why scientists are the slow kids in the class when it comes to drugs
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
February 23, 2025
recently asked myself the following question:
Why is the western world so far behind the curve when it comes to common sense? Why are we so slow in recognizing the obvious?
It wasn't until the 18th century that we realized that ultimate realities could not be explained in human words, something that tribal people had known for millennia. It wasn't until the 20th century that we transcended Cartesian dogma long enough to admit that animals felt pain, a fact that the average person had never even thought to question. And we are still behind the curve in the 21st century. Scientists of our time claim to see no benefits in drugs that have been called panaceas in the past, some of which have inspired entire religions.
Are these scientists kidding us? Why are westerners always the slow kid in the class when it comes to the things that really matter in life?
Let me suggest at least the beginning to a possible answer. It has to do with epistemology. It was always a mistake to assume that the understanding of non-quantitative phenomena could be grasped and described using the inherently fallible and eternally incomplete communication medium called human language. I write here just to get the ball rolling on this topic, mind, because this is a new train of thought that I am developing here.
I would add, however, that this is far from a "merely philosophical" issue. For the Drug War itself is justified based on the support that it receives from the kind of dogmatic dullards that I have described above, the many scientists who are dogmatically blind to both common sense and the testimony of saints and psychonauts alike. These are the folks who know all about chemical pathways and neuronal mechanisms in the brain but do not have the first clue about holistic medicine. This means that they can only sign off on a drug by finding a specific way that it treats a specific condition. In other words, they are applying a materialist standard to non-western medicine, which is a kind of pharmacological imperialism. This is how they get away with slowing down the drug approval process: they ignore the benefits that drug-induced positivity has on overall health, demanding instead that the drug demonstrate a specific ability to fix specific problems separately and in a causally identifiable manner.
Even if a drug is approved for treating condition A, those suffering from conditions B or C are out of luck until researchers find funding and time to go back to the lab and prove the existence of a separate causally relevant chemical pathway for THOSE ailments as well. This is what I call "death by a thousand approvals." It is the way that the FDA ensures that the few psychoactive medicines that pass the drug approval process will only have a marginal effect on the drug market. Not only is the newly approved drug still denied to most sufferers, but many of them will not be able to afford it thanks to the high price point created by the economics of the situation.
Again, this is all super relevant because this dogmatic foot dragging helps the DEA and the FDA keep godsend medicines out of the hands of the suffering. This injustice is all the more outrageous in light of the fact that the drugs in question often grow at our very feet and some of them have even inspired entire religions.
I fear we may need to start handing out dunce caps to modern scientists until they realize that they are totally out of touch with reality when it comes to the subject of drugs. Nor am I being mean here. If I were being mean, I would suggest that the scientists' lack of common sense was a result of cowardice, of their craven desire to toe the line when it comes to the Drug War ideology of substance demonization. But that's not what I am saying here. I am merely suggesting that such scientists have been misled by a slavish adherence to the obsolete and inhumane tenets of behaviorism, that their reductive approach is inappropriate for the study of mind and mood medicines altogether.
But what can we expect? It was always a category error to place materialist scientists in charge of mind and mood medicine in the first place.
Materialism
In "The Varieties of Religious Experience," William James demonstrated how materialists are blind to the depth and meaning of psychological states of ecstasy and transcendence -- or in other words the states that are peculiar to mystics like St. Teresa... and to those who use psychoactive substances like laughing gas. The medical materialist is dogmatically dismissive of such states, which explains why they can pretend that godsend medicines that elate and inspire have no positive uses whatsoever:
To the medical mind these ecstasies signify nothing but suggested and imitated hypnoid states, on an intellectual basis of superstition, and a corporeal one of degeneration and hysteria. Undoubtedly these pathological conditions have existed in many and possibly in all the cases, but that fact tells us nothing about the value for knowledge of the consciousness which they induce.
And so materialist scientists collaborate with the drug war by refusing to see glaringly obvious drug benefits. They acknowledge only those benefits that they believe are visible under a microscope. The Hindu religion would not exist today had materialist scientists held soma to such a standard. But that's the absurd pass to which prohibition eventually brings us in a society wherein materialist science is the new god: scientists are put in charge of deciding whether we are allowed to imagine new religions or not.
This materialist bias is inspired in turn by behaviorism, the anti-indigenous doctrine of JB Watson that makes the following inhumane claim:
"Concepts such as belief and desire are heritages of a timid savage past akin to concepts referring to magic."
According to this view, the hopes and the dreams of a "patient" are to be ignored. Instead, we are to chart their physiology and brain chemistry.
JB Watson's Behaviorism is a sort of Dr. Spock with a vengeance. It is the perfect ideology for a curmudgeon, because it would seem to justify all their inability to deal with human emotions. Unfortunately, the attitude has knock-on effects because it teaches drug researchers to ignore common sense and to downplay or ignore all positive usage reports or historic lessons about positive drug use. The "patient" needs to just shut up and let the doctors decide how they are doing. It is a doctrine that dovetails nicely with drug war ideology, because it empowers the researcher to ignore the obvious: that all drugs that elate have potential uses as antidepressants.
That statement can only be denied when one assumes that "real" proof of efficacy of a psychoactive medicine must be determined by a doctor, and that the patient's only job is to shut up because their hopes and dreams and feelings cannot be accurately displayed and quantified on a graph or a bar chart.
Drug warriors have harnessed the perfect storm. Prohibition caters to the interests of law enforcement, psychotherapy, Big Pharma, demagogues, puritans, and materialist scientists, who believe that consciousness is no big "whoop" and that spiritual states are just flukes.
Psychiatrists never acknowledge the biggest downside to modern antidepressants: the fact that they turn you into a patient for life. That's demoralizing, especially since the best drugs for depression are outlawed by the government.
It's no wonder that folks blame drugs. Carl Hart is the first American scientist to openly say in a published book that even the so-called "hard" drugs can be used wisely. That's info that the drug warriors have always tried to keep from us.
Two of the biggest promoters of the psychedelic renaissance shuffle their feet when you ask them about substance prohibition. Michael Pollan and Rick Strassman just don't get it: prohibition kills.
We won't know how hard it is to get off drugs until we legalize all drugs that could help with the change. With knowledge and safety, there will be less unwanted use. And unwanted use can be combatted creatively with a wide variety of drugs.
I'm told that science is completely unbiased today. I guess I'll have to go back and reassess my doubts about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
Materialist scientists are drug war collaborators. They are more than happy to have their fight against idealism rigged by drug law, which outlaws precisely those substances whose use serves to cast their materialism into question.
Prohibitionists are also responsible for the 100,000-plus killed in the US-inspired Mexican drug war
A law proposed in Colorado in February 2024 would have criminalized positive talk about drugs online. What? The world is on the brink of nuclear war because of hate-driven politics, and I can be arrested for singing the praises of empathogens?
Immanuel Kant wrote that scientists are scornful about metaphysics yet they rely on it themselves without realizing it. This is a case in point, for the idea that euphoria and visions are unhelpful in life is a metaphysical viewpoint, not a scientific one.
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, Dogmatic Dullards: why scientists are the slow kids in the class when it comes to drugs, published on February 23, 2025 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)
recently asked myself the following question: 
You have been reading an article entitled, Dogmatic Dullards: why scientists are the slow kids in the class when it comes to drugs, published on February 23, 2025 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)
