Conservative Lies about Drugs

Homepage of the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass

Conservative Lies about Drugs

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

January 26, 2023

Conservatives like to pretend that the Drug War is a war on hedonism and irresponsibility, but they can only do this by cherry-picking the evidence, which is to say by citing historically unrepresentative anecdotes from the last 50 years of life in a capitalist economy. The fact is that so-called "drug use" (i.e., the use of substances of which American politicians disapprove) has inspired entire philosophies. The ontology of William James would have been very different indeed had he not partaken of nitrous oxide, an experience which proved to his satisfaction that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. There is also strong circumstantial evidence that Plato partook of the psychedelic kykeon at Eleusis and that this experience inspired his views of the afterlife. We know as well that coca was considered divine, if not a deity, by the Peruvian Indians and that the entire Vedic religion was inspired by the psychoactive effects of a plant and/or fungi.

In light of this almost completely ignored backstory, we can conclude that drug prohibition is not simply a violation of the rights of hedonists, as conservatives maintain, but rather it is a government-imposed prohibition against human advancement in general, saying in effect, "The world as we know it is good enough for us, and it is forbidden for us to learn more about ultimate reality'." As such, the Drug War is not simply a worthy attempt that has failed, but it is rather a pernicious and misguided attempt that had no right to succeed in the first place, least of all in a democratic country that purports to value education and freedom of inquiry.

Conservatives have been empowered by the silence of Drug War critics on topics like these, their polemics getting more hyperbolic with every passing year, to the point where, in 2019, Marci Hamilton of Child USA wrote an oped-piece in which she referred to drug users as child abusers. Yes, child abusers.

So, let me get this straight, Marci. William James was the moral equivalent of a child abuser, as was Plato, as were the Inca, as were the first Hindus. And I suppose we should throw in the drug-using HG Wells and Jules Verne and Benjamin Franklin while we're at it.

No, Marci. The real villain of the piece is the Drug Warrior, who teaches kids to fear psychoactive substances rather than to understand them, thereby placing those kids in harm's way.

Let's never put Marci in charge of rollerblade education. She would publicize the dangers of rollerblading on prime-time public service announcements while refusing to tell kids how to use rollerblades safely. Why not? Oh, because that would encourage rollerblade use, don't you see? And then when kids start dying in rollerblade accidents, Marci would declare trimphantly: "You see! Rollerblading is every bit as evil as I said it was!"

But if we must throw around hyperbolic charges, then permit me to call Marci a child abuser for failing to educate kids
properly about the world around them, preferring to scare them instead, all because of her fanatical adherence to the drug-hating doctrines of Mary Baker Eddy -- which is a hypocritical adherence, by the way, since Marci is not about to level the charge of child abuse against topers and chimney pots, despite the fact that drinking and smoking kill 100,000 Americans a year, a figure that dwarfs the number that are killed by the substances that Marci tells her kids to fear.

And Marci's crime is only compounded by the fact that her stance on "drugs" turns true philosophy into a government-banned activity.

Author's Follow-up: January 26, 2023

follow-up on essay by the Drug War Philosopher

Marci's hyperbole reminds one of the anti-Semitism of wartime Germany. In the decades following World War I, the Nazis tried to outdo each other in an effort to demonize Jews for causing all the problems in the world. Just so in our time the Drug Warriors try to outdo each other in demonizing drugs for causing all the problems in the world. And so, after over a century now of racist-driven prohibition, the once commonplace practice of using Mother Nature's bounty for healing has finally become "child abuse" in the hysterical minds of the modern Drug Warrior. This is why I have been calling on the Holocaust Museum to denounce the Drug War, this plus the fact that Donald Trump now wants to execute the Blacks that Drug Warriors of the past decades were content merely to imprison.

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Prohibition is a crime against humanity. It forces us to use shock therapy on the severely depressed since we've outlawed all viable alternatives. It denies medicines that could combat Alzheimer's and/or render it psychologically bearable.

The DEA is gaslighting Americans, telling them that drugs with obvious benefits have no benefits whatsoever. Scientists collude in this lie thanks to their adherence to the emotion-scorning principles of behaviorism.

Had the DEA been active in the Punjab and 1500 BCE, there would be no Hindu religion today.

Most enemies of inner-city gun violence refuse to protest against the drug prohibition which caused the violence in the first place.

You can get a master's degree in healthcare today and not learn a thing about the power of hundreds of outlawed drugs to inspire and elate.

Just think how much money bar owners in the Old West would have saved on restoration expenses if they had served MDMA instead of whiskey.

The UN of today is in an odd position regarding drugs: they want to praise indigenous societies while yet outlawing the drugs that helped create them.

When scientists refuse to report positive uses for drugs, they are not motivated by power lust, they are motivated by philosophical (non-empirical) notions about what counts as "the good life." This is why it's wrong to say that the drug war is JUST about power.

There will always be people who don't use drugs wisely, just as there are car drivers who don't drive wisely, and rock climbers who fall to their death. America needs to grow up and accept this, while ending prohibition and teaching safe use.

Today's drug laws tell us that we must respect the historical use of sacred medicines, while denying us our personal right to use them unless our ancestors did so. That's a meta-injustice! It negatively affects the way that we are allowed to experience our world!

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Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

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Conservative Lies about Drugs

Author's Follow-up: January 26, 2023

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Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

Diary of a Drug Fiend