Drug users don't need treatment, they need education and choice

Homepage of the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass

Drug users don't need treatment, they need education and choice

in response to 41 Surprising War on Drugs Statistics by Elma Mrkonjic, published by The High Court website

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

January 29, 2026

Thank you for this excellent summary of the downsides of drug prohibition.¹

I would just like to add a few downsides that you missed.

Drug prohibition outlaws the right of Americans to take care of their own health, the most basic of human rights. Depression is basically a “thing” in America because we have outlawed the coca leaf and cocaine, which Sigmund Freud promoted as a godsend for the depressed – until his fellow doctors studied the drug by focusing only on its downsides, exactly as if they were to study alcohol by focusing only on alcoholics ² ³ ⁴. No one asked the depressed what they thought. And no one noticed that doctors had a vested interest in demonizing cocaine, just as they had a vested interest in demonizing opium. The healthcare industry owes its wealth today to the outlawing of those two drugs.

Drug war morality featuring depiction of pill floating in air in heavenly setting while showing nature's plant medicines beside grinning skull. — Americans have been taught to hate Mother Nature's plant medicines and to trust in Big Pharma 'meds' instead, many of which turn the depressed into patients for life with extreme chemical dependency.

As a chronic depressive myself, I am one of the millions of unacknowledged victims of the Drug War. Drug prohibition has denied me the power to take care of my own health, shunting me off instead onto a Big Pharma “med” that is far harder to kick than heroin ⁵. In fact, the “med” that I am on (Venlafaxine) has a 95% recidivism rate ⁶ for long-term users. 95%. That’s what my former psychiatrist told me – shortly before he was fired for his candor. Compare this relapse rate to heroin. When American soldiers returned from Vietnam, 34% had used heroin regularly while overseas, and yet only 5% required help getting off the drug when they returned to the States. 5%. (See the Lee Robins study.⁷)

Speaking of heroin, consider the irony: we call it a hard drug and denounce its use, while we yet praise 1 in 4 American women for taking a Big Pharma med every day of their life.

cartoon of man in front of two doors: on the left, the door to Addiction Services, decorated with depictions of souls in torment; on the right, Maintenance Meds, with picture of perky angel blowing trumpet — Drug warriors denounce chemical dependency and yet drug prohibition has rendered 1 in 4 American women chemically dependent for life by shunting them off onto Big Pharma drugs that are FAR harder to kick than heroin.

Even most drug law reformers tend to write as if drugs have no positive uses, but this is not true. Drugs can keep people from committing suicide and can give new hope and meaning to their life. In fact, I think we have a duty to give people drugs if they are on the verge of suicide and need to be cheered up ASAP. Why do 49,000 Americans commit suicide every year after all?⁸ Surely, it has something to do with the fact that we have outlawed all the drugs that could cheer them up! Indeed, Americans are so convinced that drugs have no positive uses that doctors actually encourage the severely depressed to undergo brain-damaging shock therapy!

And the madness does not stop there. Now people with severe depression (like Canadian entertainer Claire Brosseau) are demanding the right to assisted suicide.⁹ Imagine the irony here! First, the medical industry works to deny us drugs that could cheer us up in a trice. Then we ask them to kill ourselves when we can’t stand the depression anymore! This madness is brought about by the fact that we have all been brainwashed since childhood to hate drugs, above all by the media censorship of all positive uses for drugs.

Cartoon titled Euthanasia Meets the Drug War. Doctor talks to patient: The bad news is we can't give you drugs for your depression. The good news is, we can kill you if your depression gets too bad. — Americans have been taught to superstitiously believe that drugs are bad. Drugs are not bad or good. They are inanimate objects. Their widespread misuse tells us something about society, not about drugs.

So while it may sound progressive to say that drug users need treatment, what they really need is drug choice and education about safe use. Americans were not dying in the streets from overdoses when opiates were legal in America. Opium fans smoked the regulated product peaceably at home. It was drug prohibition which caused the problems by incentivizing the switch to more powerful synthesized opiates and forcing users to rely on uncertain supplies of uncertain dosage and quality, etc.

And there are many other downsides to drug prohibition that almost no one notices: like the fact that it has censored academia, to the point that everyone writes about drug abuse and misuse and no one writes about beneficial use. We forget that indigenous people, living close to the earth, have always used drugs for human benefit, as ethnobotanist Richard Schultes discovered.¹⁰ It is a uniquely western point of view to be suspicious of plant medicine, this despite the fact that God himself said his creation was good in the book of Genesis. Drug hating is even built into the D.C. bureaucracy: this is why we have a National Institute on Drug Abuse rather than a National Institute on Drug Use.

