The Hidden Drug War Prejudices of Modern Authors

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The Hidden Drug War Prejudices of Modern Authors

an open letter to Andrew Monteith, author of Christian Nationalism and the Birth of the War on Drugs

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

November 6, 2025

Good day, Andrew.

I am enjoying your book ¹.

I would like to comment on a statement of yours, however, on page 12 of the introduction:

You say, "To be clear, there are legitimate medical reasons why someone should not smoke heroin or snort cocaine."

A few comments.

Regarding cocaine:

As a chronic depressive, I have been denied healing for a lifetime now because self-interested doctors demonized cocaine -- without even asking what the depressed thought about the drug.

Author's follow-up for November 30, 2025

They judged the drug only by focusing on misusers, exactly as if they were to judge alcohol by looking only at drunkards. Moreover, the original "abusers" were folks who had trouble using morphine wisely. Why are we surprised that such people would have trouble using cocaine wisely? And why are "misusers" the only stakeholders in this debate? Why are hundreds of millions of depressed people like myself left to suffer in silence and forced to use Big Pharma meds that can never be kicked? The outlawing of cocaine has turned me into a patient for life, with all the demoralizing, expensive and time-consuming baggage that comes with that designation.

Freud knew that cocaine was a godsend for most of the depressed. Nor did he have trouble getting off the drug himself. In fact, he reports in "On Cocaine ²" that for him, his drug use was self-limiting: he felt a seemingly drug-inspired revulsion to the idea of unnecessary use. I doubt we would have heard of Freud today had he not conquered his procrastinating tendencies with the use of cocaine ³ . He dropped his advocacy only after it became clear which way the wind lay. Doctors refused to see any good in a drug that would put them out of business, at least when it came to treating the depressed. Social Psychologist Henry Lennard ⁴ is the poster child for such self-interested demonization, as I discuss in the following essay ⁵:

Coverup on Campus

There is enormous self-interest at work here, even if the cocaine-demonizers are not conscious of it themselves. The medical industry profits ENORMOUSLY from the outlawing of opium and coca. This is why it's so problematic that Big Pharma funds 75% of the FDA's drug division budget ⁶.

Regarding heroin:

A study by Lee Robins showed that only 5% of the Army's heroin users in Vietnam required help getting off the drug when they returned to the States. 5%.⁷

I am on a Big Pharma drug that has a 95% recidivism rate ⁸ for long-term users and which I believe can NEVER be kicked successfully (at least not without the psychological help of the endless psychoactive substances that America has outlawed) ⁹. I got off the drug for three months this year and found I could not think straight. The drug had apparently mucked about with my brain chemistry in a seemingly irreversible manner.

Then, too, heroin only became " a thing" because we had outlawed the peaceable smoking of opium at home, after which the search was on for an opiate replacement that was easier to conceal from the police.

I may be oversensitive, but I read your quote as saying; "We can all agree that heroin smoking and cocaine snorting are particularly bad ideas, medically speaking." This, to me, is like saying that driving a car is a bad idea because it could lead to a car accident. In fact, this is the problem with the Drug War, in my opinion: it has taught us to judge drug use outside of all context, as being good or bad. Is cocaine use really a bad idea, medically speaking, for someone who might kill themselves in the absence of such a godsend? We need context before we can discuss the medical advisability of any practice.

I am not sure Americans realize how much indoctrination they have received over the years on these matters. I don't think they understand that they have been shielded by the media from all talk of beneficial drug use -- indeed, that the media has rewritten history, while working with the White House to frame anti-drug messages in TV sitcoms ¹⁰.

Meanwhile, Jim Beam targets their ads for bourbon at young people on prime-time television -- and the FDA approves of Big Pharma drugs whose side effects include death itself! The FDA also promotes shock therapy for severe depression, while refusing to approve of drugs that would make shock therapy unnecessary.

