All articles about drug-related research are political in the age of the drug war
How the New York Times practices pharmacological colonialism in the interests of the drug war ideology of substance demonization
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
July 1, 2025
All articles about drug-related research are political in the age of the Drug War. This is because arguments about drug downsides are considered to be arguments in favor of drug prohibition in a Drug War society. This in turn is why Simar Bajaj's recent New York Times article about marijuana1 really pisses me off. Given the political nature of drug use in Drug War society, it is absolutely incumbent upon reporters who write about drugs to mention all the unspoken biases about drugs - and above all to mention all the downsides, not simply of drug use, but the downsides of drug prohibition as well, not to mention the downsides of NOT using drugs for human benefit.
And yet Simar never mentions a vast array of positive benefits of marijuana use and a vast array of negative results of outlawing the drug, starting with the fact that so doing has turned America into a penal colony - all in order to enforce laws against a drug which, when used by white people in the past, was called "hemp" and never even subjected to studies designed to discourage its use. Good old white people were using the drug back then, after all, so there was no motive for demonizing its use. These are crucial caveats when talking about demonized drugs, but ones which Simar completely ignores. Also, all reports of studies about drugs in the age of the Drug War must tell us who is sponsoring the research in question. There are stakeholders with literally billions of dollars at stake when it comes to demonizing marijuana, and they should not be able to hide their biases and self-interest behind objective-looking studies posted in profit-driven "scientific" journals.
Here is a comment that I left on Simar Bajaj's freelance website:
"The outlawing of drugs has shunted me off onto dependence-causing Big Pharma meds for life. And now Big Pharma is trying to belittle drug use by judging it by materialist standards and outside of all context. They are determined to deprive me of use of every holistic-acting drug on the planet. This is the pharmacological colonialism that has turned me into a Big Pharma patient for life. If we took this materialistic view of drugs to the rainforest, we could find "reasons" to outlaw every psychoactive plant in the world. It is easy to do so in a world in which Drug Warriors ignore all the GLARINGLY OBVIOUS reasons why drugs are considered godsends for actual users -- as opposed to passion-free materialist scientists. When is the media going to stop normalizing drug prohibition by judging drugs based on RISKS only!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have spent a lifetime on dependence-causing BIG PHARMA drugs thanks to the mindset that one-sided articles such as yours help to justify!!!!!!!!"
This is why I get so little airplay with my views, because I have skin in this game and so I do not take the Drug War in stride as do most other Drug War pundits. This is easy for most lukewarm drug-war opponents to do because they actually share the prejudices of Drug Warriors: especially, the superstitious belief that there really are evil drugs out there and that we can judge drugs "up" and "down" in advance of even using or even investigating them. True, the drug-war opponents may have a different list of substances that they consider to be evil, yet they agree with their Drug Warrior counterparts that there are indeed drugs that are wrong to use in any context whatsoever, at any dose, for any reason - a belief that inevitably leads to academic censorship2 and the creation of a police state - not to mention a world in which folks like myself are shunted off onto dependence-causing "meds" that they have to take for a lifetime.
These bamboozled reformers constitute a who's who of modern drug pundits, including Ralph Metzner3, Andrew Weil4, Rick Strassman5, Michael Pollan6, Terence McKenna 78 and Aldous Huxley9 -- all of whom have their own lists of drugs whose use is apparently "beyond the pale," based on the drug-warrior notion that human beings are children and can never learn to use addictive drugs non-addictively. Even Mike Jay10 comes dangerously close to joining this list with his overdone attempts to judge opium fairly, thereby ignoring the common-sense ways that opium use could be a godsend alternative both to alcohol and to dependence-causing Big Pharma meds. Mike does not have skin in the game and so he does not scream out loud with me: "Just give me stuff that OBVIOUSLY WORKS FOR ME and then the materialists can go on counting angels on a pinhead to find out what I should 'really' be using according to the metaphysics of reductive science." Jay treats the self-interested missionaries as authoritative judges of the opium experience, never asking what actual users thought of the drug -- nor does he cite "The Truth about Opium" by William H. Brereton11, which casts doubt on the motivations and the opium-related IQ level of the many moralizing arm-chair opium bashers in the west during the 19th century.
Speaking of opium it is strange. If I were thought to be dependent on opium, I would be considered to be a wretch and thrown into jail. But if I am dependent instead on Big Pharma 1213 drugs, I am considered to be a good patient. This paradox alone explains why I will despise the disempowering Drug War until my dying day.
