Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war lies
an open letter to WTOP News
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
August 24, 2023
The author submitted the following suggestions to WTOP News today in the hopes of convincing the news outlet to stop promoting the hateful Drug War narrative.
1) regarding coverage of DC killings. In 2014, Ann Heather Thompson wrote the following in the Atlantic: "Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist." Yet most media outlets in the country write as if the rising inner-city gun violence is inexplicable. I request that WTOP start connecting the dots between prohibition and gun violence, for it was prohibition that incentivized the disastrous arming of the hood in the first place, leading to the creation of no-go shooting zones that, to America's shame, have remained in force for almost half a century now.
2) Regarding your coverage of drugs like fentanyl and MDMA and laughing gas: Please remember ALL the stakeholders in the drug debate. When we demonize drugs rather than understand them, we throw pain patients and the depressed under the bus, by forcing them to go without godsends -- or without adequate doses of godsends -- because doctors are afraid to prescribe. There's a call now for the outlawing of laughing gas. That's throwing millions of the depressed under the bus. I hope that WTOP will remind its readers, by way of context, that the philosophy of William James was inspired by his use of laughing gas and that he himself said that we must study altered states in order to understand ultimate reality. "No account of the universe in its totality," wrote James, "can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded." But disregard them we must if prohibitionists have their way.
3) Please be sceptical of anything that the DEA reports. They have a vested interest in seeing that there is always a drug problem. Their multi-billion-dollar budget depends upon it. I suggest that you have your reporters read "Synthetic Panics" before they report government drug information as gospel truth. It tells how the DEA leverages local drug misuse into a series of national crises with the help of agitprop documentaries on shows like 48 Hours. "The New Face of Fentanyl, the New Face of Ice, the New Face of Crack, The New Face of PCP," etc. NIDA is not a good source either, for they fund studies only on abuse and misuse - never on positive use, meaning they are truly a propaganda arm of the US government.
If these suggestions seem controversial, please consider that Donald Trump won the 2016 election because of the Drug War, whose draconian laws sent millions of minorities to jail, thereby depriving them of the right and/or the ability to vote. In fact, that's clearly the REAL reason for the war on drugs: like GOP redistricting, it's a way to let the far right steal elections. 37,000 people are killed by cars every year, but we do not need to outlaw cars: we need to teach safe driving. Just so with the modern scapegoat called drugs. We have created all the problems by ensuring dangerous uncertain drug supplies for users, meanwhile absolutely refusing to teach them safe use - for the insane reason that this might encourage use. Use is not bad in itself. To say so is Christian Science.
In short, please stop reckoning without the Drug War. It has huge negative ramifications on a free society. Please start pushing back with smart coverage that connects the dots between today's problems and our disastrous drug policy. The kinds of drugs we demonize today have inspired entire religions. As Trump's propaganda-aided election has shown, America can have democracy or it can have a Drug War, but it cannot have both.
Open Letters
Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.
I used to be surprised at this reticence on the part of modern drug-war pundits, until I realized that most of them are materialists. That is, most of them believe in (or claim to believe in) the psychiatric pill mill. If they happen to praise psychedelic drugs as a godsend for the depressed, they will yet tell us that such substances are only for those whose finicky body chemistries fail to respond appropriately to SSRIs and SNRIs. The fact is, however, there are thousands of medicines out there that can help with psychological issues -- and this is based on simple psychological common sense. But materialist scientists ignore common sense. That's why Dr. Robert Glatter wrote an article in Forbes magazine wondering if laughing gas could help the depressed.
As a lifelong depressive, I am embarrassed for Robert, that he has to even ask such a question. Of course laughing gas could help. Not only is laughter "the best medicine," as Readers Digest has told us for years, but looking forward to laughing is beneficial too. But materialist scientists ignore anecdote and history and tell us that THEY will be the judge of psychoactive medicines, thank you very much. And they will NOT judge such medicines by asking folks like myself if they work but rather by looking under a microscope to see if they work in the biochemical way that materialists expect.
Typical materialist protocol. Take all the "wonder" out of the drug and sell it as a one-size-fits all "reductionist" cure for anxiety. Notice that they refer to hallucinations and euphoria as "adverse effects." What next? Communion wine with the religion taken out of it?
This is why the foes of suicide are doing absolutely nothing to get laughing gas into the hands of those who could benefit from it. Laughing is subjective after all. In the western tradition, we need a "REAL" cure to depression.
The most addictive drugs have a bunch of great uses, like treating pain and inspiring great literature. Prohibition causes addiction by making their use as problematic as possible and denying knowledge and choices. It's always wrong to blame drugs.
Science keeps telling us that godsends have not been "proven" to work. What? To say that psilocybin has not been proven to work is like saying that a hammer has not yet been proven to smash glass. Why not? Because the process has not yet been studied under a microscope.
"There has been so much delirious nonsense written about drugs that sane men may well despair of seeing the light." -- Aleister Crowley, from "Essays on Intoxication"
The front page of every mycology club page should feature a protest of drug laws that make the study of mycology illegal in the case of certain shrooms. But no one protests. Their silence makes them drug war collaborators because it serves to normalize prohibition.
I knew all along that Measure 110 in Oregon was going to be blamed for the problems that the drug war causes. Drug warriors never take responsibility, despite all the blood that they have on their hands.
Everyone's biggest concern is the economy? Is nobody concerned that Trump has promised to pardon insurrectionists and get revenge on critics? Is no one concerned that Trump taught Americans to doubt democracy by questioning our election fairness before one single vote was cast?
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.
I'm interested in CBD myself, because I want to gain benefits at times without experiencing intoxication. So I think it's great. But I like it as part of an overall strategy toward mental health. I do not think of CBD, as some do, as a way to avoid using naughty drugs.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war lies: an open letter to WTOP News, published on August 24, 2023 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
You have been reading an article entitled, Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war lies: an open letter to WTOP News, published on August 24, 2023 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)