Yes, even the director of "Bamboozled" is bamboozled about drugs. He agrees with the drug warrior lie that there are psychoactive substances in nature that have no positive uses whatsoever, in any place, any time, any context. This superstitious way of thinking has forced me to go without godsend medicine my entire life. Thanks, Spike. Why do you want people to become drug-hating Christian Scientists, exactly? These things that you call "drugs" have inspired entire religions. The conservatives are laughing as they rush to the polls to elect fascists, because they have bamboozled Spike Lee himself to sign off on the drug war which brings death and incarceration to inner city blacks. Throw away that "just say no" teddy bear with which you were bribed in childhood, Spike, and open your eyes.
Panther
1995
"Against hard drugs in the community."
"Hard" drugs? As defined by whom? The DEA? That agency which ranks psychoactive substances by the degree to which they threaten the WASP establishment?
James Leroy Anderson The Movie (The Heroes Squad)
2022
"Stay away from drugs, gangs, cyber porn on the internet and you could be President some day."
President? More like the dictator of a drug-hating Christian Science theocracy. (Another of the endless movie quotes that equate substances that inspired entire religions with everything low and disgusting.)
The Crow: City of Angels
1996
"Curve's also the one who just dusted himself CURVE (hyped on drugs) Let's get this over with."
The screenwriter's direction says "hyped on drugs." Notice that we don't have to know the specific name or kind of drug, because the political term "drugs" implies a substance that produces any and all zany illogical and dangerous behavior -- in other words, more drug war demonization of the psychoactive medicine that puritan imperialist America prefers to fear rather than to understand.
The Killer
1989
"Prostitution, gambling, drugs, guns."
Westerner's cannot think of psychoactive substances but as the politically created pejorative known as "drugs." Had the former inhabitants of the Indus Valley held this same jaundiced view of amoral substances, the Vedic religion would have arrived in the world stillborn.
Allmost Famous
2000
"ELAINE (weary of the issue) Honey, it's all about drugs and promiscuous sex."
More obligatory demonizing of medicines that have inspired entire religions.
Boone: the Bounty Hunter
2016
"If someone offers you drugs,
don't do drugs,
'cause drugs can hurt
your brain development."
More Drug War lies designed to get kids scared about substances rather than understanding them. Benjamin Franklin "did" opium. So did Marcus Aurelius. HG Wells and Jules Verne wrote stories "on" coca wine. The Vedic religion was inspired by psychedelics. Americans are bamboozled beyond belief by drug war propaganda, so much so that even in the movie Bamboozled, Spike Lee blames the boogieman of drugs, which was invented out of whole cloth to marginalize minorities.
Autumn in New York
2000
" I think
she only tried drugs once."
Again, one of the endless one liners that trash plant medicines about which Americans know nothing, except that they're supposed to hate them.
Nerdland
206
"Authorities have been after him
since the old days...
...for extortion, drugs, even murder.
Except for small collars..."
Spoken by Donahue. This is how bamboozled Americans are: movies and TV shows continually link plant medicines that have inspired entire religions with extortion and murder.
Die Hard 2
1990
"Just a cop who's spent half his career
busting scumbag lowlife dope dealers."
McClane, speaking to Esperanza, in another example of the Nazification of language by the Drug War, according to which nature's bounty is "junk" and those who deal in it are "scumbags."
Republic of Doyle
2015
"She flipped on you because you are a piece of dog turd."
Logan, speaking to someone who sells plant medicine. The Drug War Nazifies our language, making it acceptable to call folks scumbags and turds because they dare to use plant medicine that has inspired entire religions.
No Drug War Keychains The key to ending the Drug War is to spread the word about the fact that it is Anti-American, unscientific and anti-minority (for starters)
Monticello Betrayed Thomas Jefferson By demonizing plant medicine, the Drug War overthrew the Natural Law upon which Jefferson founded America -- and brazenly confiscated the Founding Father's poppy plants in 1987, in a symbolic coup against Jeffersonian freedoms.
The Drug War Censors Science Scientists: It's time to wake up to the fact that you are censored by the drug war. Drive the point home with these bumper stickers.