The fact that most Americans glibly accept this insane anti-patient and anti-indigenous status quo makes me quite pessimistic about the future of humankind. Even Arthur Schopenhauer believed that the "Truth" would eventually be acknowledged by humanity, and yet the Drug War demonstrates that humanity will go to any lengths to hold on to a financially rewarding lie, one that flatters its preconceptions about the way that the world "should be." We will re-invent the world itself -- ignoring drug benefits, burning plants, rewriting history and abolishing common-sense psychology -- in an effort to "prove" that our intoxiphobic14 understanding of the world is correct. So, whenever we see that drug use does not cause problems, we invent laws to make sure that it will do so.
This is madness, but it is a madness that is unacknowledged by most Americans, for the simple reason that it is invisible to even our most astute drug-law reform advocates. This in turn is because, unlike myself, such pundits do not have "skin in the game." They have made their peace with drug prohibition and feel like they are missing nothing thanks to the wholesale outlawing of psychoactive drugs. If they do not see the need for mind expansion and improvement, why should anyone else? And so we outlaw the metaphysical research of William James and throw Americans into jail should they dare to take care of their own health.
It is an abominable status quo.
A reader on "Reddit15" once called me "extreme" when it comes to drugs. That's to be expected in a world in which most people are "pansies" on the subject, completely rolling over and accepting an outrageous status quo that puts government in charge of how and how much they can think and feel in this life! The problem is not that I am extreme: the problem is that almost nobody else is! This can only be because they do not understand the extent of the injustice being perpetrated by substance prohibition.
AFTERWORD
Let's put this another way.
Suppose I were to take away your liquor and confiscate your house and property were any liquor to be found on-site. Suppose I were to block you from the workforce should you be found to have used liquor any time in your past. Suppose that I then outlawed your religion because it required the use of wine in its communion ritual.
Getting angry yet? Are your views on the subject suddenly becoming "extreme"?
Let me end with a few illuminating quotes from Thomas Szasz16, who, incidentally, is the only drug pundit I know who has not fallen victim to any of the childish presuppositions of the drug prohibitionists:
"If we argue from principle, then it is moot whether drug prohibition works, because it is problematic what should count as its 'working.' The very existence of such a mass movement of scapegoating-- uniting a diverse people in a common hatred-- may be regarded as evidence that, simply put, it is working."
"Actually, as a slogan, 'Just say no to drugs' is simply witless, in both senses of that word: It is at once humorless and stupid, leaving unsaid to what drugs, in what doses and under what circumstances one ought to say no."
"The laws that deny healthy people 'recreational' drugs also deny sick people 'therapeutic' drugs."
"Although there is no evidence that the American consumer ever complained about the free market in drugs, there is plenty of evidence that his self-appointed protectors complained bitterly and loudly."
But perhaps the most revealing insight that I have gained from Thomas Szasz is the fact that drug prohibition is used to bring a diverse America together -- through the insidious means of demonizing an agreed-upon enemy: namely, drugs and those who use and sell them.
"Lacking the usual grounds on which people congregate as a nation, we [Americans] habitually fall back on the most primitive yet most enduring basis for group cohesion, namely, scapegoating."
Another problem with MindMed's LSD: every time I look it up on Google, I get a mess of links about the stock market. The drug is apparently a godsend for investors. They want to profit from LSD by neutering it and making it politically correct: no inspiration, no euphoria.
Despite the 50 year-long war on drugs, the global cocaine supply has grown by 400%. --Elma Mrkonjic
In a compassionate world, we would give laughing gas kits to the suicidal just as we now give epi pens to those with severe allergies.
Opium is a godsend, as folks like Galen, Avicenna and Paracelsus knew. The drug war has facilitated a nightmare by outlawing peaceable use at home and making safe use almost impossible.
His answer to political opposition is: "Lock them up!" That's Nazi speak, not American democracy.
There are times when it is clearly WRONG to deny kids drugs (whatever the law may say). If your child is obsessed with school massacres, he or she is an excellent candidate for using empathogenic meds ASAP -- or do we prefer even school shootings to drug use???
Mayo Clinic is peddling junk. They are still promoting Venlafaxine, a drug that is harder to kick than heroin.
"Dope Sick"? "Prohibition Sick" is more like it. The very term "dope" connotes imperialism, racism and xenophobia, given that all tribal cultures have used "drugs" for various purposes. "Dope? Junk?" It's hard to imagine a more intolerant, dismissive and judgmental terminology.
Science knows nothing of the human spirit and of the hopes and dreams of humankind. Science cannot tell us whether a given drug risk is worthwhile given the human need for creativity and passion in their life. Science has no expertise in making such philosophical judgements.
The term "hard" is just our modern term for the kinds of drugs that doctors of yore used to call panaceas
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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