In my opinion, almost every single author on these topics has western-inspired prejudices of which they are unaware. These prejudices always make them underestimate the full evil of drug prohibition, which is actually the outlawing of our right to take care of our own health. These prejudices always come out when the author writes about the things that "we all know," like the idea that "snorting" cocaine is medically problematic.

Our very use of the word "snorting" serves to indicate our puritan disgust for the practice: one TAKES their meds, one SNORTS cocaine, like a pig. My point is simply that the subject of what "we all know" is highly problematic in a world in which we have been brainwashed from birth in the drug-hating ideology of substance demonization.

Your statement is at best only technically true. I realize that you added some qualifications after the citation on the subject of what we consider to be "drugs" in the first place. Yet the statement seems to support the Drug Warrior notion that there are some particularly evil substances that are bad in and of themselves, and this is, in my opinion, the big lie of the Drug War. Even deadly Botox has beneficial uses. It is now being used to treat migraine headaches -- a breakthrough that would not have occurred had we demonized and criminalized the drug based on the fact that it was deadly when considered in the abstract, outside of all context (like dose, reason for use, the user's goals in using, etc.).

I think historian William Shirer could have been writing about Drug War America when he wrote the following in his book about Nazi Germany:

"No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime's calculated and incessant propaganda." ¹¹

Yours in the hope of advancing the conversation on these matters...

Best Wishes

Author's Follow-up:

November 30, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up

When I consider my invisibility online, I sometimes think that I must be literally mad. I must THINK I am writing one thing, when I am actually writing something very different. If I think I am writing the word "cat," I must be writing the word "dog" instead. Otherwise such essays would be promulgated far and wide across the brainwashed Internet with plug lines such as, "What HE said!" or "Read this NOW!" But if I am mad, then at least I am consistently so, for having re-read this essay this morning, immediately after a mind-composing slumber, my only reaction is: "Preach! And let those who have ears, hear!" There is not one single word I would retract.

That said, I could no doubt benefit from hiring an editor who would help me render my harangues more diplomatic in the eyes of those whom I criticize, implicitly or otherwise. Being a trifle sensitive myself, I can imagine how an author might be put off by the slightest hint of criticism in my essays, let alone the fusillade of objections that I routinely level at the truly brainwashed drug pundits (like Michael Pollan ¹² and Rick Strassman ¹³ and even Andrew Weil ¹⁴ and Terence McKenna ¹⁵), whom, unfortunately, represent the vast majority of the breed. But I guess any writer who holds unpopular opinions has the same problem, especially if they have skin in the game when it comes to their topic of choice. One wants to scream bloody murder, whereas the strictly armchair pundit wants to discuss matters civilly over tea and crumpets.

One might object, "Yes, but, Brian, it is all about how you THINK and FEEL about life!" What they fail to realize, of course, is that this is precisely what drug prohibition CONTROLS: how I THINK and FEEL about life!!!

It is depressing to realize that Andrew is one of the least bamboozled pundits out there, and even he embraces the Big Lie of the Drug War, that some substances are beyond the pale without regard for details like dosage, circumstances of use, reason for use, the biochemistry of the user, the education level of the user, the goal of the user, the overall philosophy of the user, the genetics of the user, etc. He seems to embrace the Big Lie of the prohibitionist that substances can be bad in and of themselves. In reality, no drug is bad in and of itself -- and may someday be just what is needed, in some dose, for some reason, by itself or in combination with other drugs. To rule out a drug in advance is both anti-scientific and inhumane.

Of course, we may associate any drug with evil outcomes in a given society -- but that tells us something about that society, not about drugs. Puritanical prejudices ¹⁶ to the contrary, opium and coca have been used wisely and for good reasons for millennia. As Thomas Szasz writes in "Ceremonial Chemistry":

"In Galenic practice the most useful medicine was a theriaca, or antidote, named Electuarium theriacale magnum, a compound composed of several ingredients, among them opium and wine. " ¹⁷

Yet America pretends that if their own young people cannot use a drug wisely (in a world wherein society does everything it can to keep that from happening), then nobody on earth can use that drug wisely -- nor should ever be allowed to do so!

