in response to the Atlantic article by Anthony Murray
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
February 5, 2024
The following letter was written in response to a 2014 article entitled "When Judges Believe in Natural Law" by Anthony Murray in the Atlantic. When I attempted to send it to the author, my message was kicked back as "blocked" by the Murray law firm. (Hmm. Block ME will they?!) So I said, "No big deal, I'll just call their L.A. office number listed on their website." After doing so, however, I received the following somewhat cryptic prerecorded response:
"1-213-465-2367 F-R-E-E-S-W-I-T-C-H underscore H-A-1 -- no route to destination."
Well, either Murray's law firm is out of business, or they have never heard of the concept of user-friendliness. But I guess Murray is one of those high and mighty who have slipped the surly bonds of internet connectivity and are reachable only by a handful of his fellow worthies.
Dear Mr. Murray:
In regard to your Atlantic article, you say that democracy suffers "When Judges Believe in Natural Law"1. But I would like to ask you the following question: What happens when judges give up on the concept of natural law?
ANSWER: The War on Drugs happens, which is based on the concept that a government can take over our rights to Mother Nature's bounty. Surely that is outrageous in the eyes of common sense, not to say world history. Nor is it even Christian, since the Christian god said that his bounty was good. If the concept of natural law upon which America was founded means anything at all, has any power to inspire or deter, then natural law says this: that human beings have the right to what Locke called the earth and all that lies therein.
Sure, we must combat the problem of natural law leading to subjective judicial outcomes based on specific religious beliefs -- but you seem to want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. By throwing out natural law, we return unbridled license to popular opinion led by demagogues. Surely, Jefferson was spinning in his grave when the DEA stomped onto Monticello 2 in 1987 and confiscated his poppy plants3.
But you seem to say that, because natural law can be "abused" by those with narrow religious beliefs, we should hold no truths whatsoever to be self-evident. That idea has given the green light to a war on plant medicine that has outlawed entire religions, criminalized the substances that William James said we must investigate4, denied necessary pain medicine to those in hospice5 (100s of Indian hospitals no longer dare to even stock morphine 6 ) and it has completely censored academia, which cranks out endless articles about addiction and depression and consciousness in which they pretend that outlawed psychoactive medicines either do not exist or that they have no beneficial qualities whatsoever (thereby ignoring all that psychoactive experiences might tell us about the subjects in question)7. This Drug War has arrested millions of minorities by tempting the young and poor with wild profits -- and then arresting them when they took the bait -- thereby directly leading to the election of folks like Donald Trump by relatively small margins8.
The price of ignoring Natural Law is the hateful War on Drugs, which is a folly that American democracy is not likely to survive. Indeed, the 1st and 4th amendments are no longer valid in the USA thanks to the Drug War -- and property can be seized at the government's whim -- and religious freedom is outlawed, unless a church follows the substance-use policy of Christian Scientists9. And this in a country where we claim that guns do not kill people.
As an enemy of the Drug War, I cringe when I hear folks dissing natural law -- for your doctrine seems to say that government does indeed have a right to outlaw nature -- and that is something I will never believe -- nor would Jefferson.
Author's Follow-up: February 5, 2024
I am not saying that I am comfortable with the ways that Clarence Thomas might invoke natural law; but Martin Luther King himself invoked such law when he spoke of our God-given right to freedom and insisted that no law is above this right or can justly countermand it.
"We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights."10
It is surely throwing out the baby with the bath water to claim that we have no inalienable rights whatsoever just because some may, in our view, misuse that term.
Once we concede that there are no such rights, then Mother Nature is no longer ours by right -- which is the absurd result that should make us rethink our priorities. Once we concede that there are no such rights, then government may tax the very air we breathe. But I am at a loss for citing more dire power-grabs from government, since government's claim to control Mother Nature is the power-grab par excellence, for it denies us the right to pain relief on our own terms, and when a government controls pain, it has its hooks in our flesh. By controlling psychoactive substances, it tells us literally how we can think and feel about this world -- a far more dire censorship than merely outlawing books.
Of course, even on the grounds of expediency, the Drug War is insane -- for if we were to outlaw all activities that had a similar (or worse) risk profile than drug use, we would give up horseback riding and skiing and we would not even be driving automobiles11. The only remaining grounds for outlawing drugs is an anti-scientific and ahistorical view that psychoactive substances can have no good uses for anybody, anywhere, ever -- a viewpoint that has been responsible for immense suffering over the last 100 years, because Drug Warriors are blind to all the stakeholders in the drug debate -- except for the white suburban young people that they claim they want to protect -- while locking up their black counterparts in the 'hood, turning inner cities into shooting galleries, and destroying the rule of law in Latin America.
There are no merely recreational drugs. All drugs that elate have obvious potential uses for the depressed.
Drug testing labs should give high marks for those who manage to use drugs responsibly, notwithstanding the efforts of law enforcement to ruin their lives. The lab guy would be like: "Wow, you are using opium wisely, my friend! Congratulations! Your boss is lucky to have you!"
Prohibitionists have the same M O they've had for the last 100+ years: blame drugs for everything. Being a drug warrior is never having the decency to say you're sorry -- not to Mexicans, not to inner-city crime victims, not to patients who go without adequate pain relief...
There are endless ways that psychoactive drugs could be creatively combined to combat addiction and a million other things. But the drug warrior says that we have to study each in isolation, and then only for treating one single board-certified condition.
FDA drug approval is a farce when it comes to psychoactive medicine. The FDA ignores all the obvious benefits and pretends that to prove efficacy, they need "scientific" evidence. That's scientism, not science.
And where did politicians get the idea that irresponsible white American young people are the only stakeholders when it comes to the question of re-legalizing drugs??? There are hundreds of millions of other stakeholders: philosophers, pain patients, the depressed.
Laughing gas inspired the philosophy of William James. Outlawing N20 is outlawing academic freedom. Laughing gas should be available for the suicidal. Drug prohibition is not a victimless crime.
Big pharma drugs are designed to be hard to get off. Doctors write glowingly of "beta blockers" for anxiety, for instance, but ignore that fact that such drugs are hard -- and even dangerous -- to get off. We have outlawed all sorts of less dependence-causing alternatives.
Guess who's in charge of protecting us from AI? Chuck Schumer! The same guy who protected us from drugs -- by turning America into a prison camp full of minorities and so handing two presidential elections to Donald Trump.
Materialist scientists cannot triumph over addiction because their reductive focus blinds them to the obvious: namely, that drugs which cheer us up ACTUALLY DO cheer us up. Hence they keep looking for REAL cures while folks kill themselves for want of laughing gas and MDMA.
(up)
