before it kills any more Christian Science heretics
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
July 26, 2022
he western world occasionally comes out sparring against Singapore's harsh "drug laws," but they always do so with one hand tied behind their back. Take this March 2022 article from ABC News entitled "Singapore hangs drug trafficker in resumption of executions." The all-too-brief article concerns the recent execution of 68-year-old Abdul Kahar Othman for "drug dealing," a punishment that we're implicitly told is an outrage in the eyes of the west, not because of the "hanging bit," mind you, but because Abdul had a hard life and insufficient opportunities to reform (i.e., to stop using substances of which state authorities disapprove). The article then mentions a mentally disabled Singaporean on death row, Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam, who was apparently scheduled to die next for substance heresy, notwithstanding the protests of western groups and leaders, like European Union reps and LSD-friendly Richard Branson. (Spoiler alert: Nagaenthran was indeed executed little more than a month after the above article was published.)
It's no wonder that the west can't get this Asian monster to back down because we are the Frankensteins who created it. Moreover, the US has a long history now of referring to substance dealers as "vermin," so we've got a lot of incongruous backpedaling to do when we start calling for leniency toward Christian Science heretics.
Democratic Rep. Hanley of New York showed the typical left liberal scorn for substance dealers when he asked the Baldwinsville, NY Chamber of Commerce several decades ago:
"How many vermin are infesting our high schools and colleges?"
To which Thomas Szasz importantly responded in the book "Ceremonial Chemistry":
And so the western opposition is hamstrung because they agree with the Christian Science goal of eradicating "drug use" (as opposed to liquor use or Big Pharma use) -- they just do not want to be embarrassed by draconian enforcement measures which serve to highlight the hypocritical injustice of the tyrannical path which they themselves are otherwise happily following.
Meanwhile, Singapore is where all Western Drug Warriors should want to go when they die, for it's the perfect capitalist nirvana; freedom for corporations and mental control for everyone else. And how is this mental control enforced: by outlawing the kinds of medicines that have inspired entire religions in the past, like opium, psychedelics and the coca plant.
Would our forebears have been comfortable with seeing Thomas Jefferson swinging at the end of a Singaporean noose for growing poppy plants? Neither should we be comfortable today when we see Abdul and Nagaenthran dangling there for a similar "crime."
If we really want to get our message across, we will call for a boycott of Singapore -- either until it ends its Drug War, or, barring that, makes its Drug War an equal opportunity killer, by considering alcohol and Big Pharma meds to be "drugs" as well, thereby consigning beer-swilling and Xanax-popping corporate executives to the same fate as Singapore's mentally challenged poor.
*Christian Science: the religion founded by American Mary Baker Eddy in the 19th century, according to which "drugs" were bad, since one should only find peace of mind in Jesus.
Christian Science
On a superficial level, Christian Science may be seen as a drug-hating religion and so its very existence tends to support the effort of drug warriors to outlaw godsend psychoactive medicines. On a deeper level, however, the religion's founder Mary Baker-Eddy was fighting not so much against drugs as against the failure of modern science to acknowledge the power of the human mind. In Mary's case, of course, this was the mind as influenced by Jesus Christ, but yet she recognized a principle with which even a non-believer can agree and which, moreover, is clearly true in light of drug user reports from the Vedic days to the present: namely, that the human mind has a great as-yet untapped power to control one's outlook on life and to therefore positively affect overall human health to some as-yet undetermined degree. Mary does seem to have overestimated the mind's ability to cure the body, of course, but it is worth noting in her defense that the government has outlawed the very research that would be required to determine exactly where the line should be drawn between the mind-curable condition and that which is beyond the help of this sort of holistic healing.
We would need to be able to use psychoactive medicines freely in order to generate the sort of user reports that could help us answer such questions adequately. And this would be research of the greatest philosophical importance, because it would essentially be a search into the true nature of mind-body dualism.
Mind-body dualism is like the weather when it comes to the field of philosophy: everybody talks about it but nobody does anything about it. Well, here is a chance for philosophers to launch a first-hand investigation of the interaction between mind and body and to thereby determine the nature of each -- as well as the nature of the interactive whole which they in some sense comprise. Philosophers just have to decide: Do they want to perform the kind of hands-on philosophic research that William James advocated viz. altered states, or do they want to keep pretending that the drug war does not exist and that it has no downsides for philosophical research. For the opposite is so obviously true: namely, that drug prohibition forbids us from performing the kind of research that could blow the whole "mind-body" problem wide open from the western point of view and so inspire whole new fields of research.
The Cabinet of Caligari ('62) ends with a shameless display of psychiatric triumphalism. Happy shock therapy patients waltz freely about a mansion in which the "sick" protagonist has just been "cured" by tranquilizers and psychoanalysis. Did Robert Bloch believe his own script?
We need a Controlled Prohibitionists Act, to get psychiatric help for the losers who think that prohibition makes sense despite its appalling record of causing civil wars overseas and devastating inner cities.
Billboards reading "Fentanyl kills" are horrible because they encourage the creation of racist legislation that outlaws all godsend uses of opiates. Kids in hospice in India go without morphine because of America's superstitious fear of opiates.
When Americans "obtain their majority" and wish to partake of drugs safely, they should be paired with older adults who have done just that. Instead, we introduce them to "drug abusers" in prerecorded morality plays to reinforce our biased notions that drug use is wrong.
The Drug War is based on a huge number of misconceptions and prejudices. Obviously it's about power and racism too. It's all of the above. But every time I don't mention one specifically, someone makes out that I'm a moron. Gotta love Twitter.
Here is a sample drug-use report from the book "Pihkal":
"More than tranquil, I was completely at peace, in a beautiful, benign, and placid place."
Prohibition is a crime against humanity for withholding such drug experiences from the depressed (and from everybody else).
The proof that psychedelics work has always been extant. We are hoodwinked by scientists who convince us that efficacy has not been "proven." This is materialist denial of the obvious.
DEA Stormtroopers should be held responsible for destroying American Democracy. Abolish the American Gestapo.
When it comes to "drugs," the government plays Polonius to our Ophelia:
OPHELIA: I do not know, my lord, what I should think.
POLONIUS: Marry, I'll teach you; think yourself a baby!
The drug war is a meta-injustice. It does not just limit what you're allowed to think, it limits how and how much you are allowed to think.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Boycott Singapore: before it kills any more Christian Science heretics, published on July 26, 2022 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
he western world occasionally comes out sparring against Singapore's harsh "drug laws," but they always do so with one hand tied behind their back. Take this March 2022 article from ABC News entitled "Singapore hangs drug trafficker in resumption of executions." The all-too-brief article concerns the recent execution of 68-year-old Abdul Kahar Othman for "drug dealing," a punishment that we're implicitly told is an outrage in the eyes of the west, not because of the "hanging bit," mind you, but because Abdul had a hard life and insufficient opportunities to reform (i.e., to stop using substances of which state authorities disapprove). The article then mentions a mentally disabled Singaporean on death row, Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam, who was apparently scheduled to die next for substance heresy, notwithstanding the protests of western groups and leaders, like European Union reps and LSD-friendly Richard Branson. (Spoiler alert: Nagaenthran was indeed executed little more than a month after the above article was published.)
You have been reading an article entitled, Boycott Singapore: before it kills any more Christian Science heretics, published on July 26, 2022 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