You have been reading essays by the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass, at abolishthedea.com. Brian is the founder of The Drug War Gift Shop, where artists can feature and sell their protest artwork online. He has also written for Sociodelic and is the author of The Drug War Comic Book, which contains 150 political cartoons illustrating some of the seemingly endless problems with the war on drugs -- many of which only Brian seems to have noticed, by the way, judging by the recycled pieties that pass for analysis these days when it comes to "drugs." That's not surprising, considering the fact that the category of "drugs" is a political category, not a medical or scientific one.
A "drug," as the world defines the term today, is "a substance that has no good uses for anyone, ever, at any time, under any circumstances" -- and, of course, there are no substances of that kind: even cyanide and the deadly botox toxin have positive uses: a war on drugs is therefore unscientific at heart, to the point that it truly qualifies as a superstition, one in which we turn inanimate substances into boogie-men and scapegoats for all our social problems.
The Drug War is, in fact, the philosophical problem par excellence of our time, premised as it is on a raft of faulty assumptions (notwithstanding the fact that most philosophers today pretend as if the drug war does not exist). It is a war against the poor, against minorities, against religion, against science, against the elderly, against the depressed, against those in pain, against children in hospice care, and against philosophy itself. It outlaws substances that have inspired entire religions, Nazifies the English language and militarizes police forces nationwide.
It bans the substances that inspired William James' ideas about human consciousness and the nature of ultimate reality. In short, it causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, meanwhile violating the Natural Law upon which Thomas Jefferson founded America. (Surely, Jefferson was rolling over in his grave when Ronald Reagan's DEA stomped onto Monticello in 1987 and confiscated the founding father's poppy plants.)
If you believe in freedom and democracy, in America and around the world, please stay tuned for more philosophically oriented broadsides against the outrageous war on godsend medicines, AKA the war on drugs.
PS The drug war has not failed: to the contrary, it has succeeded, insofar as its ultimate goal was to militarize police forces around the world and help authorities to ruthlessly eliminate those who stand in the way of global capitalism. For more, see Drug War Capitalism by Dawn Paley.
Rather than apologetically decriminalizing selected plants, we should be demanding the immediate restoration of Natural Law, according to which "The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being." (John Locke)
Selected Bibliography
Andrew, Christopher "The Secret World: A History of Intelligence" 2019 Yale University Press
Aurelius, Marcus "Meditations" 2021 East India Publishing Company
Mate, Gabriel "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction" 2009 Vintage Canada
Maupassant, Guy de "Le Horla et autres contes fantastiques - Guy de Maupassant: Les classiques du fantastique " 2019
McKenna, Terence "Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution " 1992 Bantam
Miller, Richard Louis "Psychedelic Medicine: The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, and Ayahuasca Kindle " 2017 Park Street Press
Pinchbeck, Daniel "When Plants Dream" 2019 Watkins Publishing
Poe, Edgar Allan "The Essential Poe" 2020 Warbler Classics
Pollan, Michael "How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence " 2018 Penguin Books
Reynolds, David S. "Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville " 1988 Oxford University Press
Richards, William "Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences Hardcover" 2015 Columbia University Press
Rosenfeld, Harvey "Diary of a Dirty Little War: The Spanish-American War of 1898 " 2000 Praeger
Straussman, Rick "DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences " 2001 Park Street Press
Streatfield, Dominic "Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography" 2003 Picador USA
Swartzwelder, Scott "Buzzed: The Straight Facts About the Most Used and Abused Drugs from Alcohol to Ecstasy" 1998 W.W. Norton
Szasz, Thomas "Ceremonial Chemistry: the ritual persecution of drugs, addicts, and pushers" 1974 Anchor Press/Doubleday
Whitaker, Robert "Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America " 2010 Crown
Zinn, Howard "A People's History of the United States: 1492 - present" 2009
Zuboff , Shoshana "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power" 2019 Public Affairs
Site and its contents copyright 2023, by Brian B. Quass, the drug war philosopher at abolishthedea.com. For more information, contact Brian at quass@quass.com.