Homepage of the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass
blog icon orange rss icon with stylized radio waves bird icon for twitter bird icon for twitter substack icon


back navigation arrow forward navigation arrow


Defund the DEA

in response to a black DEA agent's complaints about agency bias

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

June 21, 2020



The Black community may be "woke" about the evils of racism1, but they are fast asleep when it comes to the evils of the Drug War

Why are black agents in the DEA in the first place? The DEA was founded by a racist politician in the early '70s, at which time it popularized the notion of treating drug suspects like dirt. Suddenly suspects were openly referred to by the police as "scumbags," as any fans of old-school cop shows can attest. And why? Because they were simply selling the natural plants that politicians had criminalized in order to punish members of their political opposition. In fact the entire Drug War began as a racist attempt to punish the Chinese, with whom American bigots associated the use of opium .

Although George Floyd was not detained for a drug violation, his assailants actually joked about the Drug War during the murder, taunting the onlookers with the hackneyed phrase: "Just say no to drugs." In other words, the officers were taking full advantage of the Drug Warrior tendency to dehumanize and mock minorities, even in cases that had nothing to do with illegal substances. The officers knew that, from their own point of view, the Drug War was nothing but a good excuse to beat up on non-whites, especially those who did not reverence and fear the police in the way that a slave feared a harsh task master in slavery days.

The solution to this systemic disregard for human life is not to abolish the police, we need to abolish the DEA and everything that it stands for: like bullying and incarcerating minorities, blocking drug research, lying about psychoactive plants, and outlawing Mother Nature's medicines that are the birth right of all human beings. We should then hold the DEA responsible for past outrages as well. How many Americans know that DEA Chief John C Lawn poisoned Americans in the 1980s by spraying marijuana plants with Paraquat, a weed killer that has since been found to cause Parkinson's Disease? If we're in a War on Drugs, then Lawn is a war criminal -- one who used chemical weapons on his own people. Yet he's still feted today by that corrupt agency.

It's a mystery to me, therefore, why blacks - or freedom-loving members of any other racial group - would want to work for this thoroughly corrupt agency, one that is responsible for turning inner cities into shooting galleries, thanks to the violence that naturally arises when one criminalizes Mother Nature's plant medicine.

For the Drug War is merely Christian Science Sharia, a religious war against those who dare attempt to heal or improve themselves, psychologically speaking, with the help of Mother Nature's medicines. It is thus doubly unconstitutional, first because it represents the de facto establishment of a religion, and second because it was a violation of natural law to criminalize Mother Nature's bounty in the first place, since John Locke himself declared that the citizen of a free republic has "the right to the use of the land and all that lies therein." There's no doubt therefore that the garden-loving Thomas Jefferson flipped in his grave when the DEA stomped onto Monticello 2 in jackboots in 1987 and confiscated his poppy plants.

Meanwhile millions go without psychoactive godsends because the DEA blatantly LIES about Mother Nature's plants. saying (in the teeth of reams of evidence to the contrary) that they have no potential therapeutic uses whatsoever. Blatant lies -- that no one in Congress has yet had the guts to "call them" on. Of course, the Drug War does have its fans, however: starting with Russian President Putin, whose own drug czar is a former dealer who is currently in charge of making sure that drug dealers in Russia keep paying off the right people in order to keep the government looking the other way. Donald Trump himself is now eager to use the Drug War as an excuse to murder minorities - for the "dastardly" crime of selling plant medicine, that is - plant medicine that the government had no right to outlaw in the first place.

All this while America is the MOST ADDICTED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD -- not because of opium 3 , not because of cocaine 4 5 6 , not because of psychedelics -- but because of Big Pharma antidepressants 7. ONE IN FOUR AMERICAN WOMEN are addicted to SSRIs, some of which are harder to quit than heroin 8 because they screw around with the brain chemistry that they falsely purport to "fix."

?374?

Why this addiction? Because the DEA lies about all psychoactive plant medicines and makes it almost impossible to study them, let alone to use them - forcing the suffering to rely instead on a handful of highly addictive and expensive pharmaceuticals, which sent Big Pharma profits soaring from $80 million a year to over $40 billion a year in just a few decades.

Again, I ask, why would any freedom-loving American want to work for this corrupt organization known as the DEA - as opposed to doing everything they can to abolish it, root and branch?

Look at "Running with the Devil" - the 2019 drug-war propaganda movie in which DEA agent Leslie Bibb TORTURES her suspects -- and she's the HERO of the film, as far as the script writers were concerned. And she SHOOTS the bad guy (Nicolas Cage) in cold blood and why?... for selling the coca plant - a rainforest medicine which has been used responsibly by non-Western cultures for millennia. AND SHE'S SMOKING A CIGARETTE while she shoots him. WHAT HYPOCRISY - proving once again that America's Drug War has nothing whatsoever to do with the nation's health; it's all about enforcing a Christian Science Sharia in which alcohol and Big Pharma 9 10 antidepressants are given undeserved monopolies when it comes to "curing what ails ya."

