Capitalism and the Drug War
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
April 15, 2021
he interests of capitalism dictate what politician-led Americans can think about substances. Psychoactive plant medicine need merely cause a problem for one demented youth and our politicians easily convince us that the substance must be eradicated from the face of the earth. Meanwhile if a Big Pharma antidepressant causes weight gain and suicide, we dismiss these as "bad reactions," essentially blaming the victim for their oddball reaction to the drugs, while insisting that the substance in question is a godsend for the vast majority of the depressed.
This is not surprising since unfettered capitalism has a history of keeping problems from being solved if the solution would negatively affect stock values. That's why we have no quick answers to heart problems and cancer, since the obvious solution would be for Americans to cut back drastically on red meat, and yet the American Heart Association is supported by precisely those industries that would lose out given such a truly scientific approach. Therefore such agencies are like OJ Simpson vowing to spend his life searching for the guy who killed his wife. If they truly wanted to find the reason for heart disease (etc.) in America, they'd take one long look in the mirror.
We'd have been driving electrically powered cars a century ago, using free electricity and cell phones too, except that capitalism quashed these inventions because they merely empowered humanity rather than the all-important stockholder.
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Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs
There are plenty of "prima facie" reasons for believing that we could eliminate most problems with drug and alcohol withdrawal by chemically aided sleep cures combined with using "drugs" to fight "drugs." But drug warriors don't want a fix, they WANT drug use to be a problem.
If I want to use the kind of drugs that have inspired entire religions, fight depression, or follow up on the research of William James into altered states, I should not have to live in fear of the DEA crashing down my door and shouting: "GO! GO! GO!"
Until we legalize ALL psychoactive drugs, there will be no such thing as an addiction expert. In the meantime, it's insulting to be told by neuroscience that I'm an addictive type. It's pathologizing my just indignation at psychiatry's niggardly pharmacopoeia.
"Arrest made in Matthew Perry death." Oh, yeah? Did they arrest the drug warriors who prioritized propaganda over education?
The FDA tells us that MDMA is not safe. This is the same FDA that tells us that "shock therapy" is safe.
Americans won't be true grown-ups until they learn to react to drug deaths the same way that they react to deaths from horseback riding and mountain climbing. They don't blame such deaths on horses and mountains; neither should they blame drug-related deaths on drugs.
The existence of a handful of bad outcomes of drug use does not justify substance prohibition... any more than the existence of drunkards justifies a call for liquor prohibition. Instead, we need to teach safe use and offer a wide choice of uncontaminated psychoactive drugs.
ME: "What are you gonna give me for my depression, doc? MDMA? Laughing gas? Occasional opium smoking? Chewing of the coca leaf?" DOC: "No, I thought we'd fry your brain with shock therapy instead."
This is why America is creeping toward authoritarianism -- because of the prohibitionists' ability to get away with everything by blaming "drugs." The fact that Americans still fall for this crap represents a kind of collective pathology.
FDA drug approval is a farce when it comes to psychoactive medicine. The FDA ignores all the obvious benefits and pretends that to prove efficacy, they need "scientific" evidence. That's scientism, not science.
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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, Capitalism and the Drug War published on April 15, 2021 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)
