hilosophically speaking, the Drug War is merely Christian Science as applied to psychoactive drugs. It is premised on an article of faith: namely, that the best life is one lived without the aid of psychoactive medicines. Therefore it is a violation of Church and State when government tells me I must live my life according to the Drug War ethic of prohibition. For I do not find it morally reprehensible for a man or woman to access the medicinal bounty of Mother Nature to improve his or her mind. It is not part of MY religion to repelled by such behavior. To the contrary, I find it a moral responsibility to be all that I can be in this life, and if that goal can be aided by Mother Nature's plants, herbs, and fungi, then I consider it a moral obligation to pursue that enlightenment.
Author's Follow-up: September 2, 2022
The Drug War is a greater outrage than almost anyone else seems to give it credit for. It's not just a good idea that was bound to fail -- it's a bad idea that is already failing spectacularly as we write (by causing civil wars overseas, denying medical godsends to billions, denying morphine to kids in hospice, killing thousands of inner-city Americans every year, censoring scientists -- or rather bamboozling them with so much tacit drug-war ideology that said scientists do not even recognize that they're being censored). The government has no business trying to get citizens to stop using plants and fungi whose psychoactive powers have inspired entire religions. The use of such proscriptions is inherently a war on religion, essentially requiring the whole world to green-light only those drugs that have been approved of by WASP politicians, namely alcohol, tobacco and coffee. And if one doesn't like the world without godsend medicines, they can always "come home" to the Christian church, by accepting the existence of a higher power while declaring yourself incapable of using so much as aspiring safely.
Thus conscience (or rather false consciousness) doth make cowards of us all.
Thus via prohibition, the Drug War hopes to turn everyone into a practicing Christian -- or else execute them for drug dealing: the more things change... It's a religious war by another name.
No Drug War Keychains The key to ending the Drug War is to spread the word about the fact that it is Anti-American, unscientific and anti-minority (for starters)
Monticello Betrayed Thomas Jefferson By demonizing plant medicine, the Drug War overthrew the Natural Law upon which Jefferson founded America -- and brazenly confiscated the Founding Father's poppy plants in 1987, in a symbolic coup against Jeffersonian freedoms.
The Drug War Censors Science Scientists: It's time to wake up to the fact that you are censored by the drug war. Drive the point home with these bumper stickers.
You have been reading essays by the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass, at abolishthedea.com. Brian is the founder of The Drug War Gift Shop, where artists can feature and sell their protest artwork online. He has also written for Sociodelic and is the author of The Drug War Comic Book, which contains 150 political cartoons illustrating some of the seemingly endless problems with the war on drugs -- many of which only Brian seems to have noticed, by the way, judging by the recycled pieties that pass for analysis these days when it comes to "drugs." That's not surprising, considering the fact that the category of "drugs" is a political category, not a medical or scientific one.
A "drug," as the world defines the term today, is "a substance that has no good uses for anyone, ever, at any time, under any circumstances" -- and, of course, there are no substances of that kind: even cyanide and the deadly botox toxin have positive uses: a war on drugs is therefore unscientific at heart, to the point that it truly qualifies as a superstition, one in which we turn inanimate substances into boogie-men and scapegoats for all our social problems.
The Drug War is, in fact, the philosophical problem par excellence of our time, premised as it is on a raft of faulty assumptions (notwithstanding the fact that most philosophers today pretend as if the drug war does not exist). It is a war against the poor, against minorities, against religion, against science, against the elderly, against the depressed, against those in pain, against children in hospice care, and against philosophy itself. It outlaws substances that have inspired entire religions, Nazifies the English language and militarizes police forces nationwide.
It bans the substances that inspired William James' ideas about human consciousness and the nature of ultimate reality. In short, it causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, meanwhile violating the Natural Law upon which Thomas Jefferson founded America. (Surely, Jefferson was rolling over in his grave when Ronald Reagan's DEA stomped onto Monticello in 1987 and confiscated the founding father's poppy plants.)
If you believe in freedom and democracy, in America and around the world, please stay tuned for more philosophically oriented broadsides against the outrageous war on godsend medicines, AKA the war on drugs.
PS The drug war has not failed: to the contrary, it has succeeded, insofar as its ultimate goal was to militarize police forces around the world and help authorities to ruthlessly eliminate those who stand in the way of global capitalism. For more, see Drug War Capitalism by Dawn Paley.
Rather than apologetically decriminalizing selected plants, we should be demanding the immediate restoration of Natural Law, according to which "The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being." (John Locke)
Site and its contents copyright 2023, by Brian B. Quass, the drug war philosopher at abolishthedea.com. For more information, contact Brian at quass@quass.com.
hilosophically speaking, the Drug War is merely Christian Science as applied to psychoactive drugs. It is premised on an article of faith: namely, that the best life is one lived without the aid of psychoactive medicines. Therefore it is a violation of Church and State when government tells me I must live my life according to the Drug War ethic of prohibition. For I do not find it morally reprehensible for a man or woman to access the medicinal bounty of Mother Nature to improve his or her mind. It is not part of MY religion to repelled by such behavior. To the contrary, I find it a moral responsibility to be all that I can be in this life, and if that goal can be aided by Mother Nature's plants, herbs, and fungi, then I consider it a moral obligation to pursue that enlightenment. 