This is the mother of all "cases of denial" -- and it is pharmacological colonialism into the bargain.

(abolishthedea.com)

Talk about denial: The UN actually has a goal of eradicating the coca plant from the face of the earth ¹⁸! This is ultimate madness! Not only do Drug Warriors think that their prohibition should apply to everybody now living -- they want to alter the world's biodiversity in such a way that future generations will not even have a CHOICE in the matter! Surely, they will curse us in saner ages to come when they realize that we have eradicated drugs that had enormous benefits and were even once considered actual panaceas! I can hear the mother in the year 2222: "I'm sorry you're depressed and in pain, honey, but the racist and paleolithic cretins back in the early 2000's eradicated all the plant-based substances that could help you the most!"

How did ostensible Christians ever sign off on such a plan: a plan that second-guessed the opinion of God himself with respect to his own creation? "God looked and saw that it was good..." reads the updated Bible, "until racist politicians came along in the 20th century and overruled God in order to make money and to garner votes by playing to popular prejudices."

Why, then, are we westerners so zealously protected from hearing, reading or seeing any positive depictions of drug use? We need simply ask the question "Cui bono?" to find out, remembering, as Poe reminds us, that the phrase means "to whose advantage?" and not "to what good?¹⁹"

Who benefits from the demonization of godsends like opium and coca?

Panaceas cure and even prevent all sorts of illnesses. That is what panaceas do by definition. When we outlaw a panacea, therefore, we create all sorts of "conditions" that the medical industry can now treat. The medical industry has been reifying those conditions into board-certified illnesses ever since such panaceas were outlawed. They have profited enormously from so doing, as can be seen by the fact that the hospital building is one of the few edifices that is not crumbling to bits in America's bullet-riddled downtowns (bullet-riddled courtesy of drug prohibition, of course ²⁰). The psychiatric field would scarcely exist if cocaine were re-legalized ²¹, nor would Americans have to rely on a doctor to decide how much pain relief they receive ²² -- a doctor who is being jealously monitored by DEA agents who will literally throw him or her in jail should they give you more relief than the bureaucrats believe that you should need. Of course, the doctors will never be thrown in jail for giving you too LITTLE pain medication.

I realize in writing this that I am not just outraged about drug prohibition because "I have skin the game"; I am outraged as well because I have a philosophical turn of mind that renders me aghast at the prohibitionist's flagrant disregard for logic and common sense. I am then further outraged when I see that the philosophical community (almost to a man and almost to a woman) refuses to even recognize the existence of drug prohibition, let alone to push back against it as an offense against reason. They are thereby demonstrating how drug prohibition outlaws the freedom of academia and in the worst possible way: by propagandizing academics from birth until they can be trusted to censor themselves! This reminds me that propaganda works, that there are indeed consequences when a country succeeds in censoring all positive talk about drugs from all media -- indeed, succeeds so well that most authors censor themselves -- or else write books that actively support the ideology of drug prohibition ²³.

Once again, the quote from historian William Shirer is all-too apropos.

"No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime's calculated and incessant propaganda." ²⁴

Notes for essay entitled The Hidden Drug War Prejudices of Modern Authors: an open letter to Andrew Monteith, author of Christian Nationalism and the Birth of the War on Drugs:

