Running with the torture loving DEA
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
November 7, 2019
Welcome back to the DEA Lounge!
I want to thank our public servants here for taking time out to join us. I know you've got a busy schedule, locking up liberals, so any time you can spare--
What did I say?
Hey, listen, I understand. By locking up liberals, you keep the Drug Warrior conservatives in power and thus maintain your crucial jobs of quashing dissent in America and limiting human consciousness.
No, seriously. I suppose the Drug War was bound to happen eventually on planet earth.
[gasp]
It had to happen at the precise moment in human history when capitalism and modern transportation coincided with a new awareness of the psychoactive power of plants.
[murmur]
PICTURE0020
We could either greet this alignment of forces rationally or not, and guess which choice we made?
[laughter]
Suddenly, Chicken Little politicians were screaming: "Oh, me gosh, we have to outlaw plants!"
Wrong.
AUDIO5
Earth to politicians: you should have outlawed the profit motive when it comes to those psychoactive plants, not the plants themselves.
[applaud]
I guess they had to scapegoat plants, though, since the alternative was to question the all-powerful god of capitalism 1 .
[laughter]
The result? They thereby created such a violent world that we had to invent a whole new movie genre to accommodate all the bullets and bodies: namely, the Drug War movie.
[laughter]
I hate to call such politicians morons, but if the dunce cap fits...
[drum]
[laughter]
"Gee, what happened? We outlawed plants and a bunch of violence ensued. Who would have thunk it?"
[laughter]
Answer: anyone with half a brain.
[drum]
[laughter]
Don't you love those Drug War movies 2 3 4 ? Those movies where the DEA "heroes" laugh at the US Constitution and willfully employ torture and murder to achieve their goal of outlawing Mother Nature? Ah, yes, good old American values: torture and murder.
[gasp]
Check out Running with the Devil, a DEA propaganda film starring Laurence Fishburne and Nicolas Cage.
[gasp]
Along with Leslie Bibb as the torture-loving DEA agent.
[gasp]
You know, if the Drug War is Christian, as many fundamentalists maintain, then I must have missed something in Sunday School.
[laughter]
I missed the part where Jesus told his followers to place suspects in bikini briefs, suspend them by a metal chain, and then threaten to drill holes in their abdomen with a power tool, as Leslie Bibb threatens to do to the so-called "Snitch" in Running with the Devil.
[gasp]
Oops, I forgot to mention: SPOILER ALERT!
[drum]
[laughter]
Speaking of spoilers, you ever notice that the Drug War spoils democracy!
[applaud]
I just looked up the movie, Running with the Devil, on so-called Common Sense Media.
[murmur]
Common Sense? More like Common Nonsense.
[laughter]
They pan the movie for its nudity and four-letter words...
[murmur]
...but they have absolutely NOTHING to say about the movie's glorification of governmental fascism5.
[laughter]
Common Sense Media is like: Watch out, parents. There are some very naughty words, indeed, in this movie! Land's sakes! Aside from that, though, it's just a good-natured romp extolling the wonders of fascism! So enjoy!
[laughter]
My name is Ballard Quass and I'll be here until they outlaw freedom of speech6, which won't be long considering that our government has already had the metaphysical chutzpah to outlaw mere plants!
Notes:
1: What the drug war tells us about American capitalism DWP (up)
2: Glenn Close but no cigar DWP (up)
3: Blast-off for Planet Hypocrisy! DWP (up)
4: Drug War Quotes in TV and Movies DWP (up)
5: Glorifying Beneficial Drug Use DWP (up)
6: Speak now or forever hold your peace about drug prohibition DWP (up)
read more essays here
Ten Tweets
against the hateful war on US
Freud thought cocaine was a great antidepressant. His contemporaries demonized the drug by focusing only on the rare misusers. That's like judging alcohol by focusing on alcoholics.
All uplifting drugs are potential antidepressants. Science denies that fact by claiming that drug efficacy must be proven quantitatively. And so they ignore anecdote, history and psychological common sense.
There would be almost no relapses for those trying to get off drugs if all drugs were legal. Then we could use a vast variety of drugs to get us through those few hours of late-night angst that are the bane of the recidivist.
There are definitely good scientists out there. Unfortunately, they are either limited by their materialist orthodoxy into showing only specific microscopic evidence or they abandon materialism for the nonce and talk the common psychological sense that we all understand.
I've been told by many that I should have seen "my doctor" before withdrawing from Effexor. But, A) My doctor got me hooked on the junk in the first place, and, B) That doctor completely ignores the OBVIOUS benefits of indigenous meds and focuses only on theoretical downsides.
Every time I see a psychiatrist, I feel like I'm playing a game of make-believe. We're both pretending that hundreds of demonized medicines do not exist and could be of no use whatsoever.
In "Four Good Days" the pompous white-coated doctor ignores the entire formulary of mother nature and instead throws the young heroin user on a cot for 3 days of cold turkey and a shot of Naltrexone: price tag $3,000.
After a long life, I have come to the conclusion that when all the establishment is united, it is always wrong. (Harold MacMillan)
Scientists cannot tell us if using drugs is worth the risk any more than they can tell us if free climbing is worth the risk, or horseback riding or parkour.
Prohibitionists have blood on their hands. People do not naturally die in the tens of thousands from opioid use, notwithstanding the lies of 19th-century missionaries in China. It takes bad drug policy to accomplish that.
Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us
No cookies, no ads.
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.
Copyright 2026, Brian Ballard Quass
Contact: quass@quass.com
(up)