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 678 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 910 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.
Someone should stand outside Jefferson's estate and hand out leaflets describing the DEA's 1987 raid on Monticello to confiscate poppy plants. That raid was against everything Jefferson stood for. The TJ Foundation DISHONORED JEFFERSON and their visitors should know that!
Imagine a world in which we were told about both the potential benefits AND the potential harms of drugs like cocaine and opium.
After a long life, I have come to the conclusion that when all the establishment is united, it is always wrong. (Harold MacMillan)
Thomas Szasz was not an extremist when it comes to drugs. The extremists are those who feel that psychiatrists know more about our mind and mood than we do.
His answer to political opposition is: "Lock them up!" That's Nazi speak, not American democracy.
Researchers insult our intelligence when they tell us that drugs like MDMA and opium and laughing gas have not been proven to work. Everyone knows they work. That's precisely why drug warriors hate them.
Drug warriors think only about young people misusing drugs. They never think about the millions of the depressed whom they're condemning to a lifetime of totally unnecessary misery by outlawing drugs.
America legalizes alcohol and then outlaws all the drugs that could help prevent and cure alcoholism.
Who would have thought back in 1776 that Americans would eventually have to petition their government for the right to even possess a damn mushroom. The Drug War has destroyed America.
The FDA will be accepting comments through September 20th on the subject of ways to fight PTSD.
PTSD@reaganudall.org
Ask them why they support brain-damaging shock therapy but won't approve drugs like MDMA that could make ECT unnecessary.
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