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Common Nonsense from Common Sense Media

So-called media watchdog scorns dirty words only, not dirty wars

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

November 7, 2019



Message sent to Common Sense Media in response to their review of the 2019 drug-war movie Running with the Devil, starring Leslie Bibb, Laurence Fishburne and Nicolas Cage

Update: May 04, 2025

Your review of Running with the Devil1 misses the point. The movie sends a HORRIBLE message to kids, not because of four-letter words but because the government agent in the film willfully tortures a suspect and then shoots and kills another suspect in cold blood. A government agent does this! The film is thus educating children to embrace fascism!!! Why? To stop the bad guy from dealing in plants that should never have been criminalized in the first place. In other words, the Drug War creates all the violence that the DEA is fighting in the movie!

And the hypocritical DEA agent is smoking a cigarette when she cold-bloodedly kills an unarmed man!!! Tobacco is one of the worst drugs on the planet in terms of addiction and health costs2. And yet this hypocritical DEA agent is smoking the stuff while she self-righteously kills a man who's marketing plants -- a plant that is used to this day for spiritual purposes in South America3. Please, tell your reviewers to wake up and start considering the true message of these movies . Stop focusing just on curse words and think what these movies are saying about American democracy.

This movie is saying: "to hell with democracy: we need fascism to fight the War on Drugs!" In other words, the war on plants, the war on minorities, the war on patients - as the DEA "heroes" are the ones who lie about psychoactive plants in their scheduling system and thus leave millions of Americans - including my 92-year-old mother - without much needed medicine that could ease their minds and even help them make their peace with death4.

If you really want to help kids, help them to steer clear of movies like this that glorify fascist police tactics and the Draconian enforcement of immoral laws5.

The Common Sense website reviews movies for crude language and violence, but it fails to warn parents when a movie promotes murder and torture in the name of the Drug War. Reviews on Variety are just the same. They may warn viewers about the scene in which the DEA agent tortures a suspect, but only because the torture victim was wearing only Speedos, not because his torture represents a flagrant violation of American law and a repudiation of everything that the US supposedly stands for.





May 11, 2022

Common Sense should not even be flagging movies for "drugs," since drugs is a political term: namely, "psychoactive medicine of which politicians disapprove." Do we flag movies in which a character takes a drug for a physical condition? No? Then why are we flagging movies in which characters take a drug for a mental condition (such as anxiety or foggy thinking)? When Common Sense flags such drug use, they are simply warning readers that the movie runs afoul of the religion of Christian Science as it pertains to medicines: for it is not a scientific fact that mind medicine is bad -- but rather an article of faith among westerners that such substances are bad, just as Mary Baker Eddy basically said that ALL drugs were bad, since perfection of spirit and body was to be achieved, or so she believed, not through medicine but by praying to Jesus Christ6.

If they insist on flagging "drug" use, they should flag drug use without hypocritical exceptions: they should flag "drug" use when a movie character takes anti-depressants7 (on which 1 in 4 women are chemically dependent) and alcohol (which causes 95,000 death a year in the US alone), and tobacco (which kills 450,000 in the states yearly), and coffee, and Monster Energy Drinks, etc. Instead, Common Sense is aiding and abetting the brain-dead Drug War ideology which tells us we should fear certain demonized substances rather than understand them, and that it is therefore wrong to even talk about the safe use of those substances of which politicians disapprove.

If they were honest, Common Sense would replace the flag titled "MOVIE CONTAINS DRUG USE" with a flag titled "MOVIE RUNS AFOUL OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ORTHODOXY.8"

Author's Follow-up: April 11, 2023


There should be a "flag" for the countless movies 9 10 that promote the anti-scientific ideology of substance demonization. "Warning: this movie promotes the false idea that some substances are bad in and of themselves, without regard for how they are used." Or, "Warning: this movie promotes prohibition policies that have killed millions in the last 50 years and militarized police forces around the globe." Or, "Warning: this movie promotes an ideology that has forced the depressed and anxious to go without godsend medicines for the last 50+ years.11"

UNCOMMON SENSE MOVIE WARNINGS



"RUNNING WITH THE DEVIL" -- WARNING: CONTAINS DRUG WAR AGITPROP: SUSPECTS ARE HUNG FROM MEAT HOOKS AND TORTURED, ALL IN THE NAME OF PROSCUTING A WAR ON TIME-HONORED MEDICINE.

