Open Letter to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
August 4, 2020
With all due respect, the UNODC is part of the problem. The Drug War creates an absurd focus on 'drugs' as the modern boogeyman. Drugs are not the problem: the Drug War is the problem: The Drug War brings 'drugs' front and center in the public mind, giving kids wild ideas about making the wrong decisions. The Drug War is also Christian Science because it tells us that we cannot use plant medicine to improve our mental outlook. Marcus Aurelius and Benjamin Franklin used opium 1 . HG Wells and Jules Verne wrote their stories "on" coca wine. Plato himself used psychedelics at the Eleusinian Mysteries2. The Vedic religion was founded to worship a psychedelic plant. What gives you the right to jail me if I choose to do likewise? We don't need a War on Drugs. We need to legalize Mother Nature's plant medicines and to educate everyone about the effects (both good and bad) of all psychoactive substances, including wine, tobacco, and modern antidepressants 3 to which 1 in 4 American women are addicted. But we don't care about THAT drug problem, of course, since 'drugs', in the Drug Warrior mind, only refers to those substances that politicians have decided to demonize.
June 1, 2022
Oh, yeah: tell the truth and shame the devil, say I. That's the thing about the Internet: it lets you write directly to agencies that shouldn't even exist. It's all one can do to remain polite. One wants to write: "Dear UNODC, please disappear from the face of the earth. Thanks."
It's interesting that it wasn't enough for America to criminalize plants, it had to have the whole world follow suit. And now we have bureaucrats at the UN working 9 to 5 to make sure that no one on earth has access to the plant medicine that grows at their very feet, medicines that in the past have inspired entire religions. No, we all must be good little consumers and get our drugs (sorry, our "meds") from psychiatrists and Big Pharma . That's the thing about the War on Drugs: it's not designed to stop people from using drugs -- it's designed to get people using the RIGHT drugs, as that term is defined by Wall Street.
So, what has the Drug War accomplished in its 100+ years of life? America is now the most drug-using country in history, with depression rates higher than ever. America is also now home to the greatest mass chemical dependency in human history, as 1 in 4 American women are dependent on Big Pharma antidepressants for life. And America has the most prisoners per capita of any country on earth, thanks to this spectacularly failing Drug War. As for harm reduction, 100,000 still die each year from alcohol, half a million from tobacco. And we have an opioid epidemic caused directly by the fact that the Drug War incentivizes dealers to sell the most readily available and addictive stuff out there. Meanwhile, gun violence 4 is rampant in inner cities, with almost 800 deaths in Chicago alone in 2021, all of which are a direct result of the Drug War and its incentivization of spectacularly lucrative drug dealing.
Earth to UNODC, we need education, not incarceration 5 ; we need facts, not fear.
Author's Follow-up: September 21, 2022
Depression could be cured overnight if we legalized the coca leaf. But Wall Street, Law Enforcement and Big Pharma hate the idea. So they demonize coca based on its alkaloid called cocaine , failing to notice that coca and cocaine are two very different things. Outlawing coca because of cocaine 67 is like outlawing peaches because of prussic acid. The Drug War is all about politics and money, not about public health. In fact, it's anti-health since it outlaws godsends that could end the depression crisis in America -- which is taking place despite the fact that 1 in 4 American women are chemically dependent on Big Pharma 89 meds for life!
Conclusion: The Drug War is not about getting the world off of drugs: it's about getting the world ON the right drugs, as far as business and law enforcement are concerned.
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.
The Drug War is a religion. The "addict" is a sinner who has to come home to the true faith of Christian Science. In reality, neither physical nor psychological addiction need be a problem if all drugs were legal and we used them creatively to counter problematic use.
Reagan paid a personal price for his idiocy however. He fell victim to memory loss from Alzheimer's, after making a career out of demonizing substances that can grow new neurons in the brain!
The drug war is a slow-motion coup against democracy.
Cocaine use is a blessing for some, just a little fun for most, and a curse for a few. Just like any other risky activity. We need to educate people about drugs rather than endlessly arresting them for attempting to improve their mental power!
The line drawn between recreational and medical use is wishful thinking on the part of drug warriors. Recreation, according to Webster's, is "refreshment or diversion," and both have positive knock-on effects in the lives of real people.
Materialist scientists cannot triumph over addiction because their reductive focus blinds them to the obvious: namely, that drugs which cheer us up ACTUALLY DO cheer us up. Hence they keep looking for REAL cures while folks kill themselves for want of laughing gas and MDMA.
Drug warriors aren't just deciding for us about drugs. They're telling us that we no longer need Coleridge poems, Lovecraft stories, Robin Williams, Sherlock Holmes, or the soma-inspired Hindu religion.
I should have added to that last post: "I in no way want to glorify or condone drug demonization."
There are endless drugs that could help with depression. Any drug that inspires and elates is an antidepressant, partly by the effect itself and partly by the mood-elevation caused by anticipation of use (facts which are far too obvious for drug warriors to understand).
Champions of indigenous medicines claim that their medicines are not "drugs." But they miss the bigger point: that there are NO drugs in the sense that drug warriors use that term. There are no drugs that have no positive uses whatsoever.
The Drug War is a religion. The "addict" is a sinner who has to come home to the true faith of Christian Science. In reality, neither physical nor psychological addiction need be a problem if all drugs were legal and we used them creatively to counter problematic use.
