Drug Prohibition should be protested on principle, not on utilitarian grounds

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Drug Prohibition should be protested on principle, not on utilitarian grounds

An open letter to Karen Mamo, author of 'The right to use drugs: considerations for more humane societies'

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

November 18, 2025

Dear Karen ¹,

With much respect, I disagree strongly with Van Ree's claim that the right to use drugs should be based on the potential for harm to others. This is because the potential harm to others is a product of social conditions -- like a refusal to educate about safe use and a refusal to educate in general. And so one society may find that a given drug causes harm to others, whereas another society can use that same drug quite safely. This has nothing to do with the drug itself but rather with the maturity level of the societies in question. Utilitarians have fallen for the Drug War lie that drugs can be dangerous in and of themselves -- whereas they are only RENDERED DANGEROUS by societies!

It is pharmacological colonialism for us to outlaw drugs everywhere simply because a country like America is deemed too immature to use them wisely. Moreover, the Drug War is one big branding operation to demonize certain drugs outside of context (and to celebrate others uncritically, as we see in the prime-time television advertisements for Jim Beam bourbon that are targeted at American young people ²). So when we outlaw "dangerous" drugs based on abstract safety concerns, we end up merely outlawing the drugs that the powers-that-be have successfully demonized with the help of media agitprop and censorship.

Moreover, what happens when we outlaw drugs out of "safety" concerns? The Iron Law of Prohibition tells us that more inherently dangerous drugs flood the market ³. It is precisely the hypocritical "concerns for safety" of the Drug Warrior that have young people dying in the street today from opiates. Young people were not dying from opiates in American streets when opiates were legal in America and when opium was regulated as to quantity and quality.

This is why GK Chesterton opposed liquor prohibition. He did not say that prohibition was okay for certain kinds of alcohol which might harm others -- he opposed prohibition on principle! He argued that once we put the government in charge of protecting the individual's health, then a case could be made that tea itself is just as bad as beer.

"People can certainly spoil their health with tea or with tobacco or with twenty other things. And there is no escape for the hygienic logician except to restrain and regulate them all.⁴"

Moreover, it is impossible to do an objective cost-benefit analysis about the propriety of psychoactive drug use. The following example should make this clear.

Let's say that some people smoke opium nightly. They are thereby given blessed relief from tension and worry and are vouchsafed tantalizing vistas of other ways of "being in the world. ⁵" They even write poetry for the first time in their life. By smoking opium nightly, they can avoid the use of dependence-causing Big Pharma meds that would turn them into a patient for life ⁶. During the inebriation, they experience a sense of oneness with the world and are therefore more compassionate with their fellows. Let's say further that the opium users used to beat their wives when drunk, but they no longer do so under the influence of opium (one of the many unrecognized reasons why nightly opium smoking is preferable to nightly drinking ⁷).

Now, to judge the potential harm of such opium use, we would have to compare that harm to the potential BENEFITS of use. That means that the judge in question would have to decide on such things as:

1) the relative value of tension relief in life
2) the relative value of poetic visions
3) the relative value of NOT being dependent on the healthcare state
4) the relative value of a feeling of oneness and compassion
5) the relative value of domestic harmony

They would even have to take up concerns like the following: Would the opium user be inspired to create a new religion -- in which case, how much of a benefit is it to create a new religion? The utilitarian ⁸ cannot make such determinations without imposing their own value system on the factors involved! Any determination about the propriety of the opium use will depend on what the chosen judge thinks about things like poetic visions, compassion, religious sensibilities, and even the probable future of humankind. If the judges mistrust drugs a la Mary Baker Eddy and have never read a poem in their life, they will tell us that protecting others from opium use is more important than my right to use the drug -- but that decision is based on metaphysics, not on logic. Also, if the judge is a materialist, they will likely say that the opium user SHOULD be using Big Pharma antidepressants instead of opium, even if the use of such drugs should turn them into patients for life, with all of the demoralizing baggage which that entails -- and this is scarcely an objective determination but rather one that presupposes a certain philosophy of life, one that is likely totally at odds with that of the opium smokers themselves.

