America's Juvenile Attitude Toward Drugs
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
September 27, 2020
Juvenile delinquents decide drug policy in America. If so much as one juvenile delinquent can figure out a way to die from using a substance, then that substance must not be available for artists to increase creativity, nor for the elderly to fight depression, nor for musicians to improve performance, nor for the religious to use in mystical rites. That's the testing standard that Americans accept in this (ahem) "scientific" country of ours. No need for lab rats or careful statistical analysis: just dig up one scrawny poorly educated waster and see how he or she handles the drug under study. If they can't handle the drug, we must ban it, not simply for Americans but for all humanity and for all time. Why? Because "one swallow makes a summer" in the minds of the statistically challenged Drug Warrior. Compared to that standard, the Monty Python "duck test" for identifying witches smacks of scientific rigor.
Author's Follow-up: May 1, 2023
Philosophically speaking, there is a telling similarity between the mindset that causes kids to titter at "nude" artwork and the mindset that causes Puritans to denounce "drugs," in proof of which admittedly eye-opening asseveration, behold! (Well, go on: behold.)
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Ketamine is like any other drug. It has good uses for certain people in certain situations. Nowadays, people insist that a drug be okay in every situation for everybody (especially American teens) before they will say that it's okay. That's crazy and anti-scientific.
The problem with blaming things on addiction genes is that it whitewashes the role of society and its laws. It's easy to imagine an enlightened country wherein drug availability, education and attitudes make addiction highly unlikely, addiction genes or no addiction genes.
In his book "Salvia Divinorum: The Sage of the Seers," Ross Heaven explains how "salvinorin A" is the strongest hallucinogen in the world and could treat Alzheimer's, AIDS, and various addictions. But America would prefer to demonize and outlaw the drug.
I don't have a problem with CBD. But I find that many people like it for the wrong reasons: they assume there is something slightly "dirty" about getting high and that all "cures" should be effected via direct materialist causes, not holistically a la time-honored tribal use.
Anytime you hear that a psychoactive drug has not been proven to be effective, it's a lie. People can make such claims only by dogmatically ignoring all the glaringly obvious signs of efficacy.
Trump is the prototypical drug warrior. He knows that he can destroy American freedoms by fearmongering.
Drug Prohibition is a crime against humanity. It outlaws our right to take care of our own health.
After watching my mother suffer because of the drug war, I hate to hear people tell me that the problem is drugs. WRONG! That's a western colonialist viewpoint. God loved his creation (see Genesis). He did not make trash. We need to use entheogenic medicines wisely.
The DEA outlawed MDMA in 1985, thereby depriving soldiers of a godsend treatment for PTSD. Apparently, the DEA staff slept well at night in the early 2000s as American soldiers were having their lives destroyed by IEDs.
"The Harrison [Narcotics] Act made the drug peddler, and the drug peddler makes drug addicts.” --Robert A. Schless, 1925.
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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.
Copyright 2026, Brian Ballard Quass
Contact: quass@quass.com
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