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Driver's Ed and Drugs

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

April 16, 2025



In my driver's ed class back in high school in the 1970s, we students were forced to binge-watch short films from the Ohio Department of Transportation featuring gory, uncensored scenes of real-life traffic accidents. The apparent goal was to frighten us into driving safely -- although the first message that I took away from the celluloid blood-fest was that I should never drive a car in the Buckeye State. Virginia roads seemed so amazingly peaceful by comparison!

Looking back now, fifty years later, I see an enormous irony in those classes. When high schools started having classes to quote-unquote "educate" kids about drug use, they also showed films about the gory consequences of not being safe -- and yet they wanted the kids to come away with a very different conclusion after watching those films. They wanted them to conclude that safe drug use is impossible, that it is a contradiction in terms.

Imagine if driver's education classes were conducted like drug education classes. The teacher would show all those gory films and then address the students as follows:


"You know what, kids? All these bloody dead Ohioans that you have just seen sprawled out on the asphalt had one thing in common: they all thought that THEY could drive safely. Well, guess what, cupcake: NO ONE CAN DRIVE SAFELY!!!

All right, class dismissed. Tomorrow, we will be taking an in-depth look at the aftermaths of some high-speed head-on collisions on Interstate 71 between Columbus and Cleveland, involving buses, tractor-trailers, farm vehicles... and yes, folks, even motorcycles. [class sighs] I know, right? So schedule your lunch breaks accordingly!"









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Drug testing labs are the modern Inquisitors. We are not judged by the content of our character, but by the content of our digestive systems.

"The homicidal drug is booze. There's more violence on a Saturday night in a neighborhood tavern than there has been in the whole 20-year history of LSD." -- Timothy Leary

America legalizes alcohol and then outlaws all the drugs that could help prevent and cure alcoholism.

Capitalism naturally results in disease-mongering by a self-interested medically establishment -- and disease-mongering requires the suppression of medicines that work holistically.

In 2017 alone, 1,632,921 drug arrests were made with 85.5 percent of those solely for possession. -- War On Us

The best harm-reduction strategy is to re-legalize drugs.

The Hindu religion was created thanks to the use of a drug that inspired and elated. It is therefore a crime against religious liberty to outlaw substances that inspire and elate.

The addiction gene should be called the prohibition gene: it renders one vulnerable to prohibition lies and limitations: like the lack of safe supply, the lack of choices, and the lack of information. We should pathologize the prohibitionists, not their victims.

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.

"In consciousness dwells the wondrous, with it man attains the realm beyond the material, and the peyote tells us where to find it." --Antonin Arnaud


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Copyright 2025, Brian Ballard Quass Contact: quass@quass.com

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