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How Ecstasy could end mass shootings

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher




March 26, 2021

Ecstasy helps humans love each other. Time to use it therapeutically on hot heads.

It's hard to end mass shootings in America, because we're not allowed to come up with any solution that involves guns in any way. So we're hobbled from the start. It's like we're being asked to solve one of those crazy logic problems that says: "Using two match sticks, make 10 triangles... but you're not allowed to touch the match sticks at any time."

But I do have one idea of how to end -- or at least to seriously decrease -- mass shootings without (heaven forbid) inconveniencing gun owners in any way, shape or form. Here's the solution:

Force all haters to undergo talk therapy while under the influence of MDMA, aka Ecstasy. That's it. Problem solved (or at least seriously dented).

Why? Because the Drug Ecstasy has a long history of promoting pro-social feelings. The drug single-handedly brought about peace, love and understanding in Britain in the 1990s, when E-using folks of every ethnic group happily joined together on the dance floor to celebrate life without regard for racial, social or ethnic distinctions, a unity never witnessed before in the British Isles. That dance floor utopia would still be going on today except that Drug Warriors blamed one single solitary death on E, and used that as an excuse to crack down on the drug. The result: dancers switched from Ecstasy to anger-facilitating drugs such as alcohol and crack cocaine, and concert producers had to hire special forces troops to police their venues.

Yet another "victory" for the Drug War.

Of course, the Drug Warriors failed to notice that the E-related death which inspired their crackdown was caused by the Drug War itself. Why? Because the Drug War suppresses research on substances like Ecstasy, making it impossible to establish guidelines for safe use. Nor did they stop to think that Ecstasy was, in fact, FANTASTICALLY SAFE compared to alcohol, which racked up 5,460 deaths in Great Britain in 2020 alone* -- deaths over which the purblind British Drug Warrior never lost a moment of sleep, let alone launched a nationwide campaign to demonize alcohol.

So the good news is that Ecstasy could drastically decrease mass shootings if we were to use it therapeutically to treat angry people.

The bad news is that America is unlikely to hear this penny drop for many decades to come. Why not? Because guns are not the only thing that Americans are hung up about. They're hung up about the politically created scapegoat called "drugs" as well, unable to wrap their minds around the fact that the substances we dogmatically demonize today could actually be used for the good of a hate-filled humanity, if not to save us from nuclear annihilation, then at least to render mass shootings fewer and farther between.

Until America ends its illogical policy of substance demonization, Americans will remain as confused about mass shootings "as the Egyptians in their fog" as Shakespeare says, vainly trying to think of solutions to this problem that do not involve either guns OR drugs... a self-created dilemma that makes the above-mentioned matchstick problem sound solvable by comparison.

*https://thehill.com/policy/international/europe/537505-alcohol-related-deaths-hit-record-high-in-uk-amid-coronavirus



The Links Police

Do you know why I stopped you? That's right, because the Drug War gives me carte blanche to be a noxious busybody. That, and I wanted to give you a few more links showing how drugs can help us stop mass shootings, as soon as we drop the drug-war ideology of substance demonization, that is.

How the Drug War killed Leah Betts
Saying Yes to Drugs
How the Drug War Blinds us to Godsend Medicine
Open letter to Professor Troy Glover at Waterloo University
MDMA for Psychotherapy


May 25, 2022




By the way, MDMA is already being fast-tracked by the FDA as a treatment for PTSD and depression. Of course, "fast-tracked" is a relative term. Brian is 64 years old, and he's been waiting his whole life for the FDA to approve medicines that grow at his very feet -- so there is nothing "fast" at all about the FDA approval process. But for those who doubt the ability of MDMA (aka Ecstasy) to change hearts, check out How the Drug War killed Leah Betts -- or better yet watch the documentary "One Nation" by concert promoter Terry "Turbo" Smith, in which we hear the following "rave reviews" about the peace and harmony that MDMA brought to the British dance floor in the 1990s (before Drug Warriors criminalized the drug and alcohol-fueled violence ensued).

"It was the first time that black-and-white people had integrated on a level... and everybody was one." -- DJ Ray Keith.



"It was black and white, Asian, Chinese, all up in one building," -- MC GQ.



"Everyone's loving each other, man, they're not hating." - DJ Mampi Swift.


The DEA outlawed MDMA/Ecstasy in 1985, against the advice of its own legal counsel. The result: American soldiers have gone without a godsend medicine for PTSD for almost 40 years now.






Author's Follow-up: September 22, 2022

Wow. I've just told America how to end school shootings. That's a tough act to follow, but I think I can do better yet. What if I were to tell you that there is a plant medicine that could end depression? It's been used by the Peruvian Indians for millennia, for whom it was considered divine. I'm talking about the coca leaf. You know? The so-called 'drug' that Americans have ignorantly demonized by conflating it with the cocaine alkaloid that it contains (all so that the US could keep boots on the ground in Latin America). But to ban coca because it contains cocaine is like banning peaches because they contain prussic acid: i.e., it's boneheaded and wrong. See W. Golden Mortimer's book on this topic, if you value facts over fear and truth over government propaganda.


Related tweet: October 24, 2022



"Drugs are horrific," huh? Does he (Rishi Sunak) mean MDMA, which could help end school shootings, or soma, which inspired the Hindu religion, or coca, which was enjoyed by the long-lived Inca for millennia?




Next essay: America's Obsession with Fascist Drug War Movies
Previous essay: Drugs: the great American scapegoat

More Essays Here




Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs

Health is not a quality, it's a balance. To decide legality based on 'health' grounds thus opens a Pandora's box of different points of view.
The Drug War is the most important evil to protest, precisely because almost everybody is afraid to do so. That's a clear sign that it is a cancer on the body politic.
The Drug War is one big entrapment scheme for poor minorities. Prohibition creates an economy that hugely incentivizes drug dealing, and when the poor fall for the bait, the prohibitionists rush in to arrest them and remove them from the voting rolls.
If drug war logic made sense, we would outlaw endless things in addition to drugs. Because the drug war says that it's all worth it if we can save just one life -- which is generally the life of a white suburban young person, btw.
Prohibition is a crime against humanity. It forces us to use shock therapy on the severely depressed since we've outlawed all viable alternatives. It denies medicines that could combat Alzheimer's and/or render it psychologically bearable.
The Drug War is based on a huge number of misconceptions and prejudices. Obviously it's about power and racism too. It's all of the above. But every time I don't mention one specifically, someone makes out that I'm a moron. Gotta love Twitter.
I wonder if Nixon knew what a favor he was doing medical capitalism when he outlawed psychedelics. Those drugs can actually cure things, and there's no money in that.
M. Pollan says "not so fast" when it comes to drug re-legalization. I say FAST? I've gone a whole lifetime w/o access to Mother Nature's plants. How can a botanist approve of that? Answer: By ignoring all legalization stakeholders except for the kids whom we refuse to educate.
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.
Prohibitionists have the same M O they've had for the last 100+ years: blame drugs for everything. Being a drug warrior is never having the decency to say you're sorry -- not to Mexicans, not to inner-city crime victims, not to patients who go without adequate pain relief...
More Tweets


essays about
UNRECOGNIZED DRUG BENEFITS

Psychoactive Drugs and the Fountain of Youth
Drug Use as Self-Medication
Let's Hear It For Psychoactive Therapy
The Good Side of Methamphetamines



front cover of Drug War Comic Book

Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans



You have been reading an article entitled, How Ecstasy could end mass shootings published on March 26, 2021 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)