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Campfire Stories about America's Drug War

live from Lake Rights-Be-Gone

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher



December 30, 2019



OUNSELOR RICK: Kids, gather around, I have a good horror story for you.

KIDS: Oooh!

COUNSELOR RICK: That's right, ears in the full upright position. This one's downright eerie.

Now then, once upon a time, there were these godsend plants that could help people get over depression and conquer loneliness.

ANTOINE: THAT'S not scary!

COUNSELOR RICK: Oh, just you wait, Antoine. See, these plants grew all around us, they were our natural birthright as Earthlings, but then these bigoted people known as "Drug Warriors" decided that these plants were somehow evil.

SALLY: That's silly, Counselor Rick. Plant medicines can't be evil, only people can be evil.

ANTOINE: That's right. Medicines can be good OR bad: it all depends on how they're used.

COUNSELOR RICK: You know that, kids, and I know that, but these people were... well, how should I put this...?

ANTOINE: Dumb as crap?

COUNSELOR RICK: Well, let's just say they were superstitious.

SALLY: Sounds like they were regular cretins to me.

COUNSELOR RICK: Now, now, Sally, be nice.

ANTOINE: Counselor Rick! Counselor Rick!

COUNSELOR RICK: Yes, ANTOINE?

ANTOINE: I think I've heard this one before.

COUNSELOR RICK: Oh, really?

ANTOINE: Oh, yeah, you're talking about that science-fiction story called "Fahrenheit 452," where the government burns plants in order to stop citizens from improving their mental focus and expanding their minds!

COUNSELOR RICK: Antoine shoots and scores!

SALLY: Ooh, Counselor Rick, I don't want to hear that story. It scares me.

ANTOINE: Me too, Counselor Rick. Just imagine a government that is so evil that it bars its own citizens from accessing the plants and fungi that grow at their very feet. I don't think I'm gonna be able to sleep tonight just thinking about it!

COUNSELOR SUE: Now you've done it, Rick, the kids are all going to have nightmares about DEA fascists kicking down their doors in order to rob them of naturally occurring godsends.

COUNSELOR RICK: Relax, kids. We're living in the 22nd century, remember? The DEA was abolished over a hundred years ago.

[kids crying]

COUNSELOR SUE: Rick, exactly how long have you been a camp counselor?

COUNSELOR RICK: Sorry, Sue. I guess I forgot just how scary the old Drug War days really were.


COUNSELOR SUE: You think?


COUNSELOR RICK: Well, it could have been worse.

COUNSELOR SUE: How's that, Rick?

COUNSELOR RICK: I could have told them about the bad old days when all the big corporations forced employees to undergo the indignity of drug testing without any probable cause, all in order to enforce the government's Sharia against the use of naturally occurring substances.

COUNSELOR SUE: Brrr! Now that really IS scary!

COUNSELOR RICK: I know, right?

COUNSELOR SUE: Thanks for bringing that up, Rick. Now I too won't be able to get to sleep tonight!

COUNSELOR RICK: That is pretty lame indeed, the government essentially forcing people to become Christian Scientists when it comes to psychological healing.

COUNSELOR SUE: You're not helping matters, Rick.



What Have We Learned?



Select the appropriate takeaway message from the above admittedly charming satire.


  1. Some plants are just plain bad and kids should be taught that from the git-go!

  2. Submitting to a drug test is a patriotic responsibility.

  3. The therapeutic needs of the suffering must be ignored so that we can carry on a full-scale Drug War. Grrr! (This answer recommended by the National Association of Prison Guards)

  4. Plant medicines can be good or bad, depending on their specific use.



    5. Answer: That's right, kids, the answer is 4: "Plant medicines can be good or bad, depending on their specific use." Unfortunately you'll never learn this from the Drug Warriors, whose patronizing MO is to insist that plant substances are bad in and of themselves. That's why we have no godsend medicines today for depression and other psychological maladies: because the unscientific Drug Warriors believe that plants are bad without regard to how they're used... which is a fib, kids, okay? And you can tell those typically Caucasian anti-scientific so-and-so's that I said so, too! Humph!

