an open letter to The American Council on Science and Health
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
January 23, 2024
The American Council on Science and Health, ACSH, says it has been "promoting science and debunking junk since 1978." Here is a letter that I wrote to them after reading an article on their website by Josh Bloom, Director of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Science at the University of Virginia.
Dear Sir or Madam:
I would like to suggest to you that science is censored in the age of the Drug War and that we live in a kind of Dark Ages thanks to this fact. We are willfully forgoing all sorts of potential treatments for illnesses, mental and physical, because of our anti-scientific belief that psychoactive substances can be judged "good" or "bad" without regard for context. Meanwhile, the materialist paradigm helps researchers make a virtue out of prohibition by allowing them to ignore common sense in favor of what they see in a microscope. (Who needs drugs that "merely" make one feel good?) And so we see articles with naive headlines like the following in Forbes magazine by Dr. Robert Glatter asking: "Can laughing gas help those with treatment-resistant depression?"
What?! He has to ask? As a lifelong chronic depressive, I feel like shouting: "Let me use laughing gas while you continue to search for what will REALLY make me happy." And yet the US and UK are attempting to criminalize laughing gas even as we speak, the substance that inspired the philosophy of William James, creating the kinds of mental states which he told us it was our duty as philosophers to study!
If we were not in the Dark Ages scientifically, then every suicidal person would have a laughing gas kit at their side, just as we give an epi pen to the allergic. If we were not in the Dark Ages, then we would be actively searching for ways to help Alzheimer's patients with the many psychoactive substances that stimulate new thoughts and even new neurons. But we have a "prior commitment" to substance demonization, which is the above-mentioned idea that a psychoactive drug must be judged by misuse and abuse only, without regard to context -- and with no concern for its benefits, nor for the violence that will be created by the prohibition of that drug.
For more evidence that we are in a Dark Ages scientifically, consider the following:
We STILL shock the brains of the depressed rather than allowing them to use drugs that could cheer them up on the double and even give them psychological insights in the process -- like the hundreds of non-addictive godsends created by Alexander Shulgin.
We allow the depressed and elderly to use drugs to kill themselves (we call it euthanasia), but we will not let them use drugs that might make them want to live.
The Drug War has upset all our priorities and censored science. That's why I've gone without godsend meds for my depression for 65 years. The government is all about spreading the word that psychoactive medicines are evil. That's why we have a National Institute on Drug Abuse rather than a National Institute on Drug Use. That's why we judge psychoactive drugs by a safety standard that no one applies to anything else in the world.
Take Josh Bloom's article about licking hallucinogenic frogs. The article is tongue-in-cheek, and yet it represents the usual Drug War biases. Josh candidly tells us that the chances of being killed by such an activity are vanishingly rare, like those of being killed by a falling coconut. Yet in the same article, he says the licking of frogs is a "disturbing trend." What? Who's disturbed by it? Drug warriors, apparently -- the same Drug Warriors who will scream bloody murder if you even suggest that guns are dangerous.
If you want a writer on such topics, please let me know. Maybe I could write a sort of "dissenters" column... to balance out the scientific triumphalism that reckons without the Drug War.
My essays on this topic are many and growing. Two of them are listed below:
How Scientific Materialism Keeps Godsend Medicines from the Depressed
https://www.abolishthedea.com/how_scientific_materialism_keeps_godsend_medicines_from_the_depressed.php
Stigmatize This: More Drug War Agitprop from The Atlantic
https://www.abolishthedea.com/stigmatize_this.php
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 used to be surprised at this reticence on the part of modern drug-war pundits, until I realized that most of them are materialists. That is, most of them believe in (or claim to believe in) the psychiatric pill mill. If they happen to praise psychedelic drugs as a godsend for the depressed, they will yet tell us that such substances are only for those whose finicky body chemistries fail to respond appropriately to SSRIs and SNRIs. The fact is, however, there are thousands of medicines out there that can help with psychological issues -- and this is based on simple psychological common sense. But materialist scientists ignore common sense. That's why Dr. Robert Glatter wrote an article in Forbes magazine wondering if laughing gas could help the depressed.
As a lifelong depressive, I am embarrassed for Robert, that he has to even ask such a question. Of course laughing gas could help. Not only is laughter "the best medicine," as Readers Digest has told us for years, but looking forward to laughing is beneficial too. But materialist scientists ignore anecdote and history and tell us that THEY will be the judge of psychoactive medicines, thank you very much. And they will NOT judge such medicines by asking folks like myself if they work but rather by looking under a microscope to see if they work in the biochemical way that materialists expect.
Being a lifetime patient is not the issue: that could make perfect sense in certain cases. But if I am to be "using" for life, I demand the drug of MY CHOICE, not that of Big Pharma and mainstream psychiatry, who are dogmatically deaf to the benefits of hated substances.
This is why the foes of suicide are doing absolutely nothing to get laughing gas into the hands of those who could benefit from it. Laughing is subjective after all. In the western tradition, we need a "REAL" cure to depression.
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.
It's amazing. Drug law is outlawing science -- and yet so few complain. Drug law tells us what mushrooms we can collect, for God's sake. Is that not straight-up insane? Or are Americans so used to being treated as children that they accept this corrupt status quo?
First we outlaw all drugs that could help; then we complain that some people have 'TREATMENT-RESISTANT DEPRESSION'. What? No. What they really "have" is an inability to thrive because of our idiotic drug laws.
3:51 PM · Jul 15, 2024
Chesterton might as well have been speaking about the word 'addiction' when he wrote the following: "It is useless to have exact figures if they are exact figures about an inexact phrase."
If I want to use the kind of drugs that have inspired entire religions, fight depression, or follow up on the research of William James into altered states, I should not have to live in fear of the DEA crashing down my door and shouting: "GO! GO! GO!"
We need to start thinking of drug-related deaths like we do about car accidents: They're terrible, and yet they should move us to make driving safer, not to outlaw driving. To think otherwise is to swallow the drug war lie that "drugs" can have no positive uses.
I passed a sign that says "Trust Trump." What does that mean? Trust him to crack down on his opposition using the U.S. Army? Or trust him not to do all the anti-American things that he's saying he's going to do.
The FDA should have no role in approving psychoactive medicine. They evaluate them based on materialist standards rather than holistic ones. In practice, this means the FDA ignores all glaringly obvious benefits.
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, Science is not free in the age of the drug war: an open letter to The American Council on Science and Health, published on January 23, 2024 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)
You have been reading an article entitled, Science is not free in the age of the drug war: an open letter to The American Council on Science and Health, published on January 23, 2024 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)