at Maquarie University, Department of Security Studies and Criminology
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 25, 2023
Dear Mr. Hurley:
With regard to your quotation in the news story by Annika Blau... Right Under Our Nose, about cocaine entering Australia, I would suggest to you that cocaine is not the "cancer," as you call it: prohibition is the cancer.
Prohibition has destroyed the rule of law in Latin America and killed over 100,000 Mexicans as part of a needless war against plant medicine that the Peruvian Indians considered to be divine.
HG Wells loved Coca Wine1. So did Jules Verne. So did Alexandre Dumas.
Please reconsider your support for prohibition and the Drug War, which has led to the election of fascists like Donald Trump by creating laws that have removed hundreds of thousands of Trump's minority opponents from the voting rolls.
Drugs are not and have never been the problem. The problem has always been ignorance and prohibition -- and the desire of conservatives to dictate which drugs Americans should use: like alcohol, coffee and the antidepressants 2 upon which 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life.
35,000 Americans are killed every year by cars. But we do not need a war against cars, we need driver education.
The drugs that we outlaw have inspired entire religions. We do not need a war against drugs, we need substance education.
Until then, the Drug War is just a makework program for law enforcement and a way to enrich militarists and fascists.
Drug warriors typically want to save a white suburban teenager from making mistakes, but in so doing, they bring about the deaths of a hundred thousand Mexicans and render teenagers in Mexico homeless. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions who desperately need medicines for depression and anxiety are thrown under the bus, not able to access godsend medicines because of racist fretting on the part of scheming suburban politicians.
Please reconsider your assumptions about the Drug War.
Sincerely Yours,
Brian Quass
abolishthedea.com
Author's Follow-up: January 24, 2024
Cocaine can be used safely. Half the politicians in Britain have shamefacedly admitted to using it as young people. Indeed, crack cocaine 34 can be used safely, as Carl Hart reports in "Drug Use for Grownups." But the Drug War is all about terrifying us about drugs in order to justify a Nazi crackdown on minorities -- and a reason to overfund law enforcement and that American Stasi that we call the DEA. It's a war on citizens by conservatives who want to make the world safe for billionaires, box stores and extractive capitalism 5 .
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.
Yeah. That's why it's so pretentious and presumptuous of People magazine to "fight for justice" on behalf of Matthew Perry, as if Perry would have wanted that.
The drug war is the defeatist doctrine that we will never be able to use psychoactive drugs wisely. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy because the government does everything it can to make drug use dangerous.
Everyone's biggest concern is the economy? Is nobody concerned that Trump has promised to pardon insurrectionists and get revenge on critics? Is no one concerned that Trump taught Americans to doubt democracy by questioning our election fairness before one single vote was cast?
Mad in America solicits personal stories about people trying to get off of antidepressants, but they will not publish your story if you want to use entheogenic medicines to help you. They're afraid their readers can't handle the truth.
Drug-designing chemists have no expertise in deciding what constitutes a cure for depression. As Schopenhauer wrote:
"The mere study of chemistry qualifies a man to become an apothecary, but not a philosopher."
The drug war is a way for conservatives to keep America's eyes OFF the prize. The right-wing motto is, "Billions for law enforcement, but not one cent for social programs."
If we encourage folks to use antidepressants daily, there is nothing wrong with them using heroin daily. A founder of Johns Hopkins used morphine daily and he not only survived, but he thrived.
The December Scientific American features a story called "The New Nuclear Age," about a trillion-dollar plan to add 100s of ICBM's to 5 states, which an SA editorial calls "kick me" signs. This Neanderthal plan comes from pols who think that compassion-boosting drugs are evil!
Just think how many ayahuasca-like godsends that we are going without because we dogmatically refuse to even look for them, out of our materialist disdain for mixing drugs with drugs.
We should start taking names. All politicians and government officials who work to keep godsends like psilocybin from the public should be held to account for crimes against humanity when the drug war finally ends.
Yeah. That's why it's so pretentious and presumptuous of People magazine to "fight for justice" on behalf of Matthew Perry, as if Perry would have wanted that.
