America's Big Lie about Opium

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America's Big Lie about Opium

How racist politicians deprived the world of a panacea

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

September 5, 2025

In Ceremonial Chemistry, Thomas Szasz reminds us that:

"In Galenic practice the most useful medicine was a theriaca, or antidote, named Electuarium theriacale magnum, a compound composed of several ingredients, among them opium and wine.¹"

In other words, for nearly 2,000 years, the Western world had made use of the poppy to relieve common ailments. Then along came sinophobic American politicians in the early 20th century, insisting that the drug would ensnare our dear white young people in the vice of "the Orient." Suddenly the world's universally recognized godsend medicine was illegal -- and medical professionals were waiting in the wings to take advantage of that fact, to acclaim themselves the white knights who were henceforth going to cure all the illnesses that we laypeople used to cure at home with a little laudanum. And so they demonized this time-honored panacea as having no positive uses whatsoever. Can you believe it? They told us that the one recognized panacea in the world has no uses whatsoever! It still amazes me that no one on the Drug War bandwagon -- which is to say all politicians -- have ever had any scruples about the endless stakeholders who go without godsend medicines thanks to their mischaracterization of opium.

All of our problems with opioids and opiates could have been avoided had the busybody Chicken Littles in America left well enough alone and let folks continue to smoke regulated opium peaceably in their own homes. Instead, we denied them their godsend right to self-medication ² and what was the result? Determined users are now using opiates 50 times the strength of smoked opium -- opiates that are unregulated as to quantity and quality, with the result that we have daily deaths from unintentional overdoses.

This is how the Drug Warrior "solves" a problem, in the manner of the governess in Turn of the Screw by Henry James. In their attempts to protect white young people, they kill hundreds of thousands and turn cities into war zones and destroy the rule of law in Latin America, not to mention in the United States itself. Their Drug War has killed over a half a million since 1917 alone ³. Someday, we need a reckoning that will hold these prohibitionists responsible for all these completely unnecessary deaths -- deaths that could have been prevented by a sane drug policy involving drug regulation to allow for the safest possible use.

This anti-Chinese movement, by the way, was led by Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor. Here is an extended quote from Szasz to illustrate the hateful bona fides of America's war on the panacea known as opium.

"Presaging by many decades the press-agentry of totalitarian propagandists, Gompers creates, out of his hate-filled fantasies, the image of the Chinese opium fiend— an image whose impact has possibly been even greater than the impact of the famous Nazi mendacities. According to Hill [labor activist Herbert Hill], 'Gompers conjures up a terrible picture of how the Chinese entice little white boys and girls into becoming ‘opium fiends.’ Condemned to spend their days in the back of laundry rooms, these tiny lost souls would yield up their virgin bodies to their maniacal yellow captors. ‘What other crimes were committed in those dark fetid places,' Gompers writes, ‘when these little innocent victims of the Chinamen’s viles were under the influence of the drug, are almost too horrible to imagine. . . . There are hundreds, aye, thousands, of our American girls and boys who have acquired this deathly habit and are doomed, hopelessly doomed, beyond the shadow of redemption.'⁴"

Hopelessly doomed? If anyone is hopelessly doomed today, it is the user of Effexor ⁵ who wishes to foreswear the drug. In my experience, it is simply impossible to get off of this Big Pharma ⁶ ⁷ antidepressant. The drug alters brain chemistry in such a way that there is "no going home again." Of course, the drug could clearly be "kicked" in a world in which we had a right to use all other time-honored medicines, including opium. In such a world, the user could obfuscate and transcend the downsides of Effexor withdrawal. But in the age of drug prohibition, this is as close to impossible as a drug could ever come to hopelessly dooming a user to eternal use. Meanwhile, as Jim Hogshire reports in "Opium for the Masses ⁸," the physical side of unwanted opium dependency can be conquered in a week, with the help of drugs. Moreover, millions have used opium safely on a daily basis for entire long lifetimes. I am not advocating such use -- least of all in a world in which one can be arrested for taking care of their own mental health -- nor am I advocating the denunciation of such use -- but that does not mean that I will remain silent as we are gaslighted ⁹ by our politicians and our materialist scientists into believing that a panacea has no positive uses whatsoever!

The reader need scarcely bother looking online for positive news about opium -- since drug-war propaganda has permeated the brains of almost all writers on this topic. For the other side of the story -- the non-hysterical side -- I recommend two books: first, Jim Hogshire's "Opium for the Masses ¹⁰," and also "The Truth about Opium" by William H. Brereton ¹¹. This latter book contains a series of lectures given during the time when the Anti-Opium Society in Britain was disseminating a Big Lie about supposed opium-caused misery in China. Brereton explains how the anti-opium movement in Britain was founded on a big lie by an American missionary, who reported that two million Chinese had died from smoking opium, which was a complete fabrication. Of course, protestant missionaries had a vested interest in stopping the Chinese from using opium: they wanted the Chinamen to put down his pipe and pick up a Christian Bible instead. In light of these motives, the outlawing of opium in the west is a religious action: it makes drug-hating Christian Science the law of the land when it comes to psychoactive medicines.

Notes for essay entitled America's Big Lie about Opium: How racist politicians deprived the world of a panacea:

1: “Ceremonial Chemistry – Syracuse University Press.” 1974. Syr.edu. 2026. https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/1114/ceremonial-chemistry/. (up)
2: Restoring our Right to Self-Medication: how drug warriors work together with the medical establishment to prevent us from taking care of our own health DWP (up)
3: Prohibition Blunder (up)
4: “Ceremonial Chemistry – Syracuse University Press.” 1974. Syr.edu. 2026. https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/1114/ceremonial-chemistry/. (up)
5: How Drug Prohibition makes it impossible to get off of Effexor and other Big Pharma drugs DWP (up)
6: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
7: LaMattina, John. n.d. “Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of the FDA’s Drug Division Budget?” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2022/09/22/why-is-biopharma-paying-75-of-the-fdas-drug-division-budget/. (up)
8: Hogshire, Jim. 2009. Opium for the Masses. Feral House. (up)
9: How psychologists gaslight us about beneficial drug use DWP (up)
10: Hogshire, Jim. 2009. Opium for the Masses. Feral House. (up)
11: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)

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"Can I use poppies, coca, laughing gas, MDMA?" "NO," says the materialist, "We must be SCIENTIFIC! We must fry your brain and give you a lobotomy and make you a patient for life with the psychiatric pill mill! That's true SCIENCE!"

To say that taking SSRIs daily is better than using opium daily is a value judgement, not a scientific one.

It is a truism to say that we cannot change the world and that therefore we have to change ourselves -- but the drug war outlaws even this latter option.

At best, antidepressants make depression bearable. We need not settle for such drugs, especially when they are notorious for causing dependence. There are many drugs that elate and inspire. It is both cruel and criminal to outlaw them.

Scientists are responsible for endless incarcerations in America. Why? Because they fail to denounce the DEA lie that psychoactive substances have no positive medical uses. This is so obviously wrong that only an academic in an Ivory Tower could believe it.

Getting off antidepressants can make things worse for only one reason: because we have outlawed all the drugs that could help with the transition. Right now, getting off any drug basically means becoming a drug-free Christian Scientist. No wonder withdrawal is hard.

The outlawing of coca and opium is a crime against humanity.

It's interesting that Jamaicans call the police 'Babylon,' given that Babylon denotes a society seeking materialist pleasures. Drug use is about transcending the material world and seeking spiritual states: states that the materialist derides as meaningless.

We should not be talking about the potential harm of drugs -- we should be talking about the well-established harm of drug PROHIBITION.

If I want to use the kind of drugs that have inspired entire religions, fight depression, or follow up on the research of William James into altered states, I should not have to live in fear of the DEA crashing down my door and shouting: "GO! GO! GO!"

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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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America's Big Lie about Opium

How racist politicians deprived the world of a panacea

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

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