The Drug War Philosopher

Lights, Camera, Drug War

Quotes From TV and movies



Jungle Fever

1991
"If you ever use drugs, I'll kill you."

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.
The Drug War Philosopher
Essay date:








Buy the Drug War Comic Book by Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans


THE MEDIA AND THE DRUG WAR

I guess the motto for their owner, Hubbard Broadcasting, is PANEM ET CIRCENSES, i.e., bread and circuses.
Breaking news : "McDonald's will stay open after petition gathered enough signatures!" If only WTOP would give such front-page coverage to petitions to end the drug war.
Over 45% of traumatic brain injuries are caused by horseback riding (ABC News). Tell your representatives to outlaw horseback riding and make it a federal offence to teach a child how to ride! Brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.
Next essay: Have you been brainwashed by the drug war?
Previous essay: The Drug War as a Litmus Test for Philosophical Wisdom

More Essays Here

A Misguided Tour of Jefferson's Monticello

Calling Doctor Scumbag

A Dope Conversation about Drugs

COPS presents the top 10 traffic stops of 2023

PSA about Deadly Aspirin

PSA about Deadly Roller Coasters

PSA about the Deadly Grand Canyon

PSA about Deadly Horses




essays about
THE MEDIA AND THE DRUG WAR

How Logic-Challenged Journalists Support the Drug War
Attention American Screenwriters: please stop spreading Drug War propaganda
Drug War Copaganda
Why Hollywood Owes Richard Nixon an Oscar
Why CBS 19 should stop supporting the Drug War
Open Letter to Lisa Ling
Cop shows as drug war propaganda
COPS: TV Show for Racist Drug Warriors
Common Nonsense from Common Sense Media
America's Obsession with Fascist Drug War Movies
Glenn Close but no cigar
How the Atlantic Supports the Drug War
How Variety and its film critics support drug war fascism
Karolina Zieba just doesn't get it
All these Sons
Colorado plane crash caused by milk!
Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide
10 Idiots who helped spread drug war propaganda on Listverse
The Runner: Racist Drug War Agitprop
Moonfall
Enough Drug War Propaganda Movies Already
Movie Warnings from Uncommon Sense
COPS PRESENTS the top 10 traffic stops of 2023
Weed Bashing at WTOP.COM
Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war lies
The media, not the FDA, approves drugs in America






SUOs

(seemingly useful organizations)

Sana Collective
Group committed to making psychedelic therapy available to all regardless of income.




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. (For proof of that latter charge, check out how the US and UK have criminalized the substances that William James himself told us to study in order to understand reality.) It outlaws substances that have inspired entire religions (like the Vedic), Nazifies the English language (referring to folks who emulate drug-loving Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin as "scumbags") and militarizes police forces nationwide (resulting in gestapo SWAT teams breaking into houses of peaceable Americans and shouting "GO GO GO!").

(Speaking of Nazification, L.A. Police Chief Daryl Gates thought that drug users should be shot. What a softie! The real hardliners are the William Bennetts of the world who want drug users to be beheaded instead. That will teach them to use time-honored plant medicine of which politicians disapprove! Mary Baker Eddy must be ecstatic in her drug-free heaven, as she looks down and sees this modern inquisition on behalf of the drug-hating principles that she herself maintained. I bet she never dared hope that her religion would become the viciously enforced religion of America, let alone of the entire freakin' world!)

In short, the drug war 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.

Brian Quass
The Drug War Philosopher
abolishthedea.com

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. Oh, and did I mention that most Drug Warriors these days would never get elected were it not for the Drug War itself, which threw hundreds of thousands of their political opposition in jail? Trump was right for the wrong reasons: elections are being stolen in America, but the number-one example of that fact is his own narrow victory in 2016, which could never have happened without the existence of laws that were specifically written to keep Blacks and minorities from voting. The Drug War, in short, is a cancer on the body politic.

PPS Drugs like opium and psychedelics should come with the following warning: "Outlawing of this product may result in inner-city gunfire, civil wars overseas, and rigged elections in which drug warriors win office by throwing minorities in jail."

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

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  • Bernays, Edward "Propaganda"1928 Public Domain
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    • Blum, Richard "Society and Drugs" 1970 Jossey-Bass
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    • Gootenberg, Paul "Cocaine: Global Histories" 1999 Routledge
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    • Jenkins, Philip "Synthetic Panics: The Symbolic Politics of Designer Drugs" 1999 New York University Press
    • Johnson, Paul "The Birth of the Modern" 1991 Harper Collins
    • Leary, Timothy Ralph Metzner "The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead " 1964 University Books
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    • Lovecraft, HP "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" 1970 Del Rey Books
  • Mariani, Angelo "Coca and its Therapeutic Application, Third Edition"1896 Gutenberg.org
    • 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 Lawrence "Drug Warriors and Their Prey: From Police Power to Police State"1966 Bloomsbury Academic
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  • Shulgin, Alexander "PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story"1991 Transform Press
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    • Slater, Lauren "Blue Dreams: The Science and the Story of the Drugs that Changed Our Minds" 2019 Boston
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    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.