hate to pick on Democrats at a time when Republicans have lost their minds and foresworn Democracy itself in lockstep with the hopes and dreams of billionaires everywhere, but the Drug War's staying power is due to the fact that it is a fully bipartisan project. Nor can I help it that the poster child for faulty reasoning when it comes to the Drug War is former president and democratic stalwart Bill Clinton himself. For Bill happens to be the poster child for one of the main logical fallacies of the Drug War: namely, the warped idea that prohibition saves lives.
Bill, it might be remembered, once remarked that his brother Roger would have been dead had cocaine in particular been legal. But this is both a selfish and a racist reason to call for drug prohibition, for it completely ignores the countless individuals who will have to suffer so that we can theoretically save Roger from his own ignorance. It is also a crazy and disingenuous viewpoint given the fact that it is drug-war policy NOT to educate the Rogers of the world, but rather to make them fear drugs instead. Why should others have to suffer the downsides of prohibition when we cannot even be bothered to educate Americans as to safe use?
The racism of Bill's prohibitionist mindset is clear. Bill says that his brother would have been dead had a PLANT been legal. But what if a D.C. mother were to respond by saying that her 13-year-old son would still be ALIVE had Bill not championed the policy of prohibition? Black lives matter1? Not as much as Bill's white brother, apparently. This is why I am forever saying that Black Lives Matter should be taking on the Drug War as public enemy number one. Why do they not see that Drug War propaganda has taken their eye off the prize? It was the Drug War which armed the 'hood to the teeth and gave racist police officers carte blanche to be as evil as they wanted to be. BLM should be fighting prohibition, just as anti-suicide movements should be fighting prohibition2, just as folks against shock therapy should be fighting prohibition3, just as the Holocaust Museum should be fighting prohibition4, just as mycologists should be fighting prohibition5. And they are all blind to the real villain of the piece. I know: I have tried in vain to convince them otherwise, and been completely ignored, of course.
America is asleep at the wheel when it comes to common sense -- and the Drug Warriors are laughing their way to the bank to cash their dividend checks from Big Pharma and Big Liquor -- the big recipients of the corporate welfare program known as the War on Drugs.
The idea that drug prohibition would save even Roger from himself is already a highly doubtful claim, since cocaine is readily available at night clubs around the world, even in an age of drug prohibition. All that prohibition has accomplished is to ensure that the drug is likely to be contaminated with other unknown substances, and that is not something to crow about, Bill.
But even if drug prohibition DID save Roger (which is something that we could never know for sure, in any case), it would still be dead wrong -- because it could only save him by outsourcing prohibition-related downsides to minorities and foreigners -- and to the millions of INTELLIGENT people who could have found rational and beneficial ways to use drugs, including to inspire new religions, and yet have to do without inspiring substances, thanks to the ignorance of those others whom we refuse to educate.
I fail to see how a Rhodes Scholar like Bill could believe that it makes sense to put government in charge of our personal health in the first place. GK Chesterton clearly saw the hateful ignorance of this idea6. There is no greater despotism than for a government to control how and how much one can think and feel in this life. So the idea that we would even THINK to outlaw psychoactive substances was always insanity -- and a slippery slope, indeed. For once you give government the job of ensuring our personal health, then every demagogue can become a self-styled expert on what substances are bad and what are good.
This is because all such "experts" fail to realize that health is a balance of a wide variety of inputs. It is determined by our genetics, our biochemical makeup, the psychological makeup of our parents, our level of education, etc. etc. etc. We are unique individuals, after all, however much the behaviorist might try to ignore that fact. A drug that is poison for some people at some doses when used for some reasons can be a godsend when used by other people at other doses for other reasons. As Chesterton put it:
"Health is not a quality. It is not a thing like darkness in the hair or length in the limbs. It is a relation, a balance.7"
Of course, our judgments about health are blatantly hypocritical in any case, since we have no prohibition for the one substance which kills more Americans than any other, namely liquor, which accounts for 178,000 deaths a year in America alone8. Indeed, drug prohibition is a sort of consolation prize for the Carrie Nation mentality of Americans: they lost their fight to hold liquor responsible for the evils of the world, but they were given the mother of all consolation prizes: the right to outlaw every single one of liquor's less dangerous rivals.
In rebutting Bill's viewpoint, I have not yet adduced any benefits to drug use. There are at least two reasons for this.
First of all, I should not have to do so. The reasons cited above deny the prohibitionist any excuse to pry into my digestive system in the first place. I am therefore reluctant to supply any reasons for my drug use lest I thereby imply that the legality of my use should depend upon what the State thinks of the emotional and mental states that I thereby obtain. The whole point is that I must have sovereignty over my own emotional and mental states in order to be a full human being in this life.
I am also reluctant to provide such "proof" for the simple reason that the proof that drugs have beneficial uses is obvious. Everyone knows that there are drugs which can cheer one up. Drug warriors and their behaviorist collaborators in modern medicine have been gaslighting us for decades by pretending otherwise, by pretending that we require microscopes in order to confirm the obvious. I do not want my enumeration of drug benefits to imply that I have "fallen" for this gaslighting, that I truly believe that drug efficacy has to be proven, when in reality it is obvious to anyone who has not been brainwashed by the drug-hating powers that be.
If you still desire proof of the existence of beneficial drug use and common sense does not get you there, I invite you to read any of my hundreds of essays on that topic, most especially the recent one entitled Case Studies in Wise Drug Use. Spoiler alert: the Hindu religion was inspired by the use of a drug, Mr. Rhodes Scholar9!
