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
No wonder the "Justice" Department relies on plea deals; otherwise juries could use nullification to free those charged with mere drug possession.
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.
Drug warriors blame all of the problems that they cause on "drugs" and then insist that the entire WORLD accept their jaundiced view of the natural bounty that God himself told us was good.
Someday those books about weird state laws will be full of factoids like: "In Alabama, you could be jailed for 20 years for conspiring to eat a mushroom."
The front page of every mycology club page should feature a protest of drug laws that make the study of mycology illegal in the case of certain shrooms. But no one protests. Their silence makes them drug war collaborators because it serves to normalize prohibition.
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.
After over a hundred years of prohibition, America has developed a kind of faux science in which despised substances are completely ignored. This is why Sci Am is making a new argument for shock therapy in 2023, because they ignore all the stuff that OBVIOUSLY cheers one up.
Opium could be a godsend for talk therapy. It can help the user step outside themselves and view their problems from novel viewpoints.
Here are some political terms that are extremely problematic in the age of the drug war:
"clean," "junk," "dope," "recreational"... and most of all the word "drugs" itself, which is as biased and loaded as the word "scab."
Prohibition is wrong root and branch. It seeks to justify the colonial disdain for indigenous healing practices through fearmongering.
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.
I asked AI the following question this afternoon:
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