The question that speaks volumes about drug war hypocrisy
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
October 10, 2022
t's odd that folks in a supposedly drug-hating country like America keep asking the question: "Have you taken your meds?"
This one phrase speaks bundles about the disingenuous nature of the hypocritically defined war on drugs. It tells us that we don't really want folks to say no to drugs, but we want them to say YES to what we consider to be the RIGHT drugs. We want people to trudge around moping so that they don't bother us, but we don't want them living large, exuberantly fulfilling their dreams in life, and thus potentially annoying us.
When we ask someone if they have taken their meds, we are really asking them if they have taken their tranquilizers. As a rule, the "meds" in question are billed as anti-depressants, but the key outcome of use, in the minds of the question poser, is the tranquilizing effect that such substances have on irritating friends and acquaintances..
But then psychiatry has a long history of creating "cures," not for the benefit of the drug takers, but for the benefit of those who have to deal with them on a daily basis. That's why the procedure of lobotomy garnered a Nobel Prize, not because the victims of that mind-numbing procedure were raving about the way that it improved their lives, but rather because the caretakers and the nurses were happy that they could get on with their work without listening to the constant blather of a noisy patient population.
This politically created distinction between "meds" and "drugs" allows us to sneer at substances that have inspired entire religions (they're just "drugs" after all) while happily signing off on noxious Big Pharma "meds" that have turned 1 in 4 American women into patients for life, while yet not "curing" the depression for which the drug was supposedly being taken.
This is why we need a philosophy of the Drug War, because until these basic drug-war premises are identified and challenged, America is always going to be on the brink of criminalizing or re-criminalizing godsend medicine, thereby ignoring not only logic and science, but also the history of humanity, in which entire religions have been inspired by the very substances that we dogmatically demonize today as "drugs."
Author's Follow-up: October 23, 2023
As ethnobotanist Richard Schultes reminds us: all tribal people have used psychoactive substances for inspiration and healing. It's interesting that America has no sooner decimated such people, when it launches a campaign to criminalize their outlook on life. Do you agree with them that mother nature is good? If you act on your belief, beware, for then Cro-Magnons like Daryl Gates and William Bennett will seek to have you shot or beheaded, without so much as blushing at the inherent barbarity of that advice. This insanity is explicable only under the assumption that the Drug War is a kind of negative religion, which, of course, is exactly what Nietzsche would be saying right now if he were on the scene to behold the demagogue blather of the Drug Warrior. Nietzsche knew, after all, that the death of God would entail the adoption of a stricter Christian morality than ever, albeit at a deep enough subconscious level so that our modern zealots could live with themselves, unconscious of the fact that they were just manifesting the intolerance of a full-scale religious inquisition in opposition to the perennial holistic philosophy of humankind.
The formula is easy: pick a substance that folks are predisposed to hate anyway, then keep hounding the public with stories about tragedies somehow related to that substance. Show it ruining lives in movies and on TV. Don't lie. Just keep showing all the negatives.
AI is inherently plagiaristic technology. It tells us: "Hey, guys, look what I can do!" -- when it should really be saying, "Hey, guys, look how I stole all your data and repackaged it in such a way as to make it appear that I am the genius, not you!"
Anytime you hear that a psychoactive drug has not been proven to be effective, it's a lie. People can make such claims only by dogmatically ignoring all the glaringly obvious signs of efficacy.
We need to push back against the very idea that the FDA is qualified to tell us what works when it comes to psychoactive medicines. Users know these things work. That's what counts. The rest is academic foot dragging.
And so, by ignoring all "up" sides to drugs, the DEA points to potential addiction as a knock-down argument for their prohibition. This is the logic of children (and uneducated children at that). It is a cost-benefit analysis that ignores all benefits.
Scientists cannot tell us if psychoactive drugs are worth the risk any more than they can tell us if free climbing is worth the risk, or horseback riding or target practice or parkour.
"Can I use poppies, coca, laughing gas, MDMA?" "NO," says the materialist, "We must be SCIENTIFIC! We must fry your brain and give you a lobotomy and make you a patient for life with the psychiatric pill mill! That's true SCIENCE!"
Rather than protesting prohibition as a crackdown on academic freedom, today's scientists are collaborating with the drug war by promoting shock therapy and SSRIs, thereby profiting from the monopoly that the drug war gives them in selling mind and mood medicine.
There are neither "drugs" nor "meds" as those terms are used today. All substances have potential good uses and bad uses. The terms as used today carry value judgements, as in meds good, drugs bad.
The FDA tells us that MDMA is not safe at the same time as they tell us that "shock therapy" IS safe. What?! Shock therapy "works" by damaging the brain.
Listen to the Drug War Philosopher as he tells you how you can support his work to end the hateful drug war -- and, ideally, put the DEA on trial for willfully lying about godsend medicines! (How? By advertising on this page right c'here!)
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, Did You Take Your Meds?: The question that speaks volumes about drug war hypocrisy, published on October 10, 2022 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)
t's odd that folks in a supposedly drug-hating country like America keep asking the question: "Have you taken your meds?" 
As ethnobotanist Richard Schultes reminds us: all tribal people have used psychoactive substances for inspiration and healing. It's interesting that America has no sooner decimated such people, when it launches a campaign to criminalize their outlook on life. Do you agree with them that mother nature is good? If you act on your belief, beware, for then Cro-Magnons like Daryl Gates and William Bennett will seek to have you shot or beheaded, without so much as blushing at the inherent barbarity of that advice. This insanity is explicable only under the assumption that the Drug War is a kind of negative religion, which, of course, is exactly what Nietzsche would be saying right now if he were on the scene to behold the demagogue blather of the Drug Warrior. Nietzsche knew, after all, that the death of God would entail the adoption of a stricter Christian morality than ever, albeit at a deep enough subconscious level so that our modern zealots could live with themselves, unconscious of the fact that they were just manifesting the intolerance of a full-scale religious inquisition in opposition to the perennial holistic philosophy of humankind.
You have been reading an article entitled, Did You Take Your Meds?: The question that speaks volumes about drug war hypocrisy, published on October 10, 2022 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)