Attention American Screenwriters: please stop spreading Drug War propaganda

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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

"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 ³ ⁴ 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

follow-up on essay by the Drug War Philosopher

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.

*drugwarmovies ⁷ ⁸ *

Drug War Ghouls

Mass Media and Drugs

Notes:

1: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
2: Heather Ann Thompson. 2014. The Atlantic. The Atlantic. October 30, 2014. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/10/inner-city-violence-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/382154/. (up)
3: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
4: 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)
5: The Dark Side of the Monticello Foundation DWP (up)
6: Blast-off for Planet Hypocrisy! DWP (up)
7: Glenn Close but no cigar DWP (up)
8: Running with the torture loving DEA DWP (up)

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This is why "rock stars" use drugs: not just for performance anxiety (which, BTW, is a completely UNDERSTANDABLE reason for drug use), but because they want to fully experience the music, even tho' they may be currently short on money and being hassled by creditors, etc.

Drug prohibition is a crime against humanity.

His answer to political opposition is: "Lock them up!" That's Nazi speak, not American democracy.

The U.S. government created violence out of whole cloth in America's inner cities with drug prohibition -- and now it is using that violence as an excuse to kick the people that they themselves have knocked down.

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.

The best long-term treatment for OUD would be to normalize the nightly smoking of opium at home, not to addict the user to government-supplied drugs that render them impervious to the benefits of the poppy plant.

"When two men who have been in an aggressive mood toward each other take part in the ritual, one is able to say to the other, 'Come, let us drink, for there is something between us.' " re: the Mayan use of the balche drink in Encyc of Psych Plants, by Ratsch & Hofmann

Materialist scientists cannot triumph over addiction because their reductive focus blinds them to the obvious: namely, that drugs which cheer us up ACTUALLY DO cheer us up. Hence they keep looking for REAL cures while folks kill themselves for want of laughing gas and MDMA.

Drug warriors are too selfish and short-sighted to fight real problems, so they blame everything on drugs.

Just saw a prosecutor gloating about the drug dealers she has taken down.How much is she getting paid to play whack-a-mole?

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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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