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An open Letter to Jacob Sullum of Reason magazine

on behalf of millions of unacknowledged victims of the War on Drugs

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

March 28, 2026



Dear Mr. Sullum,

I am a 67-year-old chronic depressive* who has been turned into a ward of the healthcare state by drug prohibition. Instead of being able to make common-sense, strategic and intermittent use of substances like laughing gas and cocaine, I was shunted off in my late teens onto Big Pharma drugs which turned out to be far harder to kick than heroin 1. This has turned me into a patient for life, with all of the humiliating, time-consuming and expensive baggage that comes with such a designation. I have to sail into Healthcare Harbor every three months of my life, like a modern Ancient Mariner, to tell my life story to complete strangers, all for the privilege of being allowed to purchase yet another supply of an expensive, under-performing, and highly dependence-causing "med." Before every such session, I am asked a litany of humiliating questions, including : "Have you considered suicide since our last visit?" – to which I always want to respond: "Only when I consider how drug prohibition has turned me into a ward of the healthcare state."

This backstory, combined with my passion for philosophy, caused me to resolve eight years ago now to spend the remainder of my life writing essays against drug prohibition from the point of view of a med-dependent American. I naively thought at first that all I had to do was to point out my seemingly blatant disempowerment in order to get the interested parties in the drug prohibition debate to sit up and take notice. I thought I could make it clear to them that the depressed are stakeholders in this debate, and that drug prohibition is nothing less than the outlawing of our right to heal. Instead, I have been ignored by literally everyone to whom I have written on this topic. Everyone. I feel like the child who has discovered that the emperor is wearing no clothes and who is now being shooed away by the adults who refuse to acknowledge that fact. I am writing to you today because I believe that you may be an exception to this rule, that you, at least, might understand what I am saying here, especially since you have no self-interested reason for refusing to do so, unlike members of the healthcare industry, for instance.

I draw that conclusion after reading statements like the following in your insightful book entitled Saying Yes:

One man's acid trip is another's spiritual awakening.


If an unhappy person takes heroin, he is committing a crime. If he takes Prozac, he is treating his depression."


Reformers will not make much progress as long as they agree with defenders of the status quo that drug use is always wrong."


You also conclude that "the stereotypes that drive the War on Drugs will be impossible to sustain" once people begin to speak out, which brings me to my main reason for writing to you today. I have a specific idea that I would like to "run by you," one that could give a voice to the millions of med-dependent Americans like myself, so that we can make it clear to the public that drug prohibition has not only outlawed our right to heal, but that, ironically, it has turned us into drug users for life. Julie Holland writes that 1 in 8 Americans (and 1 in 4 American women) are dependent on the daily use of Big Pharma drugs like SSRIs. By connecting the dots between drug prohibition and this wholesale disempowerment of the depressed with respect to their health care, we could deprive Drug Warriors of one of their biggest implicit arguments: namely, that the only stakeholders in the debate over drug prohibition are the white American young people whom we refuse "on principle" to educate about safe use. No longer would op-ed authors in the New York Times be able to state and/or imply, as they always seem to do, that drug prohibition is a victimless crime.

If you're interested in reading my specific idea for giving a voice to med-dependent Americans like myself, thereby hastening the end of drug prohibition, please let me know and I will follow up promptly with the details. I would love to get your thoughts on my plan. If not, so be it. It certainly would not be the first time that I have written to no avail on this subject. On the bright side, none of my would-be correspondents have as yet had the nerve to respond to my emails by telling me that I should just "shut up and take my meds."

Joking aside, you have my sincere thanks for reading thus far.


PS I feel that this idea of mine is more important than ever in light of the recent news stories about assisted suicide. Westerners are now so convinced that drugs have no benefits for them that depressed people like Canadian Claire Brosseau are demanding their right to die. They want the state to help to kill them: the same state that forbids them from using drugs that could cheer them up in a trice! Worse yet, the New York Times covered the story without any reference to drug prohibition. I have since written to Claire Brosseau, her psychiatrists, and to the healthcare reporter who covered her story in an attempt to convince them that assisted suicide (especially for the depressed) cannot be discussed meaningfully without also discussing drug prohibition, which outlaws substances whose informed and strategic use could make certain ailments quite livable for certain people. I say this not based on medical studies but based on psychological common sense, something that seems to be in short supply in the reductionist medical establishment of our times. So far, of course, I have received no responses to those emails.

*I use the term "chronic depressive" as a description of my general personality and not in the sense of a discrete illness as listed in the disease-mongering DSM.









Notes for essay entitled An open Letter to Jacob Sullum of Reason magazine: on behalf of millions of unacknowledged victims of the War on Drugs:

1: Heroin versus Antidepressants DWP (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




I can't imagine Allen Ginsberg writing "Howl!" while under the influence of mood-damping drugs like Inderal and Prozac -- but then maybe that's the point: the powers-that-be do not want poets writing poems like "Howl!"

If any master's candidates are looking for a thesis topic, consider the following: "The Drug War versus Religion: how the policy of substance prohibition outlaws the attainment of spiritual states described by William James in 'The Varieties of Religious Experience.'"

The massive use of plea deals lets prosecutors threaten drug suspects into giving up their rights to a fair trial.

Addiction was not a big thing until the drug war. It's now the boogie-man with which drug warriors scare us into giving up our freedoms. But getting obsessed on one single drug is natural in the age of choice-limiting prohibition.

Drug prohibition is not a victimless crime.

Typical materialist protocol. Take all the "wonder" out of the drug and sell it as a one-size-fits all "reductionist" cure for anxiety. Notice that they refer to hallucinations and euphoria as "adverse effects." What next? Communion wine with the religion taken out of it?

When psychiatrists write about heroin, they characterize dependency as enslavement. When they write about antidepressants, they characterize dependency as a medical duty.

Even the worst forms of "abuse" can be combatted with a wise use of a wide range of psychoactive drugs, to combat both physical and psychological cravings. But drug warriors NEED addiction to be a HUGE problem. That's their golden goose.

The Shipiba have learned to heal human beings physically, psychologically and spiritually with what they call "onanyati," plant allies and guides, such as Bobinsana, which "envelops seekers in a cocoon of love." You know: what the DEA would call "junk."

AI is like almost every subject under the sun: it takes on a very different and ominous meaning when we view it in light of the modern world's unprecedented wholesale outlawing of psychoactive medicine.


Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






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Book Cover

Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

This book features 150 annotated images, designed to force brainwashed Americans to confront the fact that drug prohibition is wrong. Here is what author Richard Parrish II says of the book's compiler: "The drug prohibition philosopher provides first-hand, principled, persuasive, and insightful arguments against the current drug prohibition regime..."

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Book Cover

Diary of a Drug Fiend

This is the only full-cast recording of Aleister Crowley's 1922 classic paeon to common sense. It is the first book -- and so far almost the only book -- to stake out a philosophy of drug use that is compatible with human freedom, one in which we learn to use drugs as wisely as possible for the benefit of humanity. This recording was produced by the Drug War Philosopher and your purchases help support his effort to push back against the tragically counterproductive policy of drug prohibition, in the name of human freedom and of humanity's right to heal.

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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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Copyright 2026, Brian Ballard Quass Contact: quass@quass.com

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