As far as supposed harm is concerned, any drug in the world can be successfully portrayed as harmful -- and that without lying -- should someone have the time, money and motivation to do so. Antidepressants have rendered 1 in 4 American women dependent on drugs for life ⁹. That could easily be characterized as the biggest pharmacological dystopia of all times! Alcohol kills 178,000 a year in the US alone ¹⁰. That could easily be characterized as a national emergency requiring the instant curtailment of constitutional freedoms. And yet no one has the time, money and motivation to demonize such drugs. This is why it is folly to judge drugs by the supposed harm that they cause, since society's definition of "harm" is so self-interested and malleable.

Even if we found that a drug was harmful in general, it does not follow that we should outlaw it. It is anti-scientific to say that a drug should be outlawed for all users at all doses for all conceivable reasons of use -- merely because it can be harmful for one demographic when used in one way for one reason in one dose range, and so forth. To outlaw drugs for such reasons is to outlaw human progress in the realm of psychopharmacology and to put the government in charge of what academics are allowed to study.

But back to the self-interested definition of the word "harm" in western society.

The drug called MDMA (i.e., the street drug called Ecstasy) brought totally unprecedented peace, love and understanding to the dance floors of England in the 1990s. Consider these quotes from "United Nation," a 2020 documentary about the British rave scene ¹¹ ¹²:

"Everyone's loving each other, man, they're not hating." - DJ Mampi Swift.

"It was black and white, Asian, Chinese, all up in one building." -- MC GQ.

"It was the first time that black-and-white people had integrated on a level... and everybody was one." -- DJ Ray Keith.

You might think this would be considered as a GOOD thing in a world that is on the brink of nuclear annihilation thanks to human hatred ¹³ ¹⁴ ¹⁵. In fact, you might think it to be a WONDERFUL outcome worthy of emulating!!! And yet this outcome of the use of MDMA/Ecstasy was never even seen as a benefit by the powers-that-be -- the same sort of MPs who vote in favor of stockpiling thermonuclear weapons! And so they trashed MDMA merely because it was associated with one solitary death -- a death that was caused by the prohibitionists themselves because they refused to educate young people about safe drug use!

This is why I consider it a bad joke to judge drugs based on perceived harm to others for such harm is allowed to exist in the western world only if politicians see a personal reason for highlighting it.

And what about the harm to others caused by drug prohibition itself, thanks to which minority communities have been destroyed around the globe???

We should not be talking about the potential harm of drugs -- we should be talking about the well-established harm of PROHIBITION. Its downsides are so large as to be absolutely invisible to most people.

Prohibition has harmed us by:

1) Destroying the U.S. Bill of Rights
2) Arresting so many minorities as to hand the U.S. presidential election to a would-be fascist
3) Outlawing the freedom of academia (just ask yourself how many books you've read about the benefits of opium smoking or using cocaine)
4) Destroying inner cities around the globe through violence and gunfire brought about solely by prohibition
5) Destroying the rule of law in Latin America
6) Outlawing my right to healthcare by outlawing drugs like cocaine, which Sigmund Freud knew to be a godsend for most depressed people ¹⁶, thereby shunting me off onto Big Pharma drugs that cause a dependence that literally cannot be KICKED, ever ¹⁷!!!

And what about heroin, the drug that westerners love to hate?

More than one-third of American soldiers made generous use of heroin while in Vietnam, yet only 5% needed help getting off the drug when they returned to the States. 5%! ¹⁸ Yet my own psychiatrist told me that the antidepressant called Effexor (aka Venlafaxine) has been found to have a 95% recidivism rate ¹⁹ for long-term users after three years. 95%! ²⁰

And yet politicians will tell me that heroin is a harmful drug, while I actually have a medical duty to take Effexor every day of my life!

CONCLUSION

When we focus on the "harm" of drug use, we completely miss the point. Prohibition is the killer, not drugs!

