ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the American City Homicide Awards for 2021, brought to you by drug prohibition, doing its part to keep the guns firing fast and furious in the 'hood. Now here is your host, Paxil Buspar.
PAXIL: Paxil Buspar here with co-host Adderall Zoloft, and it's an exciting night here in the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia.
GUNSHOT
ADDERALL: Oh! It sounds like someone's trying to make sure that Atlanta, Georgia, comes out on top tonight when it comes to the homicide totals.
PAXIL: The joke is on them because it's already 2022, so any murders that are committed tonight are going to have no effect on tonight's award show.
"Yeah!"
ADDERALL: Speaking of which, it's going to be a close competition tonight.
PAXIL: That's right, Adderall. Now that Covid restrictions are easing up, we're seeing record homicide numbers throughout the country, and not just in the usual cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
ADDERALL: That's right, Paxil. Homicide totals are up all over the country, including in unlikely cities like Columbus, Ohio; Portland, Oregon; Detroit, Michigan; Atlanta, Georgia; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Milwaukee, Wisconsin...
PAXIL: Yes, we get the idea, Adderall.
ADDERALL: ...Portland, Oregon; Toledo, Ohio; San Francisco, California; Memphis, Tennessee...
ADDERALL: Well, you've got to give a lot of credit to America's War on Drugs, Paxil.
PAXIL: That's right, Adderall.
ADDERALL: In fact, do you know what Heather Ann Thompson wrote in the Atlantic in 2014?
PAXIL: What's that, Adderall?
ADDERALL: She wrote, and I quote... ahem! ahem!
"Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist."
PAXIL: Nice impersonation.
ADDERALL: Thanks, Paxil.
PAXIL: All in the name of the God-fearing Drug War, Adderall.
CHURCH ORGAN PLAYING
ADDERALL: Amen.
PAXIL: Could you hand me the envelope, please? Oh, this is so exciting.
ENVELOPE CRINKLING
ADDERALL: Do you need some help with that?
PAXIL: No, thanks, I've got it.
The American city with the third-highest homicide rate per capita in 2021 is...
DRUM ROLL PLAYING
...Detroit Michigan...
CHEERING
...with 309 homicides out of a population of just over 630,000. Accepting the Silver Bullet Award on behalf of Detroit is gang member Reginald Perez from the Fiver Percenters.
REGINALD: Yo, I'd like to thank the DEA for outlawing Mother Nature's godsend medicines.
PAXIL: Oh, yeah?
REGINALD: Are you kidding me? It opened up endless entrepreneurial opportunities in the 'hood.
PAXIL: Opportunities in which guns came in handy, right, Reginald?
REGINALD: The white lady knows whereof she speaks.
CHEERING
ADDERALL: Okay, now it's my turn, Paxil.
PAXIL: Say the magic words, Adderall.
ADDERALL: Oh, great. I've always wanted to say this. Ahem. May I have the envelope, please?
ENVELOPE CRINKLING
What kind of envelopes are these, anyway? Guess they made it out of some kind of funky organic material, like seaweed. Here we go.
DRUM ROLL PLAYING
The American city with the second-highest homicide rate per capita in 2021 is New Orleans, Louisiana...
CHEERING
...with 218 homicides out of a population of 384,000. It looks like New Orleans has been pulling out all the stops...
CORK POPS
PAXIL: And all the AK47's, for that matter.
ADDERALL: To accept tonight's award on behalf of New Orleans, I'd like to welcome Tanya Wingate to the stage. She's chairwoman of the Stop the Violence Campaign in the city's historic 9th Ward.
CROWD MURMURING
What's that? Oh, that's terrible. I've just gotten word that Tanya was killed by a stray bullet while she was pulling out of her driveway this morning to catch a plane for Atlanta.
PAXIL: Oh, God, that is awful.
ADDERALL: Well, I guess I will accept this award on behalf of Tanya's next-of-kin.
PAXIL: Good idea.
ADDERALL: And congratulations once again to New Orleans for coming in second place in the 2021 homicide awards here in Atlanta, Georgia's State Farm Arena.
PAXIL: That's a hard act to follow, Adderall.
ADDERALL: I know, right? Especially if you're not wearing a bullet-proof vest.
LAUGHTER
PAXIL: But it's time now to announce the winner for the American City Homicide Awards of 2021.
ADDERALL: Here's the envelope, Paxil.