1: Monteith, Andrew. 2023. Christian Nationalism and the Birth of the War on Drugs. New York University Press EBooks. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479817993.001.0001. (up)
2: “Freud on Cocaine : Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2023. Internet Archive. 2023. https://archive.org/details/freudoncocaine0000freu/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater. (up)
3: What the Honey Trick Tells us about Drug Prohibition DWP (up)
4: Lennard, Henry L. 1972. “Freud’s Disaster with Cocaine.” The New York Times, July 22, 1972, sec. Archives. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/07/22/archives/freuds-disaster-with-cocaine.html. (up)
5: Coverup on Campus DWP (up)
6: LaMattina, John. n.d. “Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of the FDA’s Drug Division Budget?” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2022/09/22/why-is-biopharma-paying-75-of-the-fdas-drug-division-budget/. (up)
7: Hall, Wayne, and Megan Weier. 2016. “Lee Robins’ Studies of Heroin Use among US Vietnam Veterans.” Addiction 112 (1): 176–80. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.13584. (up)
8: I have been unable to confirm this stat. But the WHO notes clinical recidivism rates for depression ranging from 50% to 85%. Do we count that as a recidivism rate of Effexor? Not when Biopharma is paying 75% of The FDA’s Drug Division Budget, as reported by John LaMattina in the Sep 22, 2022 edition of Forbes magazine. (up)
9: How Drug Prohibition makes it impossible to get off of Effexor and other Big Pharma drugs DWP (up)
10: “How the White House and the Media Package Government Propaganda as Entertainment.” 2000. World Socialist Web Site. January 24, 2000. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/01/drug-j24.html. (up)
11: Shirer, William Lawrence. 1984. The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/199576.The_Rise_and_Fall_of_Adolf_Hitler. (up)
12: My Conversation with Michael Pollan DWP (up)
13: Five problems with The Psychedelic Handbook by Rick Strassman DWP (up)
14: What Andrew Weil Got Wrong DWP (up)
15: What Terence McKenna Got Wrong About Drugs DWP (up)
16: Monteith, Andrew. 2023. Christian Nationalism and the Birth of the War on Drugs. New York University Press EBooks. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479817993.001.0001. (up)
17: “Ceremonial Chemistry – Syracuse University Press.” 1974. Syr.edu. 2026. https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/1114/ceremonial-chemistry/. (up)
18: The Secret History of Coca Davis, Wade, Rolling Stone magazine, 2025 (up)
19: Thou Art the Man Poe, Edgar Allan, Poe Museum (up)
20: Heather Ann Thompson. 2014. The Atlantic. The Atlantic. October 30, 2014. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/10/inner-city-violence-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/382154/. (up)
21: “Freud on Cocaine : Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2023. Internet Archive. 2023. https://archive.org/details/freudoncocaine0000freu/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater. (up)
22: Doctor Feel Bad DWP (up)
23: Self-Censorship in the Age of the Drug War DWP (up)
24: Shirer, William Lawrence. 1984. The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/199576.The_Rise_and_Fall_of_Adolf_Hitler. (up)

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Over 45% of traumatic brain injuries are caused by horseback riding (ABC News). Tell your representatives to outlaw horseback riding and make it a federal offence to teach a child how to ride! Brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.

The prohibitionist motto: "Billions for arrest, not one cent for education."

If I have no right to mother nature's bounty, then I surely have no right to manmade guns. If hysterical fearmongering justifies the eradication of the Fourth Amendment, then the Second Amendment should go as well.

NIDA is just a propaganda arm of the U.S. government -- and will remain so until it recognizes the glaringly obvious benefits of drugs -- as well as the glaringly obvious downsides of prohibition. We need a National Institute on Drug Use, not a National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Alexander Shulgin is a typical westerner when he speaks about cocaine. He moralizes about the drug, telling us that it does not give him "real" power. But so what? Does coffee give him "real" power? Coke helps some, others not. Stop holding it to this weird metaphysical standard.

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."

America legalizes alcohol and then outlaws all the drugs that could help prevent and cure alcoholism.

Oregon's drug policy is incoherent and cruel. The rich and healthy spend $4,000 a week on psilocybin. The poor and chemically dependent are thrown in jail, unless they're on SSRIs, in which case they're congratulated for "taking their meds."

The FDA says that MindMed's LSD drug works. But this is the agency that has not been able to decide for decades now if coca "works," or if laughing gas "works." It's not just science going on at the FDA, it's materialist presuppositions about what constitutes evidence.

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!

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The Hidden Drug War Prejudices of Modern Authors

an open letter to Andrew Monteith, author of Christian Nationalism and the Birth of the War on Drugs

Author's Follow-up:

November 30, 2025

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

Diary of a Drug Fiend