To say things like "Fentanyl kills!" is the philosophical equivalent of saying "Fire bad!" Both statements would have us fear dangerous substances rather than to learn how to use them as wisely as possible for the benefit of humanity.

Thomas Szasz said it best:

"The laws that deny healthy people 'recreational' drugs also deny sick people 'therapeutic' drugs." ²¹

This is why it is wrong to outlaw psychoactive drugs based on perceived harm to others -- because in so doing, you outlaw the time-honored right of human beings to take care of their own health! I feel strongly about this because I have been turned into a ward of the healthcare state by this mindset -- and it all came about originally because self-interested doctors helped demonize time-honored panaceas like opium and coca, thereby giving ideas to racist politicians who leveraged the doctors' drug demonization to pass laws that would destroy minorities and the communities in which they live ²².

The utilitarian wants to talk about the welfare of the vast MINORITY of poor white kids who might misuse a drug (forgetting, of course, that we refuse to teach such kids about safe drug use and we refuse to regulate the drugs that they use as to quality and dose -- in other words, society itself brings about the harms for which we scapegoat drugs). But the utilitarian never talks about the HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DEPRESSED who suffer in silence behind closed doors because we have outlawed drugs based only on their potential misuse!!! HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS!!!

Speaking of unrecognized harm...

By some estimates, drug prohibition has resulted in half a million American deaths since 1971 ²³. It is laughable to think the death toll after re-legalization would be still higher, that the abolishment of gangs and the teaching of safe use will somehow increase that number! If American parents oppose drug re-legalization, it is only because their kids have been artificially protected from "drugs" thanks to drug laws that have outsourced drug-related downsides to minorities. American parents need to stop "protecting" their kids from drugs by running roughshod over the rights of others: our right to healthcare, our right to mental freedom, our right to spiritual freedom -- and the right of minorities to live in safe communities.

Utilitarian arguments have no place in the drug debate. We have an absolute right to take care of our own health using the godsends of Mother Nature. John Locke himself proclaimed our right to the use of nature "and all that lies therein.²⁴" We have an absolute right to democratic freedoms. We have an absolute right to communities that are not riddled with bullets thanks to drug laws crafted by racist politicians for that very purpose. We have an absolute right to use the kinds of drugs that have inspired entire religions -- and the outlawing of such is worse than the outlawing of religion -- it is the outlawing of the religious impulse itself!!!

The Vedic religion was created thanks to the use of a drug that inspired and elated -- and yet utilitarians claim the right to outlaw such drugs should they be deemed too dangerous for young people? What about the dangers of outlawing an entire religion"?! Of course, such future dangers can never be assessed -- which is yet another reason why utilitarian judgments make no sense in judging the propriety of psychoactive drug use.

In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, the fire department burned books to control what the people could think. In the age of drug prohibition, the police confiscate plants and fungi to control how and HOW MUCH the people are allowed to think ²⁵.

Today's dystopia is the worst by far: for it permits Big Brother inside our very minds, allowing it to control how we think and feel about life! Drug prohibition is therefore a kind of meta-tyranny and should be protested on principle, not on utilitarian grounds.

Notes:

