Exposing the anti-patient drug-war lobby in Washington
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
December 29, 2019
he DEA is the enemy of depressed individuals worldwide because it has blocked the research (let alone the use) of godsend antidepressant medications now for over four decades. Technically, it has only done this in America, but Drug War colonialism has spread this anti-scientific policy worldwide, as America financially blackmails its trading partners into touting the anti-patient party line about so-called drugs.
MDMA was legal in 1984 and ready to treat soldiers with PTSD. However, in 1985, the DEA acted against the advice of its own regulatory judge and criminalized the substance. The result: American soldiers have been without a godsend medication for PTSD during the last three and a half decades, during their fight with al-Qaida and the Taliban. While our forces were living through hell overseas, the DEA was hunkering down in its comfy Washington offices, determined to keep its jobs at any cost, even at the expense of soldiers' lives and well-being. Meanwhile, psychedelics (such as ayahuasca, psilocybin, and ibogaine) which showed profound potential for virtually curing alcoholism in the '50s, have been listed by the DEA as schedule I drugs since the DEA's inception (based purely on politics, not on science) ensuring that the depressed must continue to rely on Big Pharma meds that create chemical dependence.
But the DEA is not the only group that's determined to keep valuable medications from those who need them. To figure out who else is anti-patient in this way, just ask yourself: who stands to lose money if the drug war is finally terminated? A partial list of such groups follows. Those who oppose America's anti-patient drug war would do well to monitor the political advocacy of these groups who have a vested interest in the ongoing arrest of minorities for mere possession of Mother Nature's plants and fungi:
WHO'S KEEPING THE DRUG WAR GOING?
FOLLOW THE MONEY.
GROUPS THAT PROSPER FINANCIALLY FROM THE DRUG WAR:
Prison guards -- whose jobs proliferate as the prison population swells to record numbers
Sheriffs -- whose departmental income skyrockets thanks to the lucrative confiscation of "drug" property (think of the Drug War as a make-work program for law enforcement)
Big Pharma -- whose bottom line skyrockets thanks to their monopoly on the treatment of depression using medicines that foster chemical dependency in the user
Psychiatry -- whose clientele grows enormously since psychiatrists are the only legal distributor of Big Pharma's addictive nostrums
Alcohol producers -- who profit handsomely by the world-wide war that the American government wages against opium on their behalf, putting an end in a few generations to a millennia-old practice in the east, primping themselves up as the health-conscious good guys for this drug-war colonialism
-- and all the subsidiary businesses that profit indirectly from doing business with the above anti-patient cartel.
It's not enough to abolish the DEA and hold it responsible for its decades of patient-harming lies: those who advocate a patient-friendly drug policy must identify these sorts of natural enemies of a free market and call them to account any time they are caught attempting to buy politicians.
AFTERTHOUGHT:
Of course, the whole idea of "drugs" is absurd, insofar as that word connotes a substance that is thought to be evil in and of itself. Any sane person knows that substances are only good or bad in relation to the way that they are used. When Neil Patrick Harris snorts cocaine off of the eagerly proffered tush of a naked pole dancer in "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle," we might want to call it evil (especially if we're busybody prudes of the protestant old school), but when smart cookies use a similar substance to sharpen their analytic minds (think Sherlock Holmes in fiction or Robin Williams in reality) it is by no means clear that the substances that they thus employ are evil - unless 1) we who make that judgment are jealous psychiatrists, who would have preferred that these famous clarity-seekers fog their minds with modern antidepressants -- or 2) we are Christian Scientists, who hold the metaphysical notion that there is something wrong with improving mental states with the help of Mother Nature's pharmacy, in which case we should state our metaphysical presuppositions forthrightly and thus admit that the drug war is religiously motivated. This would accord with the facts, too, since the first drug warrior in the west was Emperor Theodosius, the founder of Catholicism, who shut down the psychedelic Eleusinian mysteries in 392 BC because he considered that ritual to be a threat to Christianity.
More materialist nonsense. "We" are the only reason that the universe exists as a universe rather than as inchoate particles.
Every video about science and psilocybin is funny. It shows nerds trying to catch up with common sense. But psychedelics work, whether the FDA thinks so or not. It's proven by what James Fadiman calls "citizen science," i.e. everyday experience.
I could tell my psychiatrist EXACTLY what would "cure" my depression, even without getting addicted, but everything involved is illegal. It has to be. Otherwise I would have no need of the psychiatrist.
The drug war is a way for conservatives to keep America's eyes OFF the prize. The right-wing motto is, "Billions for law enforcement, but not one cent for social programs."
America's "health" system was always screaming at me about the threat of addiction from drugs. Then what did it do? It put me on the most dependence-causing meds of all time: SSRIs and SNRIs.
Americans heap hypocritical praise on Walt Whitman. What they don't realize is that many of us could be "Walt Whitman for a Day" with the wise use of psychoactive drugs. To the properly predisposed, morphine gives a DEEP appreciation of Mother Nature.
Alexander Shulgin is a typical westerner when he speaks about cocaine. He moralizes about the drug, telling us that it does not give him "real" power. But so what? Does coffee give him "real" power? Coke helps some, others not. Stop holding it to this weird metaphysical standard.
I might as well say that no one can ever be taught to ride a horse safely. I would argue as follows: "Look at Christopher Reeves. He was a responsible and knowledgeable equestrian. But he couldn't handle horses. The fact is, NO ONE can handle horses!"
The government makes psychoactive drug approval as slow as possible by insisting that drugs be studied in relation to one single board-certified "illness." But the main benefits of such drugs are holistic in nature. Science should butt out if it can't recognize that fact.
In "The Book of the Damned," Charles Fort shows how science damns (i.e. excludes) facts that it cannot assimilate into a system of knowledge. Fort could never have guessed, however, how thoroughly science would eventually "damn" all positive facts about "drugs."
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, Depressed? Here's why.: Exposing the anti-patient drug-war lobby in Washington, published on December 29, 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)
he DEA is the enemy of depressed individuals worldwide because it has blocked the research (let alone the use) of godsend antidepressant medications now for over four decades. Technically, it has only done this in America, but Drug War colonialism has spread this anti-scientific policy worldwide, as America financially blackmails its trading partners into touting the anti-patient party line about so-called drugs.
You have been reading an article entitled, Depressed? Here's why.: Exposing the anti-patient drug-war lobby in Washington, published on December 29, 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)
