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Attention American Screenwriters: please stop spreading Drug War propaganda
Attention American Screenwriters: please stop spreading Drug War propaganda
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 27, 2022
The Drug War kills thousands of black Americans every year by incentivizing drug dealing and the creation of armed gangs, all so that America can outlaw plant medicines that grow at our very feet, some of which "drugs" have inspired entire religions. And yet if you search for the word "drugs" in American scripts for movies and TV, you will find virtually no positive references whatsoever. Every single character is in lockstep with the drug-war party line that tells us that psychoactive substances are pure evil -- unless, of course, they are created by Big Pharma .
Here are just a few such negative references from the over 4,000 hits that are returned when you search Scripts.com for the politically created category that we call "drugs":
"lowlife dope dealers" DIE HARD 2
typical example of how the Drug War Nazifies the English language
"you are a piece of dog turd" REPUBLIC OF DOYLE
Nazified Drug War reference to drug dealer
"If you ever use drugs, I'll kill you." JUNGLE FEVER
Yes, even the director of "Bamboozled" is bamboozled about drugs. He agrees with the Drug Warrior lie that there are psychoactive substances in nature that have no positive uses whatsoever, in any place, any time, any context. This superstitious way of thinking has forced me to go without godsend medicine my entire life. Thanks, Spike. Why do you want people to become drug-hating Christian Scientists, exactly? These things that you call "drugs" have inspired entire religions. Drugs like MDMA 1 can bring the whole world together regardless of ethnicity. Psychedelics can inspire a love for music. HG Wells and Jules Verne swore by coca wine to achieve the mental focus necessary to write their stories.
The conservatives are laughing as they rush to the polls to elect fascists, because they have bamboozled Spike Lee himself to sign off on the Drug War which brings death and incarceration 2 to inner city blacks. Throw away that "just say no" teddy bear with which you were bribed in childhood, Spike, and become truly woke.
(Look for yourself. Go to scripts.com, select "in scripts," and then enter "drugs" in the search form.)
Please remember, screenwriters: "drugs" is just a political term for psychoactive substances of which politicians disapprove. It's a highly hypocritical term, too, since it does not include tobacco and alcohol (which kill half a million Americans a year) nor does it include Big Pharma 34 meds (upon which 1 in 4 American women are addicted for life).
So the next time you write a TV episode or movie, please resist the knee-jerk temptation to echo the Drug War party line that Mother Nature's medicines are evil. By taking cheap shots at Mother Nature's psychoactive medicines, you support an anti-scientific Drug War that has turned inner cities into shooting galleries, caused civil wars overseas, empowered a self-styled "Drug War Hitler" in the Philippines, and disfranchised millions of minorities, removing them from the voting rolls and stealing elections for fascist politicians like Trump, who now want to execute the "drug dealers" that the Drug Warrior was previously happy just to marginalize. Think of the millions of depressed and anxious who must go without godsend medicines today because racist politicians have demonized Mother Nature's psychoactive godsends by dismissing them as "drugs."
Finally, think of the fate of America, for the Drug War is anti-American. To outlaw Mother Nature's bounty is a violation of the Natural Law upon which Jefferson founded our republic. That's why that garden-loving president was rolling in his grave when the DEA stomped onto Monticello 5 in 1987 and confiscated his poppy plants.
Author's Follow-up: September 29, 2023
I've since learned that the Nixon administration collaborated with Hollywood 6 to add "Drug War" messages to the plots of dozens of hit television series, including Room 222, The FBI, and Hawaii Five-O. (See Drug Warriors and Their Prey). The Clinton administration had the same comfy-cozy arrangement with TV producers. And if Nixon and Clinton were up to that, God only knows how many drug-war messages we've received from the big and small screens thanks to the Christian Science trifecta of Reagan and the two Bushes. No wonder we now have films like "Running with the Devil" in which DEA agents shoot suspects at point-blank range and torture other suspects by hanging them from meathooks in their speedos. It's the final solution, albeit so far on the small scale. That's how they get away with it, in part. It's the final solution on the installment plan, to make sure no one is finally moved to object. That's how DA's got away with the outrageous confiscation of an entire 200-acre estate for finding a marijuana joint somewhere on the premises (who cares where it came from). They kept the confiscations at a level where they could enrich themselves and their police departments while not awakening the ire of the drowsy bamboozled public. The public was primed to accept Gestapo tactics, as it were, on the installment plan.
"The Harrison [Narcotics] Act made the drug peddler, and the drug peddler makes drug addicts.” --Robert A. Schless, 1925.
The goal of rehab should not be to get people off of all drugs, it should be to teach them to be in control of their drug use and to use drugs wisely for beneficial purposes.
Malcolm X sensed an important truth about drugs: the fact that it was always a self-interested category error for Americans to place medical doctors in charge of mind and mood medicine.
America is an "arrestocracy" thanks to the war on drugs.
Conservatives say they're against Big Government -- but they let bureaucrats decide what medicines they can use.
To say that psilocybin has not been proven to work is like saying that a hammer has not yet been proven to smash glass. Why not? Because the process has not yet been studied under a microscope.
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.
This is why we would rather have a depressed person commit suicide than to use "drugs" -- because drugs, after all, are not dealing with the "real" problem. The patient may SAY that drugs make them feel good, but we need microscopes to find out if they REALLY feel good.
Today's Washington Post reports that "opioid pills shipped" DROPPED 45% between 2011 and 2019..... while fatal overdoses ROSE TO RECORD LEVELS! Prohibition is PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE.
Before anyone receives shock therapy -- or the right to assisted suicide -- they should have the option to start using opium or cocaine daily -- in fact, any drug that makes them feel that life is worth living again.
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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