    Comedy






    The drug war is laughable -- or it would be if the drug warriors hadn't deprived us of laughing gas, the substance that William James himself used to study alternate realities. (Gee, thanks, folks, for censoring academia. Don't worry, though, I'm not going to call you prohibitionists 'fascist bastards' on THAT account. Mom just didn't raise me like that.)_

  5. A Dope Comedy Routine About Drugs
  6. A Drug Warrior in our Midst
  7. A Misguided Tour of Monticello
  8. American City Homicide Awards 2021
  9. Blowing Up Arkansas
  10. Campfire Stories about America's Drug War
  11. Comedian Adderall Zoloft Riffs on the Drug War
  12. COPS PRESENTS the top 10 traffic stops of 2023
  13. Dragnet meets the Drug War
  14. Drug War Comedy Routine
  15. Drug War Copaganda
  16. Drug War Jeopardy!
  17. Drug War: the Musical!
  18. Funny Animated Gifs about America's imperialist and racist Drug War
  19. Introduction to the Drug War Philosopher Website at AbolishTheDEA.com
  20. One of these things is not like the other
  21. Plants Divine, All Plants Excelling
  22. Public Service Announcements for the Post-Drug War Era
  23. Rat Out Your Neighbors
  24. The DEA: Poisoning Americans since 1973
  25. The Drug War Board Game
  26. The Joy of Drug Testing
  27. Thought Crimes Blotter





    28. computer screen with words DRUG WAR BLOG


    Next essay: Hypocritical America Embraces Drug War Fascism
    Previous essay: Depressed? Here's why.

    More Essays Here




    Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs

    This massive concern for safety is downright bizarre in a country that will not even criminalize bump stocks for automatic weapons.
    Pundits have been sniffing about the "smell" of Detroit lately. Sounds racist -- especially since such comments tend to come from drug warriors, the guys who ruined Detroit in the first place (you know, with drug laws that incentivized profit-seeking violence as a means of escaping poverty).
    I wonder if Nixon knew what a favor he was doing medical capitalism when he outlawed psychedelics. Those drugs can actually cure things, and there's no money in that.
    Rather than protesting prohibition as a crackdown on academic freedom, today's scientists are collaborating with the drug war by promoting shock therapy and SSRIs, thereby profiting from the monopoly that the drug war gives them in selling mind and mood medicine.
    Unfortunately, the prohibitionist motto is: "Billions for arrest, not one cent for education." To the contrary, drug warriors are ideologically committed to withholding the truth about drugs from users.
    Drug Warriors rail against drugs as if they were one specific thing. They may as well rail against penicillin because cyanide can kill.
    Addiction was not a big thing until the drug war. It's now the boogie-man with which drug warriors scare us into giving up our freedoms. But getting obsessed on one single drug is natural in the age of choice-limiting prohibition.
    In "How to Change Your Mind," Michael Pollan says psychedelic legalization would endanger young people. What? Prohibition forces users to decide for themselves which mushrooms are toxic, or to risk buying contaminated product. And that's safe, Michael?
    A law proposed in Colorado in February 2024 would have criminalized positive talk about drugs online. What? The world is on the brink of nuclear war because of hate-driven politics, and I can be arrested for singing the praises of empathogens?
    I'll never understand Americans. Most of them HATE big government -- and yet they have no problem with government using drug prohibition to control how and how much they can think and feel in this life. Talk about warped priorities.
    More Tweets



    The latest hits from Drug War Records, featuring Freddie and the Fearmongers!


    1. Requiem for the Fourth Amendment



    2. There's No Place Like Home (until the DEA gets through with it)



    3. O Say Can You See (what the Drug War's done to you and me)






    front cover of Drug War Comic Book

    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, Campfire Stories about America's Drug War: live from Lake Rights-Be-Gone, published on December 30, 2019 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)