"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.

"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?

"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.)

"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.

"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.

"ELAINE (weary of the issue) Honey, it's all about drugs and promiscuous sex."

More obligatory demonizing of medicines that have inspired entire religions.

"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.

" 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.

"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.

"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."

"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.

More Essays Here

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
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



















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.

Selected Bibliography

• Andrew, Christopher "The Secret World: A History of Intelligence" 2019 Yale University Press

• Aurelius, Marcus "Meditations" 2021 East India Publishing Company

Bandow, Doug "From Fighting The Drug War To Protecting The Right To Use Drugs"2018

Barrett, Damon "Children of the Drug War: Perspectives on the Impact of Drug Polices on Young People"2011 IDEBATE Press

Bilton, Anton "DMT Entity Encounters: Dialogues on the Spirit Molecule"2021 Inner Traditions/Bear & Company

• Blum, Richard "Society and Drugs" 1970 Jossey-Bass

Boullosa , Carmen "A Narco History: How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the 'Mexican Drug War'"2016 OR Books

Brereton, William "The Truth about Opium / Being a Refutation of the Fallacies of the Anti-Opium Society and a Defence of the Indo-China Opium Trade"2017 Anna Ruggieri

Burns, Eric "1920: The year that made the decade roar"2015 Pegasus Books

Carpenter, Ted Galen "The Fire Next Door: Mexico's Drug Violence and the Danger to America"2012 Cato Institute

• Carroll, Lewis "Alice in Wonderland: The Original 1865 Edition With Complete Illustrations By Sir John Tenniel" 2021 Amazon

Chesterton, GK "Saint Thomas Acquinas"2014 BookBaby

• Cohen, Jay S. "For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health" 2011 Tarcher/Putnam

• De Quincey, Thomas "Confessions of an English Opium Eater" 1995 Dover

• Ellsberg, Daniel "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner " 2018 Bloomsbury Publishing

• Fadiman, James "The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys " 2011 Park Street Press

Filan, Kenaz "The Power of the Poppy: Harnessing Nature's Most Dangerous Plant Ally"2011 Inner Traditions/Bear & Company

• Fleming, Thomas "A Disease in the Public Mind: Why We Fought the Civil War" 2014 Da Capo Press

• Friedman, Milton "Wall Street Journal" 1989 WSJ

• Fukuyama, Francis "Liberalism and Its Discontents" 2022 Farrar, Straus and Giroux

• Gootenberg, Paul "Cocaine: Global Histories" 1999 Routledge

• Gottleib, Anthony "The Dream of Enlightenment: the Rise of Modern Philosophy" 2016 Liveright Publishing Corporation

Griffiths, William "Psilocybin: A Trip into the World of Magic Mushrooms"2021 William Griffiths

Hofmann, Albert "The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and Its Applications"2005 Inner Traditions/Bear & Company

• Holland, Julie "Good Chemistry: The Science of Connection, from Soul to Psychedelics" 2020 HarperWave

• Huxley, Aldous "The Doors of Perception / Heaven and Hell" 1970 Penguin Books

Irwin-Rogers, Keir "Illicit Drug Markets, Consumer Capitalism and the Rise of Social Media: A Toxic Trap for Young People"2019

James, William "The Varieties of Religious Experience"1902 Philosophical Library

• 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

• 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 Louis "Psychedelic Medicine: The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, and Ayahuasca Kindle " 2017 Park Street Press

Mortimer MD, W. Golden "Coca: Divine Plant of the Incas"2017 Ronin Publishing

• Noe, Alvin "Out of our Heads" 2010 HiII&Wang,

• Paley, Dawn "Drug War Capitalism" 2014 AK Press

Partridge, Chiristopher "Alistair Crowley on Drugs"2021 uploaded by Misael Hernandez

• 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

Rudgley, Richard "The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Substances"2014 Macmillan Publishers

• Russell, Kirk "Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered" 1967 Arlington House

• Schlosser, Erich "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety" 2014 Penguin

• Sewell, Kenneth Clint Richmond "Red Star Rogue: The Untold Story of a Soviet Submarine's Nuclear Strike Attempt on the U.S. " 2006 Pocket Star

• Shirer, William "The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler" 2011 RosettaBooks

Shulgin, Alexander "PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story"1991 Transform Press

Shulgin, Alexander "The Nature of Drugs Vol. 1: History, Pharmacology, and Social Impact"2021 Transform Press

• Slater, Lauren "Blue Dreams: The Science and the Story of the Drugs that Changed Our Minds" 2019 Boston

Smith, Wolfgang "Cosmos and Transcendence: Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief"0

Smith, Wolfgang "Physics: A Science in Quest of an Ontology"2022

St John, Graham "Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT"2021

• 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

Szasz, Thomas "Interview With Thomas