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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.

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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.)

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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.

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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.



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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)




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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




It is a truism to say that we cannot change the world and that therefore we have to change ourselves -- but the drug war outlaws even this latter option.

The "acceptable risk" for psychoactive drugs can only be decided by the user, based on what they prioritize in life. Science just assumes that all users should want to live forever, self-fulfilled or not.

The drug war is a whole wrong way of looking at the world. It tells us that substances can be judged "up" or "down," which is anti-scientific and blinds us to endless beneficial uses.

Americans love to hate heroin. But there is no rational reason why folks should not use heroin daily in a world in which we consider it their medical duty to use antidepressants daily.

I will gladly respect the police once we remove them from Gestapo duty by ending the war on drugs. Police should also learn to live on a budget, without deriving income from confiscating houses and dormitories, etc.

Alexander Shulgin is a typical westerner when he speaks about cocaine. He moralizes about the drug, telling us that it does not give him "real" power. But so what? Does coffee give him "real" power? Coke helps some, others not. Stop holding it to this weird metaphysical standard.

I don't have a problem with CBD. But I find that many people like it for the wrong reasons: they assume there is something slightly "dirty" about getting high and that all "cures" should be effected via direct materialist causes, not holistically a la time-honored tribal use.

We should not be talking about the potential harm of drugs -- we should be talking about the well-established harm of drug PROHIBITION.

Check out the 2021 article in Forbes in which a materialist doctor professes to doubt whether laughing gas could help the depressed. Materialists are committed to seeing the world from the POV of Spock from Star Trek.

Drug prohibition is the biggest tyranny imaginable. It is the government control of pain relief. It is government telling us how and how much we are allowed to think and feel in this life.


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






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