Drug prohibition also outlaws philosophical research. The philosophy of William James was inspired by his use of laughing gas, a gas that the FDA is now seeking to classify as a “drug,” thus making it even less available than it already is on a practical basis.¹¹ James urged philosophers to use substances like nitrous oxide to study different forms of consciousness in order to learn about the nature of reality writ large. But drug prohibition says that such study must never take place, thereby vetoing human progress. (In a sane world, we would provide laughing gas kits to the suicidal in the same way that we now give epi pens to those with severe allergies.)¹² ¹³

A sign in a library directs people about drug risks, abuse and misuse -- but no directions to books about drug benefits. — Don't think your life has been censored? Go into the local library and see how many books there are on the BENEFITS of drug use!

Drug prohibition also outlaws new religions by denying us the use of the kinds of substances that have inspired their creation in the past, as Soma inspired the Vedic religion (hence the Hindu faith) and the coca plant was considered divine by the Inca.¹⁴ ¹⁵

Two more observations and then I’m done:

First, regarding the idea that the Drug War has failed: I would add that the Drug War never had the right to succeed in the first place, given the downsides stated above and many others that I would mention if time permitted. Second, the Drug War HAS succeeded in a way: at least if we assume that its real goal was to divide Americans, destroy minority communities, hand elections to demagogues, humiliate labor, destroy the Bill of Rights (except for the second amendment, of course) and put Latin America under the thumb of the U.S. military, meanwhile destroying the rule of law south of the border.

Woman addressing a circle of seated young people as she stands in front of whiteboard reading 'Drug Warriors Anonymous': 'That's when I realized that we should learn to benefit from plant medicine rather than to demonize it.' — Imagine a 12-step group designed to help people free themselves from the mental shackles of a lifetime of anti-drug propaganda.

Notes for essay entitled Drug users don't need treatment, they need education and choice: in response to 41 Surprising War on Drugs Statistics by Elma Mrkonjic, published by The High Court website:

1: Mrkonjic, Elma. 2021. “41 Surprising War on Drugs Statistics [the 2021 Edition].” The High Court. October 11, 2021. https://thehighcourt.co/war-on-drugs-statistics/. (up)
2: “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)
3: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
4: Cocaine is a Blessing, not a Curse DWP (up)
5: Heroin versus Antidepressants DWP (up)
6: 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)
7: 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)
8: National Institute of Mental Health. 2025. “Suicide.” National Institute of Mental Health. March 2025. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide. (up)
9: No one would need assisted suicide if we ended drug prohibition: what Claire Brosseau's case tells us about the warped mindset of the west when it comes to drugs DWP (up)
10: Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers Schultes, Richard, 1979 (up)
11: Keep Laughing Gas Legal DWP (up)
12: A Philosophical Review of "The Varieties of Religious Experience"-- How William James failed to connect the dots DWP (up)
13: “The Varieties of Religious Experience : William James : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2021. Internet Archive. 2021. https://archive.org/details/the-varieties-of-religious-experience_202109. (up)
14: Blue Tide: The Search for Soma: a philosophical review of the book by Mike Jay DWP (up)
15: “Blue Tide - Mike Jay.” 2025. Mike Jay. May 18, 2025. https://mikejay.net/books/blue-tide/. (up)

read more essays here

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

The benefits of outlawed drugs read like the ultimate wish-list for psychiatrists. It's a shame that so many of them are still mounting a rear guard action to defend their psychiatric pill mill -- which demoralizes clients by turning them into lifetime patients.

Harm Reduction is not enough. We need Benefit Production as well. The autistic should be able to use compassion-enhancing drugs; dementia patients should be able to use drugs that speed up and sharpen mental processes.

It wasn't until western prudery and racism came along that we started to judge people by the substances that they chose to ingest, rather than by their actual behavior in the world.

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.

Many psychedelic fans are still drug warriors at heart. They just think that a nice big exception should be carved out for the drugs that they're suddenly finding useful.

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.

The Petpedia website says that "German Shepherds need to have challenging jobs such as searching for drugs." How about searching for prohibitionists instead?

This is why we would rather have a depressed person commit suicide than to use "drugs" -- because drugs, after all, are not dealing with the "real" problem. The patient may SAY that drugs make them feel good, but we need microscopes to find out if they REALLY feel good.

All the problems that folks associate with drugs are caused by prohibition. Thousands were not dying on the streets when opioids were legal in America. It took prohibition to bring that about.

Imagine someone starting their book about antibiotics by saying that he's not trying to suggest that we actually use them. We should not have to apologize for being honest about drugs. If prohibitionists think that honesty is wrong, that's their problem.

Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us

No cookies, no ads paid for by amoral and immoral billionaires (or trillionaires).

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.

The Partnership for a Death Free America is a proud sponsor of The Drug War Philosopher website @ abolishthedea.com.

tombstone for American Democracy, 1776-2024, RIP

(up)

Drug users don't need treatment, they need education and choice

in response to 41 Surprising War on Drugs Statistics by Elma Mrkonjic, published by The High Court website

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