Responding to Brainwashed Drug Warriors on YouTube
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
July 8, 2023
I've been leaving comments on various Jefferson-related YouTube videos, reminding viewers of the inconvenient truth that Thomas Jefferson Foundation refuses to acknowledge the DEA raid on Monticello in 1987. One of my comments (on the video entitled Why Jefferson Didn't Free His Slaves") received a reply from a smart-ass prohibitionist. Since it pissed me off (just the tiniest little bit), I have reprinted the entire thread (so far) below, starting with my post and the harebrained rebuttal, and finally a series of white-hot replies that I rattled off back to back by way of countering everything that smart-aleck seems to stand for. I have retained the typos in my sequential rejoinders to better convey the harried state that I was in when I was in the act of composing them. Yes, it really pissed me off that folks like "avus-kw2f213" still think in the year 2023, 109 years after Congress first claimed the right to outlaw a plant, that prohibition is the answer. Prohibitionists today are like witnesses of a house fire who call for the arsonist to return and put out the flames.
Original Post
At least the Thomas Jefferson Foundation acknowledges slavery. They have been silent for 35 years now about the raid on Monticello in which Reagan's DEA confiscated Jefferson's poppy plants in violation of the natural law upon which the opium -loving Jefferson founded America. It was a betrayal of Thomas Jefferson's legacy. The signs around Monticello staking out "hallowed ground" need to be removed.
Smart-ass Reply
I agree the drug trade should definitely be legal both Americans and Brits fought and died for the freedom of selling drugs
Subsequent rejoinders
The drug trade? You mean the trade in Mother Nature's bounty?
Thomas Jefferson loved opium . The poppy is a plant. A PLANT! It is a violation of natural law to outlaw Mother Nature. see John Locke. Why do you think folks are dying every day now and there is no rule of law in Latin America. Because stealth Christian Scientists have taken over the world. God's bounty is GOOD. We need knowledge and safe use, not militarization. The DRUG WAR ELECTED TRUMP by throwing his opponents in jail. THey [the founding fathers] did not fight for drugs -- that's a Drug Warrior term. They [i.e., the Founding Fathers] fought for freedom -- of which none is more important than our right to Mother Nature. If the government can tell you which plants you can use, they can tell you anything, NATURE IS OURS BY NATURAL RIGHT. THAT'S WHAT AMERICA WAS FOUNDED ON. THAT'S WHAT Monticello IGNORES IN BETRAYAL OF THOMAS JEFFERSON'S LEGACY.
yOU DRUG WARRI0RS CREATE UNSAFE SUPPLY, TEACH FEAR RATHER THAN SAFE USE, THROW A MILLION BLACKS IN JAIL, AND THEN blame all the problems that result from that on "drugs." It's the mother of all denial. And it has overthrown natural law in America, with the consent of those who should be speaking up for it. Monticello should stop stonewalling and come clean about the raid in which they stole plants. That's sci-fi stuff: Fahrenheit 451 the government confiscated books that expand the mind. In Fahrenheit 452 they confiscate PLANTS that expand the mind. William James himself said we MUST study such substances to understand ultimate reality. But the Drug War censors science and philosophical investigation by outlawing... wait for it, folks.... PLANTS! You have no right to do so. None.
Monticello should be DELISTED as a site of conscience until they come clean about the raid.
THe idea that "drugs" is a four-letter word is a modern invention spouted by racist politicians. In the past, they knew that all substances had positive uses. It depended on the dose, the reason for use, the circumstances. But Drug Warriors feed us the anti-scientific lie that psychoactive plants have no positive uses for anybody, anywhere, at any dose, ever.
Of course you have a knee-jerk aversion to drugs. You received a teddy bear in grade school for hating them. Your government and media has kept you from hearing anything about positive use. The ONDCP actually has a rule not to TALK about safe use for fear of encouraging use. Yet they blame kids dying on DRUGS. People want self-transcendence and not everybody wants the shabby drug called alcohol. Racist politicians blame everything on "drugs" so they can avoid spending time and money on real problems.
It never occurred to the founding fathers that government would so overreach itself as to pretend to dole out Mother Nature to reward and punish. They would have gasped at the idea of outlawing plants. It's not legal. It's not sensical. And all the woe that's followed from it falls squarely on the heads of prohibitionists. The daily deaths in southeast DC, the hundreds of thousands of deaths in Mexico over the last 12 years, the creation of armed gangs and cartels. And how did it start? Because of a sinophobic campaign to outlaw opium 1 .