You may say "It's only a movie," but I've never heard the DEA denounce it. If Donald Trump watched the flick, he was certainly cheering on Natalie when she got on her hypocritical high horse and shot her suspect point-blank through the foggy mist of toxic tobacco smoke that she was continually exhaling.

Is this really an agency that blacks -- or anybody who values American freedom -- should work for?

Not to mention the DEA's colonialist outrage of going overseas to supposedly sovereign countries in order to burn the poppy plant -- another plant that has been used responsibly for millennia by other cultures. They say we're going overseas to stop addiction at home. But under that logic, Muslims should be allowed to enter the States for the purpose of burning grape vines. (Make no mistake: the Drug Warrior is going overseas to extend Big Liquor's monopoly throughout the world, thus making alcohol the Christian Science go-to drug for the entire globe. Besides, it gives the US military a foothold in countries that we may need to overthrow if they start displaying symptoms of Socialism Praecox, or threaten to impede access to oil supplies.)

The DEA doesn't really mind being called "biased." That's something that they can at least pretend to fix without losing their central mission of enforcing Drug War Sharia. So if the DEA's black agents really want to bring about change, they will denounce the DEA root and branch, first and foremost by pointing out, loudly and clearly, that the DEA's Drug War actually causes all of the violence that it purports to be fighting! In short, the DEA's Drug War is simply a make-work program for law enforcement.

The answer therefore is to abolish the DEA, not the police.

There is precedent for this. The Israelis recently abolished their own drug agency. It's time for America to do the same.

|22|

PS There's nothing realistic, or even desirable, about defunding the police. Let's set ourselves a realistic and laudable goal: end the Drug War that for decades now has given the police carte blanche to treat suspects like dirt.


May 24, 2022

Since inditing the above broadside, Brian has had a rethink. He's been asking himself: "Brian," he says, "why do we have police in the first place?" And the answer (or so he figures) at least in America, seems to point back to racism following the civil war and a desire on the part of white America to keep minorities in their place. At least Brian believes that's a plausible thesis, and so he hereby recants his categorical dismissal of the anti-police push, at least until he learns more on the subject. (Don't ya love this man? When he's wrong, or even potentially wrong, the guy flags himself!)




The Links Police

Do you know why I stopped you? That's right, I stopped you to tell you why the black community is fast asleep when it comes to the evils of the Drug War. (Good guess!) Well, it's because national reporters like Lisa Ling ignore the Drug War completely. 797 blacks were killed in Chicago in 2021 by gunfire -- which would not have taken place without the Drug War to incentivize drug dealing and violence (especially in poor, and poorly educated, communities). And yet Lisa Ling's recent documentary about Chicago violence DOESN'T EVEN MENTION THE WAR ON DRUGS!!!!! I repeat: SHE DOES NOT EVEN MENTION THE DRUG WAR IN A ONE-HOUR DOCUMENTARY ABOUT CHICAGO gun violence 11 !!!! It seems the Drug War has become so much a part of national life that everyone takes it as a normal baseline, as if God himself not only created heaven and earth but the Drug War as well.

But soft, you shall read!



Ooh, and while we're on the subject...






Author's Follow-up: September 19, 2022



Fair play to Hugo Chavez, he kicked the DEA out of Venezuela in 2005. Now if Americans weren't so emasculated by the drug-war ideology of substance demonization, for which they obediently urinate for their billionaire employers, we'd give the DEA the bum's rush out of the country which they have been busy bloodying and arresting since they first (dis)graced the American scene in 1973 with their presence. You remember 1973: that was the year when the DEA (Drug Demonization Enforcement Agency) first begin abjectly lying about naturally occurring psychoactive substances, falsely claiming that they had no potential value whatsoever, this despite the fact that God him or herself says otherwise in the Old Testament and that humankind has created whole religions in grateful response to the psychoactive power of these naturally occurring meds.

Just drove through Pennsylvania and passed a sign protesting the "Defund the Police" movement, whining about getting folks to respect cops again, blah blah blah. Listen, I would respect the hell out of the cops if their job was to help little old ladies across the street and stop bank robberies. But that's not how it works in Drug War society. In the age of the Drug War, police are forced to be noxious busybodies, no longer happy to merely fight crime, now they have to poke about in everybody's business in an effort to stop a sort of "pre-crime," namely the mere possession of godsend medicine of which pharmacologically clueless politicians disapprove.

