at Maquarie University, Department of Security Studies and Criminology
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 25, 2023
ear 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 Wine. 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 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 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.
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.
The 1932 movie "Scarface" starts with on-screen text calling for a crackdown on armed gangs in America. There is no mention of the fact that a decade's worth of Prohibition had created those gangs in the first place.
All drugs have positive uses at some dose, for some reason, at some time -- but prohibitionists have the absurd idea that drugs can be voted up or down. This anti-scientific notion deprives the modern world of countless godsends.
I agree that Big Pharma drugs have wrought disaster when used in psychotherapy -- but it is common sense that non-Big Pharma drugs that elate could be used to prevent suicide and obviate the need for ECT.
New article in Scientific American: "New hope for pain relief," that ignores the fact that we have outlawed the time-honored panacea. Scientists want a drug that won't run the risk of inspiring us.
Someone tweeted that fears about a Christian Science theocracy are "baseless." Tell that to my uncle who was lobotomized because they outlawed meds that could cheer him up -- tell that to myself, a chronic depressive who could be cheered up in an instant with outlawed meds.
An Englishman's home is his castle.
An American's home is a bouncy castle for the DEA.
David Chalmers says almost everything in the world can be reductively explained. Maybe so. But science's mistake is to think that everything can therefore be reductively UNDERSTOOD. That kind of thinking blinds researchers to the positive effects of laughing gas and MDMA, etc.
FDA drug approval is a farce when it comes to psychoactive medicine. The FDA ignores all the obvious benefits and pretends that to prove efficacy, they need "scientific" evidence. That's scientism, not science.
This is the problem with trusting science to tell us about drugs. Science means reductive materialism, whereas psychoactive drug use is all about mind and the human being as a whole. We need pharmacologically savvy shaman to guide us, not scientists.
It's depressing. I thought mycology clubs across the US would be protesting drug laws that make mushroom collecting illegal for psychoactive species. But in reality, almost no club even mentions such species. No wonder prohibition is going strong.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Open Letter to Vincent Hurley, Lecturer: at Maquarie University, Department of Security Studies and Criminology, published on June 25, 2023 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
ear Mr. Hurley: 
You have been reading an article entitled, Open Letter to Vincent Hurley, Lecturer: at Maquarie University, Department of Security Studies and Criminology, published on June 25, 2023 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)