"TRADER" -- WARNING: CONTAINS DRUG WAR AGITPROP: SCRIPT TOES THE DRUG WAR PARTY LINE THAT OUTLAWED SUBSTANCES ARE IMMORAL WITHOUT REGARD TO FACTS OR LOGIC.

"THE RUNNER" -- WARNING: CONTAINS RACIST DRUG WAR FANATICISM: DETECTIVE IN FILM CALLS A BLACK TEENAGER A 'WASTE OF SPACE' AND BLACKMAILS ANOTHER TEEANGER TO NARC ON HIM. SPOILER ALERT: UNARMED BLACK TEENAGER KILLED IN RIDICULOUSLY IRRESPONSIBLE RAID ON HIGH-SCHOOL DANCE, FOR WHICH THE DETECTIVE ACTUALLY EARNS A MEDAL!



Author's Follow-up:

May 04, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up


I brought these concerns to the folks at Common Sense some years ago, but as is always the case, my criticism was ignored. It is considered bad manners these days to bring up the subject of drugs in mainstream society. America has its make-believe world based on drug demonization and they refuse to admit that it is a dystopia of their own making.











Notes:

1: Running with the Devil (up)
2: 8 Million Tobacco Deaths Could Be Avoided by Slashing Nicotine Edney, Anna, 2017 (up)
3: The Imperial Incas of Peru (from 'Travels in Peru') JJ, Tschudi (up)
4: Elderly Victims of Drug War Ideology DWP (up)
5: Glorifying Beneficial Drug Use DWP (up)
6: Why the Drug War is Christian Science Sharia DWP (up)
7: Why SSRIs are Crap DWP (up)
8: The Drug War = Christian Science DWP (up)
9: Glenn Close but no cigar DWP (up)
10: Running with the torture loving DEA DWP (up)
11: Depressed? Here's why you can't get the medicines that you need DWP (up)




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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




Psychiatrists prescribe drugs that muck about with a patient's biochemical baseline, making them chemically dependent and turning them into patients for life.

In a free world, almost all depressed individuals could do WITHOUT doctors: these adult human beings could handle their own depression with the informed intermittent use of a wide variety of psychoactive substances.

Even if the FDA approved MDMA today, it would only be available for folks specifically pronounced to have PTSD by materialist doctors, as if all other emotional issues are different problems and have to be studied separately. That's just ideological foot-dragging.

DEA Stormtroopers should be held responsible for destroying American Democracy. Abolish the American Gestapo.

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.

Drugs like opium and cocaine should come with the following warning: "Outlawing of this product may result in inner-city gunfire, civil wars overseas, and rigged elections in which drug warriors win office by throwing minorities in jail."

Drug warriors aren't just deciding for us about drugs. They're telling us that we no longer need Coleridge poems, Lovecraft stories, Robin Williams, Sherlock Holmes, or the soma-inspired Hindu religion.

Freud thought cocaine was a great antidepressant. His contemporaries demonized the drug by focusing only on the rare misusers. That's like judging alcohol by focusing on alcoholics.

Getting off some drugs could actually be fun and instructive, by using a variety of other drugs to keep one's mind off the withdrawal process. But America believes that getting off a drug should be a big moral battle.

To understand why the western world is blind to the benefits of "drugs," read "The Concept of Nature" by Whitehead. He unveils the scientific schizophrenia of the west, according to which the "real" world is invisible to us while our perceptions are mere "secondary" qualities.


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






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