1: The right to use drugs: considerations for more humane societies Mamo, Karen, Academia.edu, 2023 (up)
2: Jim Beam and Drugs DWP (up)
3: Iron Law of Prohibition Made Drugs Dangerous McKenna, Stacey, R Street, 2024 (up)
4: Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument against the Scientifically Organized State Chesterton, GK (up)
5: “Being-In-The-World.” n.d. MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262540568/being-in-the-world/. (up)
6: How materialists turned me into a patient for life DWP (up)
7: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
8: We have an absolute right to use drugs DWP (up)
9: Richard Louis Miller. 2017. Psychedelic Medicine : The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, and Ayahuasca. Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press. (up)
10: CDC. 2024. “Facts About U.S. Deaths from Excessive Alcohol Use.” Alcohol Use. July 8, 2024. https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/facts-stats/?CDC_AAref_Val=https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-deaths.html. (up)
11: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
12: Terry Stone, One Nation. 2020. Primevideo.com. 2020. https://www.primevideo.com/detail/United-Nation-Three-Decades-of-Drum-Bass/0QBTNJMS497Q0OON1UANKSOFX3. (up)
13: 8 Nuclear Close Calls that Nearly Spelled Disaster Davidson, Lucy, History Hit, 2022 (up)
14: A Darkening Horizon: Nuclear Dangers Around the World with Matthew Bunn Bunn, Matthew, Harvard Kennedy School, 2023 (up)
15: An interview with Annie Jacobsen, author of ‘Nuclear War: A Scenario’ Jackobsen, Annie, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2024 (up)
16: “Freud on Cocaine : Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2023. Internet Archive. 2023. https://archive.org/details/freudoncocaine0000freu/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater. (up)
17: How Drug Prohibition makes it impossible to get off of Effexor and other Big Pharma drugs DWP (up)
18: Hall, Wayne, and Megan Weier. 2016. “Lee Robins’ Studies of Heroin Use among US Vietnam Veterans.” Addiction 112 (1): 176–80. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.13584. (up)
19: I have been unable to confirm this stat. But the WHO notes clinical recidivism rates for depression ranging from 50% to 85%. Do we count that as a recidivism rate of Effexor? Not when Biopharma is paying 75% of The FDA’s Drug Division Budget, as reported by John LaMattina in the Sep 22, 2022 edition of Forbes magazine. (up)
20: How Drug Prohibition makes it impossible to get off of Effexor and other Big Pharma drugs DWP (up)
21: Listening to Thomas Szasz: a philosophical review of Our Right to Drugs DWP (up)
22: Coverup on Campus DWP (up)
23: Prohibition Blunder (up)
24: Second Treatise of Government Locke, John, Project Gutenberg, 1689 (up)
25: Let's burn some plants! DWP (up)

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As great as it is, "Synthetic Panics" by Philip Jenkins was only tolerated by academia because it did not mention drugs in the title and it contains no explicit opinions about drugs. As a result, many drug law reformers still don't know the book exists.

The search for SSRIs has always been based on a flawed materialist premise that human consciousness is nothing but a mix of brain chemicals and so depression can be treated medically like any other physical condition.

Freud's real discovery was that drugs like cocaine could make psychiatry UNNECESSARY for the vast majority of people. The medical establishment hated the idea -- so they judged the drug based on its worst possible use!

William James knew that there were substances that could elate. However, it never occurred to him that we should use such substances to prevent suicide. It seems James was blinded to this possibility by his puritanical assumptions.

Big pharma drugs are designed to be hard to get off. Doctors write glowingly of "beta blockers" for anxiety, for instance, but ignore that fact that such drugs are hard -- and even dangerous -- to get off. We have outlawed all sorts of less dependence-causing alternatives.

The press once again hauls out the easy answer. Reiner's son was using drugs! Aha! Of course, that explains EVERYTHING! [sigh]

It's funny to hear fans of sacred plants indignantly insisting that their meds are not "drugs." They're right in a way, but actually NO substances are "drugs." Calling substances "drugs" is like referring to striking workers as "scabs." It's biased terminology.

Someone tweeted that fears about a Christian Science theocracy are "baseless." Tell that to my uncle who was lobotomized because they outlawed meds that could cheer him up -- tell that to myself, a chronic depressive who could be cheered up in an instant with outlawed meds.

LA Police Chief Daryl Gates said drug users should be summarily executed. William Bennett said drug dealers should be beheaded. These are the Nazi attitudes that the drug war inculcates. This racist and brutal ideology must be wiped out.

The massive use of plea deals lets prosecutors threaten drug suspects into giving up their rights to a fair trial.

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Drug Prohibition should be protested on principle, not on utilitarian grounds

An open letter to Karen Mamo, author of 'The right to use drugs: considerations for more humane societies'

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

Diary of a Drug Fiend