Homepage of the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass
blog icon orange rss icon with stylized radio waves bird icon for twitter bird icon for twitter substack icon


back navigation arrow forward navigation arrow


Black Lives Don't Matter

in 'The Runner' by Jason Chase

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

April 2, 2022



'The Runner' by Jason Chase shows the Drug War at its racist best.

The screenplay tries to make a villain out of the usual suspects, including the obligatory coke-dealing Hispanic Drug Dealer, "Local Legend," and his black teenage admirer, Blake. But the real villain of the piece is Detective Wall, the smug and self-righteous drug agent, who...

1) calls Aiden's black teenage friend "a scumbag, not worth another thought," and wants to lock him up for 20 years.

2) ignores Aiden's request for a lawyer, saying, "Guilty people want lawyers."

3) slaps the teenage Aiden repeatedly, telling him, "I own you, you f - -, you waste!"

This un-American (indeed Nazi-like) law enforcement makes sense only if we believe the Drug War lie that plant medicine is pure evil, but that's wrong! God himself said his creation was good, both as to flora and fauna. Jules Verne and HG Wells wrote their best work under the influence of coca wine. Marcus Aurelius and Benjamin Franklin enjoyed opium 1 . The entire Vedic-Hindu religion was inspired by the psychoactive effects of a plant, and Plato's views about the afterlife were inspired by his participation in the psychedelic-fueled Eleusinian mysteries2.


Green bullet-riddled sign says 'Welcome to Chicago'. To right, yellow bullet-riddled sign says 'Pardon our Drug War'
Americans completely ignore the role of prohibition in destroying inner cities.




And yet Jason Chase has made a movie that glorifies the trigger-happy gunmen who bash down doors to stop people from using plants that grow at their very feet, thereby supporting a Drug War that has caused a civil war in Mexico, turned America's inner cities into shooting galleries, and empowered a self-proclaimed Drug War Hitler in the Philippines.

Jason fails to realize that the negative events depicted in his film only take place because America has decided to demonize psychoactive plant medicine rather than learning how to use it wisely for the benefit of humanity, which, despite drug-war lies, has always sought self-transcendence and self-improvement with Mother Nature's plant medicines - and we seek to quash that impulse at our own peril.

Please, Jason, America does not need more films that glorify SWAT teams: America needs films that promote facts not fear, and education not criminalization.

|20|

If you're worried about addiction, Jason, what about the record-breaking 1 in 4 American women in the US who are chemically dependent on Big Pharma 3 4 meds, many harder to kick than heroin 5, which they have to take every single day of their life??? That's the biggest addiction in human history!!! Why don't we break down THEIR doors and haul THEM downtown and call THEM "scumbags" and "waste"? Why don't we say that THEY'RE "not worth another thought"? Likewise with those who use liquor, which kills 400,000 people a year - or tobacco, which kills 95,000 a year.

We don't break down their doors and shout "Go, go, go!" And why not? Because the Drug War is a political war against minorities, not a war against the powers-that-be. It's a shame that in the third decade of the 21st century, Americans still don't get this, and that we are still making movies 6 7 like this that celebrate our imperialist and racist war against psychoactive plant medicine.

Oh, and spoiler alert: remember that black teenager who was selling plant medicine of which politicians disapprove? He was shot dead in the gunfire that erupted as the SWAT team stormed in. (Detective Wall only wanted to throw the teenager in jail, but this works too, since either way, he's been taken off the voting rolls so that conservatives and Drug Warriors can continue to triumph at the polls.)

?128?

Agent Burrell had warned against the raid, suggesting that teenagers might get killed, but Captain Ames indignantly dismissed his worry, for the totally irrelevant reason that "thousands of lives are endangered by this crew." 

"Really?" one wants to say in response. So what? That doesn't mean that you have to arrest them in the most violent and dramatic fashion imaginable! Fortunately for the SWAT team, the middle-aged Hispanic dealer was also killed in the raid, so at least the SWAT team can boast about something more than killing children.

