Homepage of the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass
blog icon orange rss icon with stylized radio waves bird icon for twitter bird icon for twitter substack icon


back navigation arrow forward navigation arrow


Why the Drug War is the Great Philosophical Problem of Our Time

my application for joining the Philosophy Forum

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

March 25, 2025



Membership in the Philosophy Forum1 is by invitation only and the moderator requests a letter of introduction from potential members. I will be very interested to see if I am "allowed in." I know nothing about the site moderator, but I do know that philosophers in general ignore the Drug War completely and seem to think that it is bad manners even to mention the topic. But fingers crossed. Check back to this page from time to time to see whether the Philosophy Forum will let your old pal Rudolph join in any reindeer games!

Hello, Jamal.

I was wondering if I might join your Philosophy Forum.


I am a 66-year-old philosopher in spirit if not in title. I have written hundreds of philosophically oriented essays against the War on Drugs and drug prohibition as The Drug War Philosopher at abolishthedea.com. I have also written essays for Sociedelic magazine. I received a BA in Philosophy from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1989. I was offered a job as a TA at the time, but unfortunately, I turned it down. I have come to regret that decision since I now see that my lack of credentials has rendered me more or less invisible online in the world of philosophical discussions.

I am, however, the only professed philosopher who protested on behalf of William James against the FDA's recently announced plan to regulate laughing gas as a "drug.2" As I am sure you know, it was the use of such anesthetics that gave James his view of reality and that he urged philosophers to study the effects of such substances as well.

'No account of the universe in its totality,' wrote James, 'can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.3'


But many (most?) philosophers are afraid to challenge the drug-war ideology of substance demonization. William James founded the psychology department at Harvard University, and yet Harvard's online bio of James does not even mention his use of such substances or how they shaped his views of reality4.

Don't worry: whenever I post on such subjects in forums, I always make supported inductive or deductive arguments and/or quote identifiable sources: I do not simply rant against the status quo, even though I am depressed that so few philosophers push back against the Drug War, given the fact that it is, in my view, the great philosophical problem of our time. I believe that it represents the triumph of illogical argumentation over common sense, arguments based on unfounded yet unspoken premises -- in other words, it represents a world view which philosophers as such might be thought to be uniquely qualified to anatomize and rebuke, were they not afraid to do so. This is one of the benefits of working outside academia: I can afford to be braver than tenured professors.

I have, in fact, written hundreds of letters to philosophers on this subject, almost all of which have been ignored, however5. The Drug War has frightened academics into silence, which alone is a good enough reason to end it, were there not many other reasons to do so as well, such as the fact that it has brought about the end of the rule of law in Latin America, while turning America's inner-cities into no-go zones and causing unnecessary drug overdoses by refusing to teach safe use and to regulate product. We are also under a sort of intense form of propaganda as westerners, thanks to which almost no reports of positive drug use can be published or depicted in movies or other media - this despite the fact that user reports in books by researchers such as Alexander Shulgin6 (and James Fadiman7, William Richards8, Stanislav Grof9, etc.) imply endless potential for common-sense therapeutic drug use. Consider the following user reports in Shulgin's book "Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story10":

"The breakthrough I had... the following day... was of the highest value and importance for me.11"

"The feeling was one of great camaraderie, and it was very easy to talk to people.12"

"I am experiencing more deeply than ever before the importance of acknowledging and deeply honoring each human being. And I was able to go through and resolve some judgments with particular persons.13"










Notes for essay entitled Why the Drug War is the Great Philosophical Problem of Our Time: my application for joining the Philosophy Forum:

