The Drug War Philosopher of the United States of America -- session 3
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 2, 2025
Ladies and gentlemen, the Drug War Philosopher of the United States of America.
I will make a brief statement and then I will open up the floor to termites. As you know, I have been reading and reviewing the excellent drug histories of Mike Jay1 with an eye toward the philosophical insights that his books either contain or imply. The conclusions that I have drawn to date may be found in the following three essays: End Drug Prohibition Now, The Kangaroo Courts of Modern Science and most recently, How the West turned the world into a police state.
Mr. Philosopher! Mr. Philosopher! Telvar Pipkin from the Tennessee Teapot.
Not THE Telvar Pipkin?
That's right.
From THE Tennessee Teapot?
The same.
Well, I have not officially opened the floor to termites yet, but go ahead, Telvar.
Sorry, but I just have to know: which of Mike Jay's books have you read so far?
Well, I began with Emperors of Dreams2, which I discussed in two essays: namely, the one entitled End Prohibition Now3 and the other entitled The Kangaroo Courts of Modern Drug Science4.
Gotcha.
I have also read Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind5, which I discuss in the essay entitled How the West Turned the World into a Police State6.
Vespar Latigan from the Daily World Telegraph and Community Ledger Star, weekend edition.
Cor blimey.
What is your chief takeaway thus far from reading Mike's historical tomes about drugs and drug use?
The biggest takeaway message is that the Drug War mindset was firmly entrenched in the 19th century.
Oh, really? How so?
There was already a knee-jerk belief that the only answer to drug-related problems was criminalization.
I see.
Nobody stopped to think that the world was full of psychoactive substances -- and that the number of such substances would only increase over time as we westerners slowly open our eyes to the psychoactive powers of flowers, trees, plants, animals and fungi -- not to mention the endless drugs that can be synthesized based on the biochemical clues that we garner from Mother Nature.
I hear ya.
It never occurred to anyone that the world would become a police state if we decided to have the police and military playing "whack-a-mole" with this potentially endless supply of psychoactive medicines.
So you're saying, then, that no one talked about educating people rather than arresting them?
Bingo. And that's crazy, right? Already in the 19th century, there was this crazy idea that we should judge the value of drugs "up" or "down," based on how we personally felt about their effects in specific, often notorious cases.. There was already this crazy idea that a substance that could be misused by white young people at one dose when used for one reason, must not be used by anyone at any dose for any reason. It is impossible to think of a more anti-scientific approach to drugs. It is an approach which mindlessly rules out all beneficial uses of drugs in advance based on our biases against the kind of people whom one assumes are using them.
Cash Cheslock from the Hackensack Soundboard.
Cash WHO? From the WHAT?
Inquiring minds want to know, Mr. Philosopher, what other essays have you written or updated lately?
Lord, help my memory. Well, let's see: do you remember that 2022 harangue of mine called "Drug Warriors can go to hell!7"?
Oh, you mean the one in which you let Drug Warriors have it for depriving you of godsend medicines for an entire lifetime?
That's the one.
Mr. Philosopher, Madeline Hayball from the East Hampstead Express and Daily Record, weekend supplement.
Oh, I LOVE that supplement!
My sources tell me that you have updated your article about "The Truth about Opium89" by William H. Brereton and that you have added dozens of insightful citations from the three lectures that it contains.
Did you say thwee?
Oh, you know what I mean!
I'm just kidding you. Yes, I have highlighted dozens of insightful citations from that lecture series, far more than just thwee of them.
Oh, you!
Ladies and gentlemen, the Drug War Philosopher of the United States of America.
People magazine should be fighting for justice on behalf of the thousands of American young people who are dying on the streets because of the drug war.
The search for SSRIs has always been based on a flawed materialist premise that human consciousness is nothing but a mix of brain chemicals and so depression can be treated medically like any other physical condition.
Drug Warriors will publicize all sorts of drug use -- but they will never publicize sane and positive drug use. Drug Warrior dogma holds that such use is impossible -- and, indeed, the drug war does all it can to turn that prejudice into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Who would have thought back in 1776 that Americans would eventually have to petition their government for the right to even possess a damn mushroom. The Drug War has destroyed America.
That's the problem with prohibition. It is not ultimately a health question but a question about priorities and sensibilities -- and those topics are open to lively debate and should not be the province of science, especially when natural law itself says mother nature is ours.
Anyone who has read Pihkal by Alexander Shulgin knows that the drug warriors have it exactly backwards. Drugs are our friends. We need to find safe ways to use them to improve ourselves psychologically, spiritually and mentally.
I can't believe that no one at UVA is bothered by the DEA's 1987 raid on Monticello. It was, after all, a sort of coup against the Natural Law upon which Jefferson had founded America, asserting as it did the government's right to outlaw Mother Nature.
"Abuse" is a funny term because it implies that there's a right way to use "drugs," which is something that the drug warriors deny. To the contrary, they make the anti-scientific claim that "drugs" are not good for anybody for any reason at any dose.
Today's war against drug users is like Elizabeth I's war against Catholics. Both are religious crackdowns. For today's oppressors, the true faith (i.e., the moral way to live) is according to the drug-hating religion of Christian Science.
To oppose the Drug War philosophically, one has to highlight its connections to both materialism and the psychiatric pill mill. And that's a problem, because almost everyone is either a Drug Warrior or a materialist these days and has a vested interest in the continuation of the psychiatric pill mill.
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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