The immorality of assisted suicide in the age of drug prohibition
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
February 24, 2026
When I first learned that North Americans like Claire Brosseau were demanding the right to assisted suicide on account of their depression, I was stunned. I simply could not understand how such westerners could "make that call" without realizing the obvious: namely, that it is drug prohibition which is keeping them from using drugs that could make them want to live! I could not understand how activists like Claire were not calling for an end to drug prohibition rather than demanding their right to die with the help of the state: the same state that was refusing to let them heal! Now that I am coming to my senses after that blow, like a boxer shaking off the effects of a left hook, I realize that assisted suicide for any reason is morally reprehensible insofar as the option is chosen in willful ignorance of the option-limiting policy of drug prohibition.
How can we decide on a person's quality of life without taking their mental state into account? And if drug prohibition prevents us from improving that mental state, how can we make a fair decision about "allowing" that patient to die?
Westerners believe they can pass judgment on the value of a paralyzed life by considering only the physical elements of that existence. They pay short shrift to the ability of the human mind to rise above challenges -- so much so that they outlaw all the drugs that could help a disabled person leverage that mental power to new heights of ecstasy and insight.
This mental power arises naturally in some. After having been paralyzed by a stroke, French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby dictated an entire book about his life through the strategic blinking of his left eye. (Had his left eye itself been inoperative, Bauby might well have been considered to be braindead.) We have a moral duty to use any and all drugs necessary to prompt the many less naturally motivated patients to rise above their paralyzed condition as well, not so that they too can write their memoirs, but so that they too can rise above their condition and gain a sort of philosophical perspective on their troubles with the help of the attitude improvement vouchsafed by the strategic use of a wide variety of motivating drugs.
Make no mistake, I occupy the high ground in this argument. I am merely making the common-sense claim that we should use all available medicines to help the paralyzed patient -- whereas the prohibitionists believe that we should use only those drugs of which politicians approve, and to hell with the mental state of the depressed paralytic -- even though the mental state of the patient is ultimately all that really matters for them in life.
As an Elizabethan poet once wrote:
My mind to me a kingdom is;
Such perfect joy therein I find
That it excels all other bliss
Which God or nature hath assign'd.
We are morally guilty of torturing patients when we knowingly deprive them of drugs that could improve their mental states and so improve their ability to tolerate their pathologies, whether we consider those pathologies to be physical or psychological.
Many psychedelic fans are still drug warriors at heart. They just think that a nice big exception should be carved out for the drugs that they're suddenly finding useful.
When folks banned opium, they did not just ban a drug: they banned the philosophical and artistic insights that the drug has been known to inspire in writers like Poe, Lovecraft and De Quincey.
Wanna show drug warriors the error of their ways? Legalize all less dangerous drugs than alcohol and then deny work to those who test positive for liquor and confiscate their property if beer cans are found on-site.
Musk and co. want to make us more robot-like with AI, when they should be trying to make us more human-like with sacred medicine. Only humans can gain creativity from plant medicine. All AI can do is harvest the knowledge that eventually results from that creativity.
Heroin versus Antidepressants https://abolishthedea.com/heroin_versus_antidepressants.php
The "acceptable risk" for psychoactive drugs can only be decided by the user, based on what they prioritize in life. Science just assumes that all users should want to live forever, self-fulfilled or not.
Americans are starting to think that psychedelics may be an exception to the rule that drugs are evil -- but drugs have never been evil. The evil resides in how we think, talk and legislate about drugs.
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.
In a free world, almost all depressed individuals could do WITHOUT doctors: these adult human beings could handle their own depression with the informed intermittent use of a wide variety of psychoactive substances.
The goal of drug-law reform should be to outlaw prohibition. Anything short of that, and our basic rights will always be subject to veto by fearmongers. Outlawing prohibition would restore the Natural Law of Jefferson, which the DEA scorned in 1987 with its raid on Monticello.
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