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.
The FDA approves of shock therapy and the psychiatric pill mill, but they cannot see the benefits in MDMA, a drug that brought peace, love and understanding to the dance floor in 1990s Britain.
Many people take antidepressants believing their depression has a biochemical cause. Research does not support this belief. --Dr. Noam Shpancer, Psychology Today
Cop and detective shows are loaded with subtle drug war propaganda, including lines like, "She had a history of drug use, so..." The implication being that anyone who uses substances that politicians hate cannot be trusted.
Had the FDA been around in the Indus Valley 3,500 years ago, there would be no Hindu religion today, because they would have found some potential problem with the use of soma.
The U.S. government created violence out of whole cloth in America's inner cities with drug prohibition -- and now it is using that violence as an excuse to kick the people that they themselves have knocked down.
Westerners have "just said no" to pain relief, mood elevation and religious insight.
Today's Washington Post reports that "opioid pills shipped" DROPPED 45% between 2011 and 2019..... while fatal overdoses ROSE TO RECORD LEVELS! Prohibition is PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE.
When people tell us there's nothing to be gained from using mind-improving drugs, they are embarrassing themselves. Users benefit from such drugs precisely to the extent that they are educated and open-minded. Loudmouth abstainers are telling us that they lack these traits.
We should not be talking about the potential harm of drugs -- we should be talking about the well-established harm of drug PROHIBITION.
The outlawing of opium eventually resulted in an "opioid crisis"? The message is clear: people want self-transcendence. If we don't let them find it safely, they will find it dangerously.
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