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You Have Been Ghosted

how the drug war frightens the world into silence

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

May 22, 2025



I don't mean to scare you, but you are reading an essay by a ghost. Yes, I have been ghosted so often when writing to others about drugs that I believe it is now time for me to embrace the identity that my reluctant interlocutors have tacitly chosen for me. We will all be ghosts soon enough, so I suppose that there is no harm in embracing that condition proactively, as it were. Not that my phantasmal status is going to shut me up, mind. On the contrary, I consider it my first official duty as a ghost to haunt those who have saddled me with this status in the first place, and what better way to do that than by publicizing their neglect of me online? This is not really about payback, however. My real goal in calling these people on the carpet is simply to demonstrate the extent to which drug prohibition has shut down free speech in America on a wide range of important topics.


CNN reporter Lisa Ling has been ghosting me ever since May 13, 2022, when I wrote her to suggest that she should have mentioned the Drug War in her documentary about Chicago gun violence 1 .
See Open Letter to Lisa Ling. BR>

Matthew K. Nock, chair of the Harvard Psychology Department, has been ghosting me since May 11, 2025, when I wrote to suggest that his university's bio about William James should reflect James's interest in altered states.
See How Harvard University Censored the Biography of William James.


Mitch Horrowitz, author of "Uncertain Places, has been ghosting me since March 2, 2025, when I wrote to suggest that facts about beneficial drug use are the most "damned" facts in the world today, in the Fortean sense of that word.
See Charles Fort Didn't Know from Damnation.


Francis Fukuyama has been ghosting me since May 20, 2022, when I wrote him to suggest that the Drug War is the problem with inner-city neighborhoods, not drugs. Liquor and drug prohibition brought gunfire to American streets, not drugs.
See Open Letter to Francis Fukuyama.


San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins has been ghosting me since November 8, 2023, when I wrote her suggesting that drug prohibition is the problem 2 , not the drug dealers whom she makes such a fuss about catching. She should do us a favor and arrest all the Drug Warriors who set up all this violence in the first place, first with liquor prohibition and then with substance prohibition.
See Prohibitionists Never Learn.


Variety Critic Owen Glieberman has been ghosting me since May 23, 2021, when I wrote him suggesting that his review of the movie "Four Good Days" was warped by Drug War presumptions and biases.
See Open Letter to Variety Critic Owen Glieberman.


Oregon Governor Tina Kotek has been ghosting me since September 1, 2024, when I wrote her complaining about her use of drug law to cover up societal problems, such as a lack of affordable housing and affordable medical care, etc.
See Regulate and Educate.


The Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., has been ghosting me since September 9, 2020, when I first wrote to ask them to condemn the Nazification of America via drug law.
See Why the Holocaust Museum must denounce the Drug War.










Notes for essay entitled You Have Been Ghosted: how the drug war frightens the world into silence:

1: Firearm Violence in the United States Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Johns Hopkins University (up)
2: Drug Prohibition is the Problem, not Drugs: what the movers and shakers get wrong in the drug re-legalization debate DWP (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




That's another problem with "following the science." Science downplays personal testimony as subjective. But psychoactive experiences are all ABOUT subjectivity. With such drugs, users are not widgets susceptible to the one-size-fits-all pills of reductionism.

It is evil to give the depressed drugs to help them die while barring them from using drugs that could make them wish to live.

Hollywood presents cocaine as a drug of killers. In reality, strategic cocaine use by an educated person can lead to great mental power, especially as just one part of a pharmacologically balanced diet.

Scientists cannot tell us if using drugs is worth the risk any more than they can tell us if free climbing is worth the risk, or horseback riding or parkour.

People talk about how dangerous Jamaica is -- but no one reminds us that it is all due to America's Drug War. Yes, cannabis and psilocybin are legal there, but plenty of drugs are not, and even if they were, their illegality elsewhere would lead to fierce dealer rivalry.

Many articles in science mags need this disclaimer: "Author has declined to consider the insights gained from drug-induced states on this topic out of fealty to Christian Science orthodoxy." They don't do this because they know readers already assume that drugs will be ignored.

I just asked New York Attorney General Letitia James how much she was getting paid to play Whack-a-Mole. I pointed out that the drug war created the gangs just as liquor prohibition created the Mafia.

Prohibitionists are responsible for the 200,000-plus killed in the US-inspired Mexican drug war in the 21st century.

Opium could be a godsend for talk therapy. It can help the user step outside themselves and view their problems from novel viewpoints.

Being a lifetime patient is not the issue: that could make perfect sense in certain cases. But if I am to be "using" for life, I demand the drug of MY CHOICE, not that of Big Pharma and mainstream psychiatry, who are dogmatically deaf to the benefits of hated substances.


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






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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.

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