloth in poor neighborhoods. The Drug War has caused civil wars overseas ab nihilo and emboldened a self-described Drug War Hitler in the Philippines. It has disfranchised millions of minorities, thereby ensuring the election of fascists. Nor has it stopped people from using drugs. America is now the most drug-using country in the world. One in 4 American women are chemically dependent upon Big Pharma 1 2 meds for their entire life, the biggest addiction crisis in world history, many times more than were ever habituated to opium 3 (like Benjamin Franklin) before the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 turned them from "habitues" into "addicts" overnight. The Drug War also caused the opioid crisis because its crackdown on less harmful medicines naturally encouraged drug dealers to deal the most readily available controlled substances (like legally prescribed pain killers). On a personal note, as a chronically depressed 64-year-old, I have gone my whole life now without godsend medicines that grow at my feet, all because America violated natural law by criminalizing plants and fungi. (Jefferson was rolling in his grave when the DEA stomped onto Monticello 4 in 1987 and confiscated his poppy plants.)

The nuclear risk is so high today precisely because our presidents were focusing on catching people who were selling godsend plant medicine rather than using the money to fight nuclear proliferation and increase world understanding.

What did Nixon do almost immediately after the Red Star Rogue incident (the near thermonuclear obliteration of Pearl Harbor)? He launched a "War on Drugs," in which he outlawed naturally occurring medicines that had inspired entire religions in the past. What did Reagan do almost immediately after the Air Force almost destroyed half the country in "The Damascus Incident"? He cracked down on psychoactive plant medicine, much of which could help human beings become less belligerent and less reliant on military solutions to world problems, and called on children to turn in their parents for using plant medicine of which he disapproved.

You surely have to admit that the only hope for humanity, considering the facts on the ground that you enumerate, is to have a change of heart - and there is only one way for that to happen: for people to begin USING entheogens and empathogens: substances like MDMA 5 and psilocybin that can actually teach an individual how to love their fellow human beings.

In light of these facts, I found it jarring for you to end your book on the Red Star incident by implying that drug dealing was on a par with blowing up Pearl Harbor or any other city.

"Drugs" is a political term, a scapegoat invention of conservatives that allows them to ignore real social problems and blame all trouble on inanimate substances (while intervening overseas at will, of course, on the pretense of eradicating "drugs"). Until 1914, all intelligent people knew that substances were only good or bad with reference to how they were actually used. But the Drug War tells us that such substances are evil in and of themselves, which is a point of view which has blinded us to endless life-affirming therapies, even preventing us from helping Alzheimer's 6 patients and those with autism, let alone those who are depressed.

If the world is in precarious shape today and under a nuclear sword of Damocles, it is in large part because our leaders (like Nixon and Reagan) have sought to deflect attention from that issue and focus the American mind instead on the political boogieman called "drugs."

So I submit to you that drug dealers with submarines are not the problem.

I just hope America realizes this before my published warnings on this topic become an extant reproof to a future generation that ends up scrounging through the ruins of a burnt-out American city.

I'd personally rather have a flotilla of submarines dealing psychoactive plant medicines hand over fist in every port on earth - than to have even one populous city obliterated by a nuclear weapon.

America has to choose: do we want world peace, or do we want a war on the strategically created boogieman called "drugs"?

Let's hope we make a better choice than the Brits, who shut down the unprecedentedly peaceful rave scene in the 1990s because a "drug" helped inspire the harmony. The result: peace, love and understanding disappeared overnight, as empathogenic Ecstasy was replaced by anger-facilitating alcohol and special forces troops had to be hired to keep the peace. Another "victory" for the addle-brained "War on Drugs."











Notes:

1: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
2: 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)
3: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
4: The Dark Side of the Monticello Foundation DWP (up)
5: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
6: What the Honey Trick Tells us about Drug Prohibition DWP (up)




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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




NOW is the time for entheogens -- not (as Strassman and Pollan seem to think) at some future date when materialists have finally wrapped their minds around the potential usefulness of drugs that experientially teach compassion.

Health is not a quality, it's a balance. To decide drug legality based on 'health' grounds thus opens a Pandora's box of different points of view.

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!)

Now drug warriors have nitrous oxide in their sights, the substance that inspired the philosophy of William James. They're using the same tired MO: focusing exclusively on potential downsides and never mentioning the benefits of use, and/or denying that any exist.

In the 19th century, author Richard Middleton wrote how poets would get together to use opium "in a series of magnificent quarterly carouses."

Ann Lemke's case studies make the usual assumptions: getting free from addiction is a morality tale. No reference to how the drug war promotes addiction and how banned drugs could solve such problems. She does not say why daily SSRI use is acceptable while daily opium use is not. Etc.

Amphetamines are "meds" when they help kids think more clearly but they are "drugs" when they help adults think more clearly. That shows you just how bewildered Americans are when it comes to drugs.

Trump's lies about America's voting process are typical NAZI and DRUG WAR strategy: raise mendacious doubts about whatever you want to destroy and keep repeating them. It's what Joseph Goebbels called "The Big Lie."

If we can go overseas to burn poppy plants, then Islamic countries should be free to come to the United States to burn our grape vines.

Over 45% of traumatic brain injuries are caused by horseback riding (ABC News). Tell your representatives to outlaw horseback riding and make it a federal offence to teach a child how to ride! Brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.


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






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