PAXIL: Nice try, Adderall, but you're not going to deprive me of the opportunity of saying those magic words once again tonight.
ADDERALL: Oh, right.
PAXIL: May I have the envelope, please?
ADDERALL: I thought you'd never ask.
ENVELOPE CRINKLING
PAXIL: Excuse me just one moment.
CHAINSAW BUZZES
There.
DRUM ROLL PLAYING
And the winner for the American City Homicide Awards for 2021 is... St. Louis, Missouri...
CHEERING
...with 195 homicides out of a population of just 300,000.
ST. LOUIS HOMEBOY: St. Louis does not accept your stupid award.
ADDERALL: And who might you be?
ST. LOUIS HOMEBOY: I might be the guy that's gonna shove that microphone down your throat if you don't stop glamorizing gun violence.
AUDIENCE GASPS
PAXIL: You should be happy. Your city won the American City Homicide competition for 2021.
ST. LOUIS HOMEBOY: Yeah, but only because the racist Drug War incentivized drug dealing, thereby filling my hometown with guns.
PAXIL: You say potato and I say potahto.
ST. LOUIS HOMEBOY: Say what?
ADDERALL: Can we get some security officers up here, please?
PAXIL: Well, I'll tell you what. I used to live in St. Louis myself so I will accept this Silver Bullet Award on behalf of my former hometown.
ADDERALL: I didn't know you used to live in St. Louis.
PAXIL: Oh, yeah, I grew up there.
ADDERALL: Why did you leave?
PAXIL: Because between you and me, it was way too violent.
CHEERING
ANNOUNCER: You have been listening to the American City Homicide Awards for 2021, brought to you by Drug War prohibition: helping to keep the 'hood exciting by incentivizing drug dealing among the poor and powerless. Do your part to marginalize and kill American minorities: tell your Congress people to ratchet up the patriotic War on Drugs today. The War on Drugs: proudly keeping Mother Nature's godsends from the American people for over 100 years.
Right. In fact, the drug war can be seen as a way for conservatives to keep America's eyes OFF the prize. The right-wing motto is, "Billions for law enforcement, but not one cent for social programs."
5% of proceeds from the sale of the above product will go toward getting Brian a decent haircut for once. Honestly. 9% will go toward shoes. 50% will go toward miscellaneous. 9% of the remainder will go toward relaxation, which could encompass anything from a spin around town to an outdoor barbecue at Brian's brother's house in Stanardsville (both gas and the ice-cream cake that Brian usually supplies).
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. Oh, and did I mention that most Drug Warriors these days would never get elected were it not for the Drug War itself, which threw hundreds of thousands of their political opposition in jail? Trump was right for the wrong reasons: elections are being stolen in America, but the number-one example of that fact is his own narrow victory in 2016, which could never have happened without the existence of laws that were specifically written to keep Blacks and minorities from voting. The Drug War, in short, is a cancer on the body politic.
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)
Selected Bibliography
Andrew, Christopher "The Secret World: A History of Intelligence" 2019 Yale University Press
Aurelius, Marcus "Meditations" 2021 East India Publishing Company
Mate, Gabriel "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction" 2009 Vintage Canada
Maupassant, Guy de "Le Horla et autres contes fantastiques - Guy de Maupassant: Les classiques du fantastique " 2019
McKenna, Terence "Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution " 1992 Bantam
Pinchbeck, Daniel "When Plants Dream" 2019 Watkins Publishing
Poe, Edgar Allan "The Essential Poe" 2020 Warbler Classics
Pollan, Michael "How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence " 2018 Penguin Books
Reynolds, David S. "Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville " 1988 Oxford University Press
Richards, William "Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences Hardcover" 2015 Columbia University Press
Rosenfeld, Harvey "Diary of a Dirty Little War: The Spanish-American War of 1898 " 2000 Praeger
Straussman, Rick "DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences " 2001 Park Street Press
Streatfield, Dominic "Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography" 2003 Picador USA
Swartzwelder, Scott "Buzzed: The Straight Facts About the Most Used and Abused Drugs from Alcohol to Ecstasy" 1998 W.W. Norton
Szasz, Thomas "Ceremonial Chemistry: the ritual persecution of drugs, addicts, and pushers" 1974 Anchor Press/Doubleday
Whitaker, Robert "Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America " 2010 Crown
Zinn, Howard "A People's History of the United States: 1492 - present" 2009
Zuboff , Shoshana "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power" 2019 Public Affairs
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.