Detective Wall, who apparently got a bad scratch during the raid (aww!), actually wins a medal for killing teenagers. A medal, he says, "is so no one questions whether it was a worthwhile cause."

Well, the medal didn't work this time, Wall. This reviewer, at least, questions the wisdom of your cause, for the Drug War that you champion goes against everything that America is meant to stand for, by demonizing teenagers, criminalizing plant medicine, incentivizing dealing, and holding the safeguards of the US Constitution in supreme contempt.

I dare say that Thomas Jefferson would agree with me, since he was rolling in his grave when the DEA stormed onto Monticello 8 in 1987 and confiscated his poppy plants, in violation of the natural law upon which the garden-loving president had founded America.

The Links Police

Why do you think I stopped you? That's right, because it would have been a crime for you to leave without at least perusing some additional pics and 'says on the topic of Drug War and minorities. Sad that today, when minorities are beaten for selling drugs, their so-called defenders cheer on the police. They (Jesse Jackson Sr., Bill Clinton and company) have yet to grok the simple truth made so evident during liquor prohibition, namely that prohibition leads to violence.

?278?

Author's Follow-up: August 31, 2022



If you ever see a quartet of self-satisfied cops holding a press conference about the latest drug bust, do me a favor and boo. The police should have nothing to do with substance use. If someone misses a dose of their antibiotic, do we have the cops come break down their door? No more should they do so when we're discussing the pharmacological improvement of mood and mind.

So, bug off, copper! Go help some little old lady across the street or stop a terrorist attack, and stop scapegoating "drugs" for every social problem in the world.



?279?
?300?
?320?
?374?









Notes for essay entitled Black Lives Don't Matter: in 'The Runner' by Jason Chase:

1: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
2: The Eleusinian Mysteries: A Gateway to the Afterlife in Greek Beliefs (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: Hall, Wayne, and Megan Weier. 2016. “Lee Robins’ Studies of Heroin Use among US Vietnam Veterans.” Addiction 112 (1): 176–80. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.13584. (up)
6: Glenn Close but no cigar DWP (up)
7: Running with the torture loving DEA DWP (up)
8: The Dark Side of the Monticello Foundation DWP (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




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.

At best, antidepressants make depression bearable. We need not settle for such drugs, especially when they are notorious for causing dependence. There are many drugs that elate and inspire. It is both cruel and criminal to outlaw them.

Prohibitionists will me that we're all children when it comes to drugs, and can never -- but never -- use them wisely. That's like saying that we could never ride horses wisely. Or mountain climb. Or skateboard.

UNESCO celebrates the healing practices of the Kallawaya people of South America. What hypocrisy! UNESCO supports a drug war that makes some of those practices illegal!

We should place prohibitionists on trial for destroying inner cities.

Problem 2,643 of the war on drugs: It puts the government in charge of deciding what counts as a true religion.

"Drugs" is imperialist terminology. In the smug self-righteousness of those who use it, I hear Columbus's disdain for the shroom use of the Taino people and the Spanish disdain for the coca use of the Peruvian Indians.

Rick Strassman isn't sure that DMT should be legal. Really?! Does he not realize how dangerous it is to chemically extract DMT from plants? In the name of safety, prohibitionists have encouraged dangerous ignorance and turned local police into busybody Nazis.

Americans were always free to take care of their own health -- until drug warriors handed doctors a monopoly on providing mind and mood medicine.

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation is a drug war collaborator. They helped the DEA confiscate Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants in 1987.


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






back navigation arrow forward navigation arrow
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..."

Purchase Your Copy
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.

Purchase Your Copy



No cookies, no ads paid for by amoral and immoral billionaires (or trillionaires).


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.

The Partnership for a Death Free America is a proud sponsor of The Drug War Philosopher website @ abolishthedea.com.


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

tombstone for American Democracy, 1776-2024, RIP (up)