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Why DARE should stop telling kids to say no

open letter to the Christian Science propaganda organization called DARE

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

June 10, 2022



2025 update



It's wrong to tell kids to say no to drugs. That's Christian Science. That's religious indoctrination. Why do you assume that mind medicine is evil? You surely don't think that physical medicine is evil. Some of the drugs that you tell kids to say "No" to have inspired entire religions. So stop the CHRISTIAN SCIENCE indoctrination.


Cartoon featuring a sign in front of a grade school reading: Drug Free Zone... except for coffee, nicotine, alcohol, cigarettes, SSRIs... sugar, chocolate, aspirin, Monster-Energy drinks...
Signs that read Drug Free Zone are proselytizing on behalf of the drug-hating religion of Christian Science. We should not want to be free of drugs in cases where they could be useful -- which are potentially legion in a sane world.




It's fine to teach kids not to accept drugs from kids and strangers, but it's wrong to teach them to despise the politically defined boogieman called "drugs."

Organizations like DARE increase substance abuse because you're always reminding kids about "DRUGS DRUGS DRUGS!" You never let them forget about it. Well, guess what:

that just gives kids ideas. If they want to rebel, they know what to do: take those dirty evil awful drugs that the parents are always trying to frighten them about.

Check out the research: the drugs that you demonize could be godsends for the depressed and lonely. But organizations like yours have forced depressed folks like myself to go an entire lifetime without the godsend medicine that grows at my very feet, all so that you can demonize Mother Nature's plant medicine -- after racist politicians have given alcohol and tobacco a great big MULLIGAN, even though those drugs kill half a million Americans every year!

If you're going to tell kids to say no to drugs, then stop being hypocritical. Tell them to say no to Big Pharma 1 2 antidepressants 3 -- upon which ONE IN FOUR AMERICAN WOMEN ARE HOOKED FOR LIFE. Tell them to say no to coffee. Tell them to say no to sugar. Tell them to say no to Pepto-Bismol, aspirin and heart medicine.

Or better yet, tell them the unvarnished truth about ALL drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, not just those spectacular but rare anecdotes of abuse that drug-haters cite whenever the drugs that they hate have proven to be extraordinarily safe, statistically speaking.

Speaking of which...

SCHOOL SHOOTINGS could be ended by the therapeutic use of the drug Ecstasy, a drug that teaches folks to care about their fellow human being, but you guys are so caught up in a frenzy of knee-jerk drug demonization that you can't even imagine this glaringly obvious solution to this enormous problem of our time.

In short, DARE promotes an unscientific view of plant medicine. It is a jaundiced drug-war view that has censored American scientists, caused civil wars overseas, empowered a self-styled Drug War Hitler in the Philippines, and caused almost 800 black deaths in Chicago alone last year thanks to the guns and violence that naturally follow from prohibition. For as Heath Ann Thompson wrote in the Atlantic in 2014: "Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence 4 that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist."


September 24, 2022
DARE's superstitious demonization of drugs hurts children in hospices. Yes, there are hospices that refuse to give dying children morphine 5 to ease their pain because of the drug-warrior lie that substances like morphine 6 are evil in and of themselves, without regard for how, why or when they are used. If DARE wants to help children, they would disband, or devote their efforts to promoting full-on honesty about ALL drugs (including alcohol and anti-depressants) -- the honesty to which America has been so firmly opposed for a variety of political and economic motivations too obvious to require mentioning here.


Author's Follow-up: February 7, 2023

And what about those signs that read DRUG FREE ZONE? Posting signs like that around schools makes as much sense as posting signs that read: SEX FREE ZONE. You're only giving kids ideas about something about which they need to make up their minds as adults. For it's not education's role to teach kids the doctrine of Mary Baker Eddy with respect to psychoactive medicine. Kids have to make up their own minds: is psychoactive medicine a blessing sent from God or is it a curse sent from the devil, as the Drug Warrior seems to think? That's a decision for educated adults to make: neither DARE nor anybody else should try to influence their decisions in grade school, of all places, nor constantly nag them on the subject and thereby put unhelpful thoughts in youngsters' heads.

?270?



Author's Follow-up: January 19, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




The Drug Warriors know what they're doing. Get to them while they're young, teach them to fear drugs rather than to understand them. That way they'll grow up into fearful citizens, ready to accept any loss of freedom in the name of fighting a phantom, thereby keeping their minds off of real problems. Hysterical Drug Warriors like Marci Hamilton liken drug use to child abuse7 -- but the real child abuse occurs when we indoctrinate children in grade school in the drug-hating tenets of the Christian Science religion. We thereby encourage a drug prohibition which brings totally unnecessary torture and violence into the world while denying us a host of potential godsends that common sense and creativity could leverage as powerful psychological benefactors for individuals and communities alike.

But the Drug Warrior prefers that our children be proselytized about drugs, not educated about them.

It is a disgrace, and groups like DARE should be disbanded and held accountable for their brainwashing of our children in the idiotic know-nothing ideology of substance demonization.







Notes:

1: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
2: 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)
3: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
4: Firearm Violence in the United States Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Johns Hopkins University (up)
5: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)
6: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)
7: Marci Hamilton Equates Drug Use with Child Abuse DWP (up)








Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




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.

I'm told antidepressant withdrawal is fine because it doesn't cause cravings. Why is it better to feel like hell than to have a craving? In any case, cravings are caused by prohibition. A sane world could also end cravings with the help of other drugs.

The DEA is gaslighting Americans, telling them that drugs with obvious benefits have no benefits whatsoever. Scientists collude in this lie thanks to their adherence to the emotion-scorning principles of behaviorism.

If there were no other problem with antidepressants, they would be wrong for the simple reason that they make a user dependent for life -- not as a bug (as in drugs like opium) but rather as a feature: that's how they "work," by being administered daily for a lifetime.

Until prohibition ends, rehab is all about enforcing a Christian Science attitude toward psychoactive medicines (with the occasional hypocritical exception of Big Pharma meds).

I will gladly respect the police once we remove them from Gestapo duty by ending the war on drugs. Police should also learn to live on a budget, without deriving income from confiscating houses and dormitories, etc.

To understand why the western world is blind to the benefits of "drugs," read "The Concept of Nature" by Whitehead. He unveils the scientific schizophrenia of the west, according to which the "real" world is invisible to us while our perceptions are mere "secondary" qualities.

I should have added to that last post: "I in no way want to glorify or condone drug demonization."

If we encourage folks to use antidepressants daily, there is nothing wrong with them using heroin daily. A founder of Johns Hopkins used morphine daily and he not only survived, but he thrived.

A Pennsylvanian politician now wants the US Army to "fight fentanyl." The guy is anthropomorphizing a damn drug! No wonder pols don't want to spend money on education, because any educated country would laugh a superstitious guy like that right out of public office.


Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






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Copyright 2025, Brian Ballard Quass Contact: quass@quass.com

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