"All these anti-opium articles, speeches, and resolutions are based upon the same model. They assume certain statements as existing and acknowledged facts which have never been proved to be such, and then proceed to draw deductions from those alleged facts."
--William H. Brereton, The Truth About Opium
Author's Follow-up:
July 11, 2025
The following was written six years ago, when I was first beginning to study the warped philosophical assumptions behind the War on Drugs and the substance demonization for which it stands. Since then, I have learned much more about the motivations behind opium prohibition, to the point that I fear that my former musings are now inadequate and that they might therefore inadvertently serve, as it were, to praise prohibition with faint condemnation. I have learned over the years that it is almost impossible to exaggerate the counterproductive and inhumane idiocy of the prohibitionist mindset. Nevertheless I will let my former musings stand as a sort of historical marker of my Pilgrim's Progress through the maze of disinformation and misdirection that constitutes America's unprecedented wholesale outlawing of psychoactive medicines.
American conservatives claim to be outraged by government control, yet the government controls the most important thing in their life: how they are allowed to think and feel by outlawing godsend medicines.
Meanwhile, I encourage all seekers of the massively hushed-up truth on this topic to read William Brereton's The Truth About Opium: Refutation of the Fallacies of the Anti-Opium Society and a Defence of the Indo-China Opium Trade.1 Sure, Brereton had his own prejudices, of course, though he addresses these in the lectures of which this book consists, and, I think, does so in a reassuring and convincing manner. This is beside the point, however; for my goal on this website is not to advance an inductive argument about the upsides and downsides of any given drugs: my goal is to demonstrate that the whole mindset of drug prohibition is wrong and counterproductive: that it is wrong to judge drugs as good or bad "per se," that all drugs, even Botox and cyanide, have positive uses, and that to criminalize drugs because they can be misused by one demographic is anti-scientific and an inhumane policy. It is racist and xenophobic as well, basically telling the world: If a drug can be misused by a white American young person at one dose when used for one reason, then it must not be used by anyone in the world at any dose for any reason. This is the issue.
Also, I know that some doctors make a big distinction between dependence and addiction. I have a psychiatrist who thinks Effexor 2 is great because it does not cause addiction, only dependence. I do not understand that point of view. When I tried to get off Effexor too quickly, I literally wished that I were dead. Literally. Why is that outcome so much better than being addicted? Answer? Because it leaves the doctor UNBOTHERED! I was not going to bother my doctor by phone -- I was just going to sit quietly at home and contemplate suicide. Why is that so much better than experiencing a craving, doc?
The irony is that anyone can end physical opiate addiction in a week -- whereas it is unclear if one can ever end their biochemical dependence on SNRIs like Effexor, at least in a world wherein all other psychoactive alternatives have been ruthlessly outlawed. Indeed, my previous psychiatrist told me that Effexor has a 95% recidivism rate 3 for long-term users after three years, far worse than that for heroin 4. So for these -- and many, many other reasons to be found throughout my hundreds of drug-related essays -- I insist that we all should have the right to smoke opium nightly as opposed to using Big Pharma drugs daily, or indeed to use any other drug, dependence-causing or not. Dependence in itself is not evil, after all: we are all dependent on chemicals of all kinds. Unwanted dependency is the evil, and such dependency will be the norm until we claw back our right to self-medicate5 from the self-interested medical establishment, meanwhile loudly denying the lie that they are the experts when it comes to mind and mood medicine and that they, not we, are experts on how we think and feel in life -- and even, indeed, on how we should be allowed to think and feel in life. Finally, when all drugs are re-legalized and we actually learn from best practices, then we can fight drugs with drugs. Dependent on Effexor? Surely, not for long when one can exchange the drug for laughing gas 6 on Friday, phenethylamines on Saturday, and opium on Sunday. (I'd better stop this talk about common-sense freedom lest I give a brainwashed reader a coronary. You've got to realize that they have been shielded their whole lifetime from such honest talk about drugs, the fact that they actually have benefits!)
Let's end this unprecedented power grab by the medical industry. Let's reclaim our right to take care of our own emotional and mental states.
I preface thus much lest my six-year-old essay should fall short, written as it was before I had recognized the disempowering, racist and xenophobic tyranny of the status quo with respect to opium and other so-called "hard" drugs. That very category, "hard drugs," is political, of course. Drugs are only dangerous when we refuse to teach safe use, refuse to ensure drug quality and refuse to provide choices. They are not dangerous in and of themselves. We should no more say "Drugs bad!" than we used to say "Fire bad!" Yet racist and xenophobic politicians use the term "hard" in an attempt to render the use of certain drugs "beyond the pale," unthinkable, as it were, to the average digitally hypnotized citizen. What are hard drugs then, in plain English? Hard drugs are just those drugs which, if used intelligently, could make most drug stores irrelevant -- and which might even inspire entire new religions! That's what Drug Warriors really fear about the substances that they demonize as "hard," failing to realize that the addictive potential of some such drugs could be easily dealt with by fighting drugs with drugs, in a world wherein we sought to learn about drugs rather than to demonize them.