Even if we refuse to acknowledge any benefits to drug use, however, drug prohibition would be wrong both as a matter of principle and based on its actual effects in the real world. As a matter of principle, the Drug War puts the government in charge of personal health, which results in a complete emasculation of human beings as personal agents in life. It denies them sovereignty over their own emotional and mental processes. It is, in fact, the most hateful tyranny one can imagine: one that does not simply censor one's world, but dictates how one is allowed to feel and think about that world.
As for actual effects, drug prohibition causes endless unnecessary suffering. In its attempts to save everybody, it kills and disempowers countless millions. They are literally countless because they are never counted. Why not? Because prohibitionists never keep track of those whom they cause to suffer: the 67,000 victims of gun violence in inner cities over the last two decades10; the 60,000 Mexicans who have been disappeared thanks to drug prohibition11, which has destroyed the rule of law in Latin America; the depressed who sit at home behind closed doors contemplating suicide because racist politicians have outlawed all substances that elate and inspire12; the workers who have been emasculated and humiliated by drug tests that are performed, not to detect impairment, but rather to remove them from the workforce should they be found to be using plant medicine of which pharmacologically clueless politicians disapprove -- in other words, employees who can be fired for being a Christian Science heretic, and through an extrajudicial process at that13.
But let us be a little more specific here. Karon Blake was a 13-year-old D.C. resident who was killed by a drive-by shooting in 2022, thanks to the fact that drug prohibition had incentivized drug dealing and so loaded the 'hood to the teeth with guns. And as Ann Heather Thompson wrote in The Atlantic in 2014:
"Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist."
Conclusion?
Prohibitionists like Bill Clinton (and Kevin Sabet and Donald Trump and Joe Biden, etc...) should be down on their knees, begging forgiveness from the Blake family for promoting policies that kill children. Yes, let us dare to be honest for a change, folks:
If prohibition saved Roger Clinton, it only did so by killing Karon Blake.
The topic of prohibition is so fraught with mad but unspoken assumptions on the part of the Drug Warrior that I find it hard to bring this essay to a close. I keep thinking of new ways in which a brainwashed American will misunderstand me, bearing in mind that they have been shielded for a lifetime from all positive reports of drug use. My inclination is to deal with each imagined scruple by itself and in detail, which is a protocol for which I have no time.
I will therefore simply refer any unconvinced reader at this point to the rest of my website, where I have addressed hundreds of possible reader misgivings over the years in my attempt to convince Drug Warriors that they have things completely backwards: that drug use is like any other risky activity on earth, that it has benefits and downsides -- and that prohibition, for its part, has only downsides, unless considered selfishly and from a racist point of view. What's more, that prohibition is evil in and of itself, for it puts politicians in control of how and how much human beings are allowed to think and feel in this world. It is even worse than an outlawing of religion. It is worse even than the outlawing of the religious impulse. It is the outlawing of personal agency and hence the greatest tyranny of all times.
This is why Bill Clinton was not just wrong about prohibition, but horribly wrong -- i.e. wrong with consequences. His attitude is responsible for the deaths of many a Karon Blake in our inner-cities.
And why was Clinton wrong? Because he fell for the two big lies of the War on Drugs: 1) that drug use has no upsides, and 2) that prohibition has no downsides.
"In consciousness dwells the wondrous, with it man attains the realm beyond the material, and the peyote tells us where to find it." --Antonin Arnaud
Ann Lemke's case studies make the usual assumptions: getting free from addiction is a morality tale. No reference to how the drug war promotes addiction and how banned drugs could solve such problems. She does not say why daily SSRI use is acceptable while daily opium use is not. Etc.
The front page of every mycology club page should feature a protest of drug laws that make the study of mycology illegal in the case of certain shrooms. But no one protests. Their silence makes them drug war collaborators because it serves to normalize prohibition.
Folks point to the seemingly endless drugs that can be synthesized today and say it's a reason for prohibition. To the contrary, it's the reason why prohibition is madness. It results in an endless game of militaristic whack-a-mole at the expense of democratic freedoms.
That's why we damage the brains of the depressed with shock therapy rather than let them use coca or opium. That's why many regions allow folks to kill themselves but not to take drugs that would make them want to live. The Drug War is a perversion of social priorities.
"My faith votes and strives to outlaw religions that use substances of which politicians disapprove."
Pro-psychedelic websites tell me to check with my "doctor" before using Mother Nature. But WHY? I'm the expert on my own psychology, damn it. These "doctors" are the ones who got me hooked on synthetic drugs, because they honor microscopic evidence, not time-honored usage.
The line drawn between recreational and medical use is wishful thinking on the part of drug warriors. Recreation, according to Webster's, is "refreshment or diversion," and both have positive knock-on effects in the lives of real people.
Orchestras will eventually use psychedelics to train conductors. When the successful candidate directs mood-fests like Mahler's 2nd, THEY will be the stars, channeling every known -- and some unknown -- human emotions. Think Simon Rattle on... well, on psychedelics.
The Shipiba have learned to heal human beings physically, psychologically and spiritually with what they call "onanyati," plant allies and guides, such as Bobinsana, which "envelops seekers in a cocoon of love." You know: what the DEA would call "junk."
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, The Bill Clinton Fallacy: Why Drug Prohibition is Selfish and Evil, published on April 1, 2025 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)
hate to pick on Democrats at a time when Republicans have lost their minds and foresworn Democracy itself in lockstep with the hopes and dreams of billionaires everywhere, but the Drug War's staying power is due to the fact that it is a fully bipartisan project. Nor can I help it that the poster child for faulty reasoning when it comes to the Drug War is former president and democratic stalwart Bill Clinton himself. For Bill happens to be the poster child for one of the main logical fallacies of the Drug War: namely, the warped idea that prohibition saves lives. 
You have been reading an article entitled, The Bill Clinton Fallacy: Why Drug Prohibition is Selfish and Evil, published on April 1, 2025 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)
