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Childish Drug Warriors

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

January 2, 2021



When a child snickers before Michelangelo's statue of David and says that the statue is "nekkid," we know that the child is immature. But American politicians behave the exact same way when it comes to so-called "drugs." They snicker cynically before higher states of consciousness (states of consciousness that have fostered entire religions) and dismiss it as getting "high" or getting "wasted." What's worse, in the latter case, Americans think they have discovered some new truth about substances, that there's this thing out there called "drugs" that are evil... when what they've really discovered is that America is immature, to the point of not being able to live sanely with the very flora that grows unbidden around us. Americans cannot imagine any way to use spiritual substances except in a cynical and hedonist fashion, as part of some scheming capitalistic transaction, and rather than blaming themselves or unfettered capitalism for this immaturity, they proclaim a new law of the land: that drugs are evil and that they must be eradicated around the globe. It's as if that immature child never grew up and declared that nudity in art is evil and must be eradicated everywhere around the globe.

There is no drug problem 1 . There is a problem with America's attitude toward drugs. That problem is immaturity, cynicism and hedonism, and the insistence that every transaction be considered through the calculating lens of capitalism 2 . Why do we blame these American problems on the scapegoat "drugs"? 3 Because otherwise America would have to transform for the better in order to live wisely with the flora that surrounds us. We'd have to prioritize education and permit true religious freedom. Instead, we blame all our problems on inanimate substances, drugs -- and worse yet, we insist that the entire world follow our superstitious example under pain of economic and sociopolitical blackmail. Sadly, all nations are happy to follow suit. It was America, after all, that claimed we had a basic right to nature under Natural Law. If a nation so founded should dare to come in between its citizens and the flora that grows at their very feet, what need have less enlightened countries to stand up for common sense, let alone dictatorships, which will gladly take America's lead and crack down on the modern boogieman of "drugs" in order to enhance their despotic control over their citizens.

And what better way to enhance tyranny than to control how (and how much) citizens are allowed to think and feel by denying them the God-given bounty of Mother Nature's psychoactive plant medicine? It is, in fact, the ultimate tyranny. Why merely control what your citizens can think when you can control how and how much they can both think and feel? It's the ultimate power grab of government, rendered acceptable by the one country that should have known better given its birth under natural law: the USA.











Notes for essay entitled Childish Drug Warriors:

1: There is no drug problem DWP (up)
2: What the drug war tells us about American capitalism DWP (up)
3: Drugs: the great American scapegoat DWP (up)




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Ten Tweets

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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?

Billboards reading "Fentanyl kills" 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.

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'm told antidepressant withdrawal is fine because it doesn't cause cravings. Why is it better to feel like hell than to have a craving? In any case, cravings are caused by prohibition. A sane world could also end cravings with the help of other drugs.

If they're going to throw doctors in jail for prescribing too much pain medication, they should also throw them in jail for prescribing too LITTLE.

By reading "Drug Warriors and Their Prey," I begin to understand why I encounter a wall of silence when I write to authors and professors on the subject of "drugs." The mere fact that the drug war inspires such self-censorship should be grounds for its immediate termination.

There would be almost no relapses for those trying to get off drugs if all drugs were legal. Then we could use a vast variety of drugs to get us through those few hours of late-night angst that are the bane of the recidivist.

Drug prohibition is superstitious idiocy. It is based on the following crazy idea: that a substance that can be misused by a white young person at one dose for one reason must not be used by anybody at any dose for any reason.

This is the "Oprah fallacy," which has led to so much suffering. She told women they were fools if they accepted a drink from a man. That's crazy. If we are terrified by such a statistically improbable event, we should be absolutely horrified by horses and skateboards.

I can't imagine Allen Ginsberg writing "Howl!" while under the influence of mood-damping drugs like Inderal and Prozac -- but then maybe that's the point: the powers-that-be do not want poets writing poems like "Howl!"


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