Acknowledge the coup against natural law. Stop hiding the truth. If the raid made so much sense, then acknowledge it and let everyone see how "sensical" it was for the government to CONFISCATE A PLANT!
Author's Follow-up: August 19, 2023
The smart-ass above implies that it's no big deal that the government has outlawed plants. Therefore it's no big deal that Monticello allowed the DEA to confiscate Jefferson's poppy plants. I can only observe by way of response that Monticello 2 itself (i.e., the Thomas Jefferson Foundation) seems to consider it a big deal. They are obviously ashamed of the fact that they collaborated with the DEA in 1987 to allow them to stomp onto the garden-loving Jefferson's "hallowed ground" and steal his plants. Why else would they be covering up the fact that such a raid took place. Why don't they just say: "Sure, we let our government come in and steal some naughty plants: and what's more, we're proud of it!"
They obviously are ashamed and do not want to be "called out" for their betrayal of Jefferson's legacy of natural law, which tells us that Mother Nature's bounty belongs to individuals to use as they fit -- that government has no ownership whatsoever of the flora of this earth.
November 16, 2023
Trust that I've upbraided Brian for his ill-advised use of epithets. ("Smart ass" indeed!) Still, can you imagine this flamer dude? The government claims that it has a right to control Mother Nature and dole out pain relief and spiritual inspiration as it sees fit, and this guy has no problem with it. ("Just tell me when and where you want me to take a urine test, guys!") You can bet he'll think again when, God forbid, he's injured or in hospice and is refused godsend medicine for pain relief, medicine that is his by right as a denizen of Planet Earth.
If there is an epidemic of "self-harm," prohibitionists never think of outlawing razor blades. They ask: "Why the self-harm?" But if there is an epidemic of drug use which they CLAIM is self-harm, they never ask "Why the self-harm?" They say: "Let's prohibit and punish!"
Using the billions now spent on caging users, we could end the whole phenomena of both physical and psychological addiction by using "drugs to fight drugs." But drug warriors do not want to end addiction, they want to keep using it as an excuse to ban drugs.
Just think how much money bar owners in the Old West would have saved on restoration expenses if they had served MDMA instead of whiskey.
When we place the FDA in charge of deciding whether a psychoactive drug should be re-legalized or not, we are asking them to decide on things like the relative importance of appreciating a sunset, a task for which the FDA has no expertise whatsoever.
If opium and cocaine were legal again in America, the healthcare industry would suddenly have to undergo extensive downsizing, as Americans were once again put in charge of their own health.
Americans think that fighting drugs is more important than freedom. We have already given up on the fourth amendment. Nor is the right to religion honored for those who believe in indigenous medicines. Pols are now trying to end free speech about drugs as well.
In "Psychedelic Refugee," Rosemary Leary writes:
"Fueled by small doses of LSD, almost everything was amusing or weird." -- Rosemary Leary
In a non-brainwashed world, such testimony would suggest obvious ways to help the depressed.
Almost every article about suicide is shallow because it takes drug prohibition as a natural baseline, even though drug prohibition outlaws substances that could so clearly elevate mood.
I wonder if Nixon knew what a favor he was doing medical capitalism when he outlawed psychedelics. Those drugs can actually cure things, and there's no money in that.
Musk vies with his fellow materialists in his attempt to diss humans as insignificant. But we are not insignificant. The very term "insignificant" is a human creation. Consciousness rules. Indeed, consciousness makes the rules. Without us, there would only be inchoate particles.
Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.
The smart-ass above implies that it's no big deal that the government has outlawed plants. Therefore it's no big deal that Monticello allowed the DEA to confiscate Jefferson's poppy plants. I can only observe by way of response that Monticello 2 itself (i.e., the Thomas Jefferson Foundation) seems to consider it a big deal. They are obviously ashamed of the fact that they collaborated with the DEA in 1987 to allow them to stomp onto the garden-loving Jefferson's "hallowed ground" and steal his plants. Why else would they be covering up the fact that such a raid took place. Why don't they just say: "Sure, we let our government come in and steal some naughty plants: and what's more, we're proud of it!" 
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