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The Drug War = Christian Science

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

April 29, 2019



Philosophically speaking, the Drug War is merely Christian Science as applied to psychoactive drugs.

April 2025 Update

It is premised on an article of faith: namely, that the best life is one lived without the aid of psychoactive medicines. Therefore it is a violation of Church and State when government tells me I must live my life according to the Drug War ethic of prohibition. For I do not find it morally reprehensible for a man or woman to access the medicinal bounty of Mother Nature to improve his or her mind. It is not part of MY religion to be repelled by such behavior. To the contrary, I find it a moral responsibility to be all that I can be in this life, and if that goal can be aided by Mother Nature's plants, herbs, and fungi, then I consider it a moral obligation to pursue that enlightenment.

Author's Follow-up: September 2, 2022



The Drug War is a greater outrage than almost anyone else seems to give it credit for. It's not just a good idea that was bound to fail -- it's a bad idea that is already failing spectacularly as we write (by causing civil wars overseas, denying medical godsends to billions, denying morphine 1 to kids in hospice, killing thousands of inner-city Americans every year, censoring scientists -- or rather bamboozling them with so much tacit drug-war ideology that said scientists do not even recognize that they're being censored). The government has no business trying to get citizens to stop using plants and fungi whose psychoactive powers have inspired entire religions. The use of such proscriptions is inherently a war on religion, essentially requiring the whole world to green-light only those drugs that have been approved of by WASP politicians, namely alcohol, tobacco and coffee. And if one doesn't like the world without godsend medicines, they can always "come home" to the Christian church, by accepting the existence of a higher power while declaring yourself incapable of using so much as aspirin safely.

Thus conscience (or rather false consciousness) doth make cowards of us all.

Thus via prohibition, the Drug War hopes to turn everyone into a practicing Christian -- or else execute them for drug dealing: the more things change... It's a religious war by another name.



Author's Follow-up:

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




The above essay was written almost six years ago, when I had just begun to unmask the hateful but unspoken premises upon which the Drug War is based. Spoiler alert: the takeaway message from my subsequent six years of study could be wrapped up in one short sentence: "Prohibition is evil." The proof is extant.

Another summary of my conclusions about the Drug War over the past six years could be stated as follows:

"The Drug War is based on two huge lies: 1) that drug use has no upsides, and 2) that prohibition has no downsides."

Better yet, prohibition is a crime against religious liberty insofar as it outlaws the same kinds of medicines that inspired the Hindu religion: namely, drugs that inspire and elate.

But returning to the theme of the above 2019 essay:

If anyone doubts my thesis that the Drug War represents the outlawing of religion, I have just three words for them: the Hindu religion. As much as even Hindus might refuse to admit it, the Hindu religion was inspired by drug use. It was created thanks to the use of a drug that inspired and elated. Just consider the following handful of citations about Soma in Vedic scripture:

"Soon as his song of praise is born, the Soma, Indra's juice, becomes A thousand-winning thunderbolt."

"Swift to the purifying sieve flows Soma 2 as exalted Law, Slaying the fiends, loving the Gods."

"Effused as cheerer of the men, flowing best gladdener, thou art A Prince to Indra with thy juice."

"Flow on, Sage Soma, 3 with thy stream to give us mental power and strength."


The take-home message from the Rig Veda is the following: A religion was created thanks to the use of a drug that inspired and elated. From this it follows that prohibition is a crime against religious liberty. It is worse than the outlawing of a specific existing religion -- prohibition is the outlawing of the religious impulse itself.












Notes for essay entitled The Drug War = Christian Science:

1: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)
2: Blue Tide: The Search for Soma: a philosophical review of the book by Mike Jay DWP (up)
3: “Blue Tide - Mike Jay.” 2025. Mike Jay. May 18, 2025. https://mikejay.net/books/blue-tide/. (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




Guess who's in charge of protecting us from AI? Chuck Schumer! The same guy who protected us from drugs -- by turning America into a prison camp full of minorities and so handing two presidential elections to Donald Trump.

Saying "Fentanyl kills" is philosophically equivalent to saying "Fire bad!" Both statements are attempts to make us fear dangerous substances rather than to learn how to use them as safely as possible for human benefit.

Drug testing labs are the modern Inquisitors. We are not judged by the content of our character, but by the content of our digestive systems.

Question: Why do doctors judge cocaine by its worst possible use? Answer: Follow the money.

After over a hundred years of prohibition, America has developed a kind of faux science in which despised substances are completely ignored. This is why Sci Am is making a new argument for shock therapy in 2023, because they ignore all the stuff that OBVIOUSLY cheers one up.

The 1932 movie "Scarface" starts with on-screen text calling for a crackdown on armed gangs in America. There is no mention of the fact that a decade's worth of Prohibition had created those gangs in the first place.

Drug Warriors never take responsibility for incentivizing poor kids throughout the west to sell drugs. It's not just in NYC and LA, it's in modest-sized towns in France. Find public housing, you find drug dealing. It's the prohibition, damn it!

Almost all talk about the supposed intractability of things like addiction are exercises in make-believe. The pundits pretend that godsend medicines do not exist, thus normalizing prohibition by implying that it does not limit progress. It's a tacit form of collaboration.

The proof that psychedelics work has always been extant. We are hoodwinked by scientists who convince us that efficacy has not been "proven." This is materialist denial of the obvious.

We've created a faux psychology to support such science: that psychology says that anything that really WORKS is just a "crutch" -- as if there is, or there even should be, a "CURE" for sadness.


Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






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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.

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