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Attention American Screenwriters: please stop spreading Drug War propaganda

by Brian 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":


  1. "lowlife dope dealers" DIE HARD 2
    2. typical example of how the Drug War Nazifies the English language

  2. "you are a piece of dog turd" REPUBLIC OF DOYLE
    Nazified Drug War reference to drug dealer

  3. "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





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 *










Notes for essay entitled Attention American Screenwriters: please stop spreading Drug War propaganda:

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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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




I've been told by many that I should have seen "my doctor" before withdrawing from Effexor. But, A) My doctor got me hooked on the junk in the first place, and, B) That doctor completely ignores the OBVIOUS benefits of indigenous meds and focuses only on theoretical downsides.

The drug war tells us that certain drugs have no potential uses and then turns that into a self-fulfilling prophecy by outlawing these drugs. This is insanely anti-scientific and anti-progress. We should never give up on looking for positive uses for ANY substance.

Drugs like opium and cocaine should come with the following warning: "Outlawing of this product may result in inner-city gunfire, civil wars overseas, and rigged elections in which drug warriors win office by throwing minorities in jail."

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.

The term "hard" is just our modern term for the kinds of drugs that doctors of yore used to call panaceas

People talk about how dangerous Jamaica is -- but no one reminds us that it is all due to America's Drug War. Yes, cannabis and psilocybin are legal there, but plenty of drugs are not, and even if they were, their illegality elsewhere would lead to fierce dealer rivalry.

Drug prohibition has resulted in hundreds of thousands of completely unnecessary deaths thanks to totally preventable drug overdoses!

"Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death." -Jean Cocteau

That's so "drug war" of Rick: If a psychoactive substance has a bad use at some dose, for somebody, then it must not be used at any dose by anybody. It's hard to imagine a less scientific proposition, or one more likely to lead to unnecessary suffering.

There would be little or no profiling of blacks if the Drug War did not exist.


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