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 laws.
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.
LINKSMOVIES
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 Christ5.
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-depressants6 (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.7"
Author's Follow-up: April 11, 2023
There should be a "flag" for the countless movies 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.8"
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
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.
Mass Media and Drugs
Wonder how America got to the point where we let the Executive Branch arrest judges? Look no further than the Drug War, which, since the 1970s, has demonized Constitutional protections as impediments to justice. The media has played its role with movies like "Running with the DEA," "The Crisis" and "The Runner." In the first of these three, the DEA are the "good guys" for murdering a suspect in cold blood. In the second, the DEA plants evidence to cover up the murder of a drug suspect by an indignant mother. And in the third, a white detective stages a raid that kills a young Black teenager that said detective refers to as "a waste of space."
The Drug War is all about making us hate -- making us hate anybody except for the folks that brought about the violence and drug problems in the first place: the damned prohibitionists who, having failed to outlaw liquor, turned their scapegoating on every less dangerous substance in the world.
Meanwhile, the media have done all they can to support this drug war by holding the use of outlawed substances to safety standards that are never applied to any other risky activity on earth, meanwhile ignoring the fact that prohibition encourages ignorance and leads to contaminated drug supply. Thousands of American young people die each month because of unregulated supply and ignorance, not from drugs themselves.
The media also supports the drug war by failing to hold it accountable for all the problems that it causes. Just read any article on inner-city shootings -- today's journalists will trace the problem to a lack of jobs or to global warming, to anything but the drug war which incentivized violence in the first place. As for violence overseas, we're told that it's caused by evil rotten drug cartels -- without any acknowledgement that it was American drug policy that created those cartels out of whole cloth, just as liquor prohibition created the Mafia here in the States.
Meanwhile, the media have a field day superstitiously blaming drugs. It used to be PCP, ICE, oxy, crack, and now it's fentanyl... It's all part of the DEA's tried-and-true formula to stay relevant, as academic Philip Jenkins clearly demonstrates in "Synthetic Panics": Take a local drug problem and publicize it so that it goes national. Then work with a film crew at "48 Hours" to show that the drug in question threatens the white American middle class. Then go to Congress, hat in hand, and accept billions to 'solve' the latest drug problem.
And Americans fall for it every time. In fact, their gullibility seems to be increasing over time. They love to hate drugs, so much so that drugs have become the new horror trope. Recent movies have taken to personifying "evil" drugs in the forms of Crack Raccoons and Meth Gators. It's sad that America has become so superstitious and childish about drugs -- and the media can take much of the blame.
Attention American Screenwriters: please stop spreading Drug War propagandaColorado plane crash caused by milk!Common Nonsense from Common Sense MediaCop shows as drug war propagandaCOPS PRESENTS the top 10 traffic stops of 2023COPS: TV Show for Racist Drug WarriorsDrug War AgitpropDrug War MurderersFentanyl does not kill! Prohibition does!Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous OxideGlenn Close but no cigarHow National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of cocaHow Scientific American reckons without the drug warHow the Atlantic Supports the Drug WarHow the Atlantic Supports the Drug War Part IIIntroduction to the Drug War Philosopher Website at AbolishTheDEA.comJim Beam and DrugsMatthew Perry and the Drug War GhoulsMore Weed Bashing at the Washington PostMovie Warnings from Uncommon SenseOpen Letter to Lisa LingOpen Letter to Variety Critic Owen GliebermanScience News Continues to Ignore the Drug WarScience News magazine continues to pretend that there is no war on drugsScience News Unveils Shock Therapy IIStigmatize THISThe Runner: Racist Drug War AgitpropThe Unpeople of Southeast Washington, D.C.Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war liesUnscientific American: the hypocritical materialism of Elon MuskWeed Bashing at WTOP.COMWhy CBS 19 should stop supporting the Drug War
Notes:1
Running with the Devil,
(up)2 Edney, Anna,
8 Million Tobacco Deaths Could Be Avoided by Slashing Nicotine, 2017
(up)3 JJ, Tschudi,
The Imperial Incas of Peru (from 'Travels in Peru'),
(up)4 Quass, Brian,
Elderly Victims of Drug War Ideology, 2022
(up)5 Quass, Brian,
Why the Drug War is Christian Science Sharia, 2020
(up)6 Quass, Brian,
Why SSRIs are Crap, 2023
(up)7 Quass, Brian,
The Drug War = Christian Science, 2019
(up)8 Quass, Brian,
Depressed? Here's why you can't get the medicines that you need, 2022
(up)
More Essays Here
Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs
Uruguay wants to re-legalize psilocybin mushrooms -- but only for use in a psychiatrist's office. So let me get this straight: psychiatrists are the new privileged shaman? It's a mushroom, for God's sake. Just re-legalize the damn thing and stop treating us like children.
In "Four Good Days" the pompous white-coated doctor ignores the entire formulary of mother nature and instead throws the young heroin user on a cot for 3 days of cold turkey and a shot of Naltrexone: price tag $3,000.
"There has been so much delirious nonsense written about drugs that sane men may well despair of seeing the light." -- Aleister Crowley, from "Essays on Intoxication"
The line drawn between recreational and medical use is wishful thinking on the part of drug warriors. Recreation, according to Webster's, is "refreshment or diversion," and both have positive knock-on effects in the lives of real people.
Lying billboards in Philadelphia say that "Fentanyl Kills." NONSENSE! If Fentanyl kills, then so do cars, horses and alcohol. PROHIBITION IS THE REAL KILLLER.
In the 19th century, poets got together to use opium "in a series of magnificent quarterly carouses" (as per author Richard Middleton). When we outlaw drugs, we outlaw free expression.
Americans think that fighting drugs is more important than freedom. We have already given up on the fourth amendment. Nor is the right to religion honored for those who believe in indigenous medicines. Pols are now trying to end free speech about drugs as well.
I hope that scientists will eventually find the prohibition gene so that we can eradicate this superstitious way of thinking from humankind. "Ug! Drugs bad! Drugs not good for anyone, anywhere, at any dose, for any reason, ever! Ug!"
Just saw a People's magazine article with the headline: "JUSTICE FOR MATTHEW PERRY."
If there was true justice, their editorial staff would be in jail for promoting user ignorance and a contaminated drug supply.
It's the prohibition, stupid!!!
Over 45% of traumatic brain injuries are caused by horseback riding (ABC News). Tell your representatives to outlaw horseback riding and make it a federal offence to teach a child how to ride! Brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.
More Tweets
The latest hits from Drug War Records, featuring Freddie and the Fearmongers!
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, Common Nonsense from Common Sense Media: So-called media watchdog scorns dirty words only, not dirty wars, published on November 7, 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)
