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You have the right to give up your rights

The injustice of plea dealing in the age of drug prohibition

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

March 16, 2026



I asked AI the following question this afternoon:

How many felonies were committed in 2025 and how many were drug-related?


It responded as follows:

"In 2025, there were over 1.5 million drug-related arrests in the United States, indicating a significant number of drug-related felonies. However, the total number of felonies committed in 2025 is not specified in the available data." -- Search Assist AI on Duck Duck Go Browser, question asked on March 16, 2026.


AI only cited two sources for this information -- or rather for this LACK of information -- one of which was a site for "SoCal Defense Attorney" in which a Southern California defense lawyer by the name of Tammy Higgins gives drug prohibition an enormous Mulligan by blaming all of the problems that it causes on drug crime.1

"Drug crimes hurt entire neighborhoods," tut-tuts Tammy, "not just the people involved. Families worry about their safety when drug activity increases nearby." She then goes on to lament the deteriorating property values brought about by such crime, the overwhelming of local healthcare services, the impact on local businesses and local schools, and Tammy doesn't know what-all!

[Sigh]

This is just another case of an American blaming drugs for the problems that are caused by drug prohibition itself, another case of giving drug prohibition a big fat Mulligan for the evil that it has brought to America.

By the way, I was looking up this felony stat after reading Colleen Cowles' account in "War On Us"2 of how drug criminals are subject to cruel and unusual punishment in our so-called justice system. What an eye-opener! Did you know that 97% of all criminal cases in the United States are a result of plea deals? 97%. The cases never go to trial! And this is no wonder. There are 1.4 million drug arrests every year, after all, and as Colleen writes, "If even 1/4 of these cases required prosecutors to actually spend time reviewing facts in detail or preparing for trial to prosecute those charges, the court system would implode."

And what does this mean for those arrested on drug offenses? It means that they are under great pressure to admit to charges, regardless of facts, and to forswear their rights, lest they incur long jail sentences for standing up for those rights.

"You do have the right to demand a trial," writes Colleen, assuming the voice of a deal-making prosecutor, "but did I mention that additional charges may be filed against you if you don't accept this plea agreement? Have you looked at the maximum penalty for what you're charged with? That pill in your pocket could carry seven years. If you go to trial, we'll convince that jury that you need to be behind bars for a long time. Do you really want to risk years in prison?"

We should end plea deals altogether. Let the system implode, and maybe then Americans will see the folly of outlawing our right to our own bodies and what we place therein.

But I'll leave the final word on America's plea-dealing mania to Judge William Young of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, whom Colleen quotes as follows from his opinion in the 2004 case of US v. Green:

"This is the essential key to an understanding of federal sentencing policy today. The [Justice] Department is so addicted to plea bargaining to leverage its law enforcement resources to an overwhelming conviction rate that the focus of our entire criminal justice system has shifted far away from trials and juries and adjudication to a massive system of sentence bargaining that is heavily rigged against the accused citizen."3




Author's Follow-up:

March 19, 2026

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up


No wonder the "Justice" Department relies on plea deals; otherwise juries could use nullification to free those charged with mere drug possession.






Key Takeaways:






Notes for essay entitled You have the right to give up your rights: The injustice of plea dealing in the age of drug prohibition:

1: A Look at How Many Drug-Related Crimes Happen Each Year Higgins, Tammy, SoCal Criminal Defense Lawyer, 2025 (up)
2: “War on Us – the War on Drugs Is a War on All of Us.” 2019. Waronus.com. 2019. http://waronus.com/. (up)
3: U.S. v. Green V Lex (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




The 1932 movie "Scarface" starts with on-screen text calling for a crackdown on armed gangs in America. There is no mention of the fact that a decade's worth of Prohibition had created those gangs in the first place.

Now the folks who helped Matthew get Ketamine must be sacrificed on the altar of the Drug War, lest people start thinking that the Drug War itself was at fault.y

You can get a Ph.D. in healthcare, and not learn a thing about the glaringly obvious benefits of drugs, as demonstrated by history, anecdote and common sense.

When psychiatrists write about heroin, they characterize dependency as enslavement. When they write about antidepressants, they characterize dependency as a medical duty.

When Rick Strassman and Michael Pollan call for continued prohibition to protect young people, they ignore the ENORMOUS fact that prohibition has destroyed inner cities around the world. Wake up, guys! Prohibition is evil, not drugs! Ignorance is evil, not education!

The New York Times gets it wrong again. Yes, kratom, like all drugs, has downsides. The problem is not kratom, it's drug prohibition which limits choice. Nor are young people the only stakeholders in the debate, as the Times always assumes.

The UN of today is in an odd position regarding drugs: they want to praise indigenous societies while yet outlawing the drugs that helped create them.

The fact that drugs have positive uses for human beings is a psychological corollary of Husserl's phenomenology and Whitehead's philosophy of organism.

The Drug War shows us that American democracy is fundamentally flawed. Propaganda and fearmongering has persuaded Americans to give up freedoms that are clearly enunciated in the U.S. Constitution. We need a new democracy in which a Constitution actually matters.

Irony of ironies, that the indignant 19th-century hatred of liquor should ultimately result in the outlawing of virtually every mind-affecting substance on the planet EXCEPT for liquor.


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

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