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Why Drug Prohibition is the Ultimate Injustice

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

August 9, 2025



Drug prohibition is a meta-injustice. It seeks to get inside our very biochemistry and control the way that we think and feel about the world around us. How does it do this? By denying us all the godsend medicines that could give us a blessed respite from ourselves, from our negative inner voices, drugs which could open up new worlds for us and keep us from being psychologically lorded over, night and day, by an oppressive psychological status quo. The Drug War politician is like a despot who is not satisfied with simply oppressing his people by denying them their inalienable right to Mother Nature's bounty: he wants to make sure that his people never successfully "rise above" this oppression, even in their own minds. He wants them to eat their hearts out, to always recognize their subservient status in the world. He wants a total psycho-political victory over his people, one in which each and every one of them are forever consciously aware of the government's ownership of their very minds and moods.

In the anglophile tradition, one's home is said to be one's castle -- a sanctuary into which government dare not intrude -- and yet one's body clearly belongs to the state in the age of the Drug War, right down to the chemicals that course through that body at any given moment. This is the apotheosis of the nanny state. And yet this enormously invasive status quo is championed by conservatives who claim to be enemies of Big Government? What?! Please! These are the guys who tool around in cars with license plates reading "Don't tread on me," meanwhile encouraging the use of government to decree how and how much we are each allowed to think and feel in this life. Talk about TREADING!? That is downright stomping!

It is as if the conservative were telling government: "Don't tread on me! However, please keep limiting my ability to transcend negative mental states by outlawing the kinds of medicines that have inspired entire religions in the past. Please keep telling me which plants and fungi I may access as a resident of planet Earth. Please keep telling me how and how much I can think and feel in this life. Other than that, you'd better keep your hands off me. Oh, except for drug testing 1 , of course. Feel free to keep me from earning a living in the United States if my urine should be found to contain godsend medicines of which racist and fearmongering politicians disapprove."


 (abolishthedea.com)

It is a truism to say that we cannot change the world and that therefore we have to change ourselves -- but the Drug War outlaws even this latter option for most people. How? By denying them the kinds of substances that alone could help them transcend the status quo.

And so drug prohibition is not just an example of a bad social policy: it is the ne plus ultra of bad social policies. It is the ultimate tyranny. It not only puts oppressive power in the hands of the government, but it limits our ability to make our peace with that injustice. And so the Drug Warrior can not only pass oppressive legislation, but they can demand through drug prohibition that we feel as badly as possible, as often as possible, about that legislation.

This is what happens when we allow the government to limit our mental flexibility and resilience through the unprecedented wholesale criminalization of psychoactive medicine.

And yet this disempowerment is just the beginning of the downsides of the racist policy of drug prohibition -- which include the destruction of inner-cities, the mass arrest of minorities and the end of the rule of law in Latin America -- not to mention the election of Donald Trump himself, who is only in office today because drug law has effectively removed over a million minorities from the voting rolls.

This is the real reason why drug use is outlawed in historically despotic countries today. Our modern mandarins do not simply want to control the lives of their fellow human beings -- they want it to be UNDERSTOOD that they exercise such control. That is why they favor drug prohibition: they want to outlaw the use of all drugs that could help the hoi polloi to inhabit mental realities in which the government does not even exist, or else exists only as a kind of comic relief, worthy only of magnanimous and good-natured scorn. In short, such Drug War despots reason as follows: "WE are the ones calling the shots in this world -- and the people must be made to understand that fact and to FEEL IT to be true, 24/7."









Notes for essay entitled Why Drug Prohibition is the Ultimate Injustice:

1: Drug Testing and the Christian Science Inquisition DWP (up)




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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




That's the problem with prohibition. It is not ultimately a health question but a question about priorities and sensibilities -- and those topics are open to lively debate and should not be the province of science, especially when natural law itself says mother nature is ours.

Some outlawed drugs grow new neurons in the brain. To refuse to use them makes us complicit in the dementia of our loved ones!

That's so "drug war" of Rick: If a psychoactive substance has a bad use at some dose, for somebody, then it must not be used at any dose by anybody. It's hard to imagine a less scientific proposition, or one more likely to lead to unnecessary suffering.

I will gladly respect the police once we remove them from Gestapo duty by ending the war on drugs. Police should also learn to live on a budget, without deriving income from confiscating houses and dormitories, etc.

Brits have a right to die, but they do not have the right to use drugs that might make them want to live. Bad policy is indicated by absurd outcomes, and this is but one of the many absurd outcomes that the policy of prohibition foists upon the world.

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.

In a sane world, we would learn to strategically fight drugs with drugs.

If the depressed patient laughs, that means nothing. Materialists have to see results under a microscopic or they will never sign off on a therapy.

There's a run of addiction movies out there, like "Craving!" wherein they actually personify addiction as a screaming skeleton. Funny, drug warriors never call for a Manhattan Project to end addiction. Addiction is their golden goose.

Who would have thought back in 1776 that Americans would eventually have to petition their government for the right to even possess a damn mushroom. The Drug War has destroyed America.


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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..."

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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.

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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.

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