1: The Philosophy Forum (up)
2: Why the FDA should not schedule Laughing Gas DWP (up)
3: James, William. 2016. The Varieties of Religious Experience. Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28820.The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience. (up)
4: William James Harvard University (up)
5: I asked 100 American philosophers what they thought about the Drug War DWP (up)
6: I asked 100 American philosophers what they thought about the Drug War DWP (up)
7: Microdosing 101 Fadiman, James, Microdosing Institute (up)
8: Richards, William A, and G William Barnard. 2015. Sacred Knowledge Psychedelics and Religious Experiences. New York Columbia University Press. (up)
9: “The Transpersonal Vision : The Healing Potential of Nonordinary States of Consciousness : Grof, Stanislav, 1931- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2022. Internet Archive. 2022. https://archive.org/details/transpersonalvis0000gro (up)
10: “The Transpersonal Vision : The Healing Potential of Nonordinary States of Consciousness : Grof, Stanislav, 1931- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2022. Internet Archive. 2022. https://archive.org/details/transpersonalvis0000gro (up)
11: “The Transpersonal Vision : The Healing Potential of Nonordinary States of Consciousness : Grof, Stanislav, 1931- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2022. Internet Archive. 2022. https://archive.org/details/transpersonalvis0000gro (up)
12: “The Transpersonal Vision : The Healing Potential of Nonordinary States of Consciousness : Grof, Stanislav, 1931- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2022. Internet Archive. 2022. https://archive.org/details/transpersonalvis0000gro (up)
13: “The Transpersonal Vision : The Healing Potential of Nonordinary States of Consciousness : Grof, Stanislav, 1931- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2022. Internet Archive. 2022. https://archive.org/details/transpersonalvis0000gro (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




Thomas Szasz was not an extremist when it comes to drugs. The extremists are those who feel that psychiatrists know more about our mind and mood than we do.

Drug Prohibition Downside #1,529: aviation accidents caused by pilots who failed to use mind-sharpening drugs to improve their situational awareness. (See, for instance, Comair flight 5191)

Judging from research articles, they do not even teach the many obvious benefits of drugs in med school.

Whether we judge people only by the words that they say or only by the substances of which they partake, we are ignoring the most important things: what they really mean and how they really behave.

All sites about drugs are propaganda in the age of the Drug War, just as all talk about Jewish criminals was propaganda during WWII. Drugs can have downsides and Jews may be criminals, but to focus only on those facts in a time of war turns everything you say into propaganda.

Americans HATE big government -- and yet they have no problem with government using drug prohibition to control their pain relief and how and how much they can think and feel in this life.

The line drawn between recreational and medical use is wishful thinking on the part of drug warriors. Recreation, according to Webster's, is "refreshment or diversion," and both have positive knock-on effects in the lives of real people.

The fact that some drugs can be addictive is no reason to outlaw drugs. It is a reason to teach safe use and to publicize all the ways that smart people have found to avoid unwanted pharmacological dependency -- and a reason to use drugs to fight drugs.

There would be little or no profiling of blacks if the Drug War did not exist.

Morphine can provide a vivid appreciation of mother nature in properly disposed minds. That should be seen as a benefit. Instead, dogma tells us that we must hate morphine for any use.


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






back navigation arrow forward navigation arrow
Book Cover

Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

This book features 150 annotated images, designed to force brainwashed Americans to confront the fact that drug prohibition is wrong. Here is what author Richard Parrish II says of the book's compiler: "The drug prohibition philosopher provides first-hand, principled, persuasive, and insightful arguments against the current drug prohibition regime..."

Purchase Your Copy
Book Cover

Diary of a Drug Fiend

This is the only full-cast recording of Aleister Crowley's 1922 classic paeon to common sense. It is the first book -- and so far almost the only book -- to stake out a philosophy of drug use that is compatible with human freedom, one in which we learn to use drugs as wisely as possible for the benefit of humanity. This recording was produced by the Drug War Philosopher and your purchases help support his effort to push back against the tragically counterproductive policy of drug prohibition, in the name of human freedom and of humanity's right to heal.

Purchase Your Copy



No cookies, no ads paid for by amoral and immoral billionaires (or trillionaires).


Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

The Partnership for a Death Free America is a proud sponsor of The Drug War Philosopher website @ abolishthedea.com.


Copyright 2026, Brian Ballard Quass Contact: quass@quass.com

tombstone for American Democracy, 1776-2024, RIP (up)