I'd love and respect the police if they were fighting terrorism, preventing robberies and keeping gunmen from attacking grade schools. But that's only a side job of the police in the age of the Drug War: the real money-earner and focus of modern policemen is to be a nosy snooping busybody, a kind of thought police which keeps us from using substances that might encourage us to frown on the excesses of modern capitalism 12 . The police, in short, are the thought police, and if the 1% want to make me respect them, they'll have to do more than put up a few road signs in red-leaning townships of Pennsylvania: they'll have to end the outrageous war on godsend medicines, AKA the Drug War, which prioritizes ignorance over education and incarceration 13 over personal autonomy.

Author's Follow-up: December 21, 2022



In "Liberalism and its Discontents," Francis Fukuyama tell us that liberals are crazy because they want to get rid of the police in cities where violence and drug dealing is rife. Yes, but why is violence and drug dealing rife, Francis? It's because of substance prohibition, which the police are in the business of enforcing. So having the police help "solve" the crime problem in inner cities is like having an arsonist help put out a fire. The real issue is the incentivizing of violence in poor and poorly educated communities, and the culprit for that crime is the Drug War. But Francis has no useful suggestions to make about inner-city violence because he NEVER EVEN MENTIONS the War on Drugs in his book, yet another sign that authors self-censor themselves (usually without even realizing it) in the age of the Drug War.









Notes for essay entitled Defund the DEA: in response to a black DEA agent's complaints about agency bias:

1: US Sentencing Commission: Over 65% of Federal Prisoners are Black or Hispanic Defender Services Office Training Division (up)
2: The Dark Side of the Monticello Foundation DWP (up)
3: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
4: What the Honey Trick Tells us about Drug Prohibition DWP (up)
5: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
6: “Freud on Cocaine : Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2023. Internet Archive. 2023. https://archive.org/details/freudoncocaine0000freu/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater. (up)
7: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
8: Hall, Wayne, and Megan Weier. 2016. “Lee Robins’ Studies of Heroin Use among US Vietnam Veterans.” Addiction 112 (1): 176–80. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.13584. (up)
9: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
10: LaMattina, John. n.d. “Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of the FDA’s Drug Division Budget?” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2022/09/22/why-is-biopharma-paying-75-of-the-fdas-drug-division-budget/. (up)
11: Firearm Violence in the United States Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Johns Hopkins University (up)
12: What the drug war tells us about American capitalism DWP (up)
13: Heather Ann Thompson. 2014. The Atlantic. The Atlantic. October 30, 2014. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/10/inner-city-violence-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/382154/. (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




Irony of ironies, that the indignant 19th-century hatred of liquor should ultimately result in the outlawing of virtually every mind-affecting substance on the planet EXCEPT for liquor.

To treat opioid use disorder, we should re-normalize the peaceable smoking of opium at home as an alternative to drinking alcohol.

The Drug War shows us that American democracy is fundamentally flawed. Propaganda and fearmongering has persuaded Americans to give up freedoms that are clearly enunciated in the U.S. Constitution. We need a new democracy in which a Constitution actually matters.

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.

Drug prohibition has resulted in hundreds of thousands of completely unnecessary deaths thanks to totally preventable drug overdoses!

There are definitely good scientists out there. Unfortunately, they are either limited by their materialist orthodoxy into showing only specific microscopic evidence or they abandon materialism for the nonce and talk the common psychological sense that we all understand.

Scientists hold holistically working drugs to reductionist standards, thereby practicing a sort of pharmacological colonialsm.

Big Pharma drugs have wrought disaster when used in psychotherapy, but it does not follow that the depressed should become Christian Scientists. The use of outlawed drugs can obviate the need for shock therapy.

The confusion arises because materialists insist that every psychological problem is actually a physical problem, hence the disease-mongering of the DSM. This is antithetical to the shamanic approach, which sees people holistically, as people, not patients.

"Just ONE HORSE took the life of my daughter." This message brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.


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






back navigation arrow forward navigation arrow
Book Cover

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

This book features 150 annotated images, designed to force brainwashed Americans to confront the fact that drug prohibition is wrong. Here is what author Richard Parrish II says of the book's compiler: "The drug prohibition philosopher provides first-hand, principled, persuasive, and insightful arguments against the current drug prohibition regime..."

Purchase Your Copy
Book Cover

Diary of a Drug Fiend

This is the only full-cast recording of Aleister Crowley's 1922 classic paeon to common sense. It is the first book -- and so far almost the only book -- to stake out a philosophy of drug use that is compatible with human freedom, one in which we learn to use drugs as wisely as possible for the benefit of humanity. This recording was produced by the Drug War Philosopher and your purchases help support his effort to push back against the tragically counterproductive policy of drug prohibition, in the name of human freedom and of humanity's right to heal.

Purchase Your Copy



No cookies, no ads paid for by amoral and immoral billionaires (or trillionaires).


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.

The Partnership for a Death Free America is a proud sponsor of The Drug War Philosopher website @ abolishthedea.com.


Copyright 2026, Brian Ballard Quass Contact: quass@quass.com

tombstone for American Democracy, 1776-2024, RIP (up)