Like almost everyone else in America, John Halpern looks at the opium wars of the 19th century and draws two erroneous conclusions. I discuss and refute those two conclusions below.
1) Opium is a drug from hell.
Why do we think that opium is the drug from hell? Why? Because we never hear from the thousands of human beings who have used opium responsibly and to good effect. How many westerners know that Benjamin Franklin used opium? How many know that Marcus Aurelius was also a big fan of the drug? How many westerners know or care that opium had a great productive influence on writers like De Quincey, Poe and Lovecraft? How many westerners know that opium has been found to cure the common cold by many users?
This is the Drug Warrior strategy, by the way, to never admit to or point out any positive uses of Mother Nature's psychoactive drugs, to constantly highlight the negative, thereby leaving the impression that these substances truly are evil incarnate. If these people focused their polemics on driving, we would come to feel that driving only led to accidents and should therefore be outlawed. Unfortunately, the worst villain in this story is the news media. Cowed as they are by the DEA and public hysteria, they studiously avoid reporting positive news about substance use, thereby giving the impression, through selective negative reporting, that illegal substance use is always substance abuse.
Here's a headline you'll never see: "'Responsible opium use helps me write creatively and prolifically!'"
While it's true that opium can become addictive if used on a daily basis (especially when eaten rather than smoked), this is a property of opium that no westerner has a right to complain about (a property, by the way, which opium shares with alcohol, caffeine and nicotine). As I type this, 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life on Big Pharma drugs -- 1 in 4. Besides, opium addiction can be "kicked" in a week whereas certain modern anti-depressants like Effexor CAN NEVER BE STOPPED according to a recent study by the NIH itself, which reports a 95% recidivism rate for those who try.
2) We should therefore make opium illegal.
The lesson of the opium war is not that natural substances should be illegal. Opium itself never injured anyone in the 19th century. It was the PROFIT MOTIVE that made opium a bad thing. It was the PROFIT MOTIVE that flooded the market and brought forward only the most potent productions of the poppy plants. It was the same PROFIT MOTIVE that allows today's Big Pharma 78 to get away scot-free with addicting an entire nation.
But writers like Halpern ignore this. Instead of blaming exploitative capitalism , they make a scapegoat out of the substances themselves. The real lesson of the opium war, however, is that the PROFIT MOTIVE should have no role when it comes to the sale of psychoactive substances, not because the substances are evil incarnate, but because the PROFIT MOTIVE encourages irresponsible and uninformed use of such substances.
Indeed, the whole opioid crisis today exists because of the PROFIT MOTIVE, not because poppy plants are the spawn of the devil, as the superstitious Drug Warrior prefers to believe -- probably because they can't bring themselves to criticize capitalism , and so Mother Nature's plants become convenient scapegoats.
Afterthoughts
Language counts because it is laden with stealth assumptions. When we say "Opium War," we superstitiously associate the evils of the conflict in question with a plant, turning Mother Nature into a scapegoat for human evil and giving a free pass to the phenomenon of unbridled and militaristic capitalism 9 , which is really the villain of the piece.
Related tweet: June 2, 2023
"Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death." -Jean Cocteau
The existence of a handful of bad outcomes of drug use does not justify substance prohibition... any more than the existence of drunkards justifies a call for liquor prohibition.
Prohibitionists think that they merely have to use the word "drugs" to win an argument.
America never ended prohibition. It just redirected prohibition from alcohol to all of alcohol's competitors.
Harm Reduction is not enough. We need Benefit Production as well. The autistic should be able to use compassion-enhancing drugs; dementia patients should be able to use drugs that speed up and sharpen mental processes.
The Drug War brought guns to the "hoods," thereby incentivizing violence in the name of enormous profits. Any site featuring victims of gun violence should therefore be rebranded as a site featuring victims of the drug war.
If I smoke opium nightly, I am a drug scumbag. If I use Big Pharma "meds" every day of my life, I am a good patient.
The Drug War has turned America into the world's first "Indignocracy," where our most basic rights can be vetoed by a misinformed public. That's how scheming racist politicians put an end to the 4th amendment to the US Constitution.
If you're looking for an anti-Christ, just look for an American presidential politician who has taught us to hate our enemies. Gee, now, who could that be, huh? According to Trump, Jesus was just a chump. Winning comes before anything at all in his sick view of life.
In an article about Mazatec mushroom use, the author says: "Mushrooms should not be considered a drug." True. But then NOTHING should be considered a drug: every substance has potential good uses.
The best long-term treatment for OUD would be to normalize the nightly smoking of opium at home, not to addict the user to government-supplied drugs that render them impervious to the benefits of the poppy plant.
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