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"
American conservatives claim to be outraged by government control, yet the government controls the most important thing in their life: how they are allowed to think and feel by outlawing godsend medicines.
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 alone3. 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 Effexor5 who wishes to foreswear the drug. In my experience, it is simply impossible to get off of this Big Pharma 67 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 Masses8," 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 gaslighted9 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 Masses10," and also "The Truth about Opium" by William H. Brereton11. 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.
My cousin says we should punish drug dealers. I say we should punish those politicians who created those drug dealers out of whole cloth by passing unprecedented laws against the use of Mother Nature's bounty.
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies." -- Groucho Marx
Even prohibition haters have their own list of drugs that they feel should be outlawed. They're missing the point. We should not drugs "up or down" any more than we should judge penicillin or aspirin in that way.
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.
I have nothing against science, BTW (altho' I might feel differently after a nuclear war!) I just want scientists to "stay in their lane" and stop pretending to be experts on my own personal mood and consciousness.
Americans believe scientists when they say that drugs like MDMA are not proven effective. That's false. They are super effective and obviously so. It's just that science holds entheogenic medicines to the standards of reductive materialism. That's unfair and inappropriate.
Endless drugs could help with depression. Any drug that inspires and elates is an antidepressant, partly by the effect itself and partly by the mood-elevation caused by anticipation of use (facts which are far too obvious for materialists and drug warriors to understand -- let alone materialist drug warriors!).
If Fentanyl kills, then alcohol slaughters. Drug prohibition is the real killer.
The FDA will be accepting comments through September 20th on the subject of ways to fight PTSD.
PTSD@reaganudall.org
Ask them why they support brain-damaging shock therapy but won't approve drugs like MDMA that could make ECT unnecessary.
What prohibitionists forget is that every popular but dangerous activity, from horseback riding to drug use, will have its victims. You cannot save everybody, and when you try to do so by law, you kill far more than you save, meanwhile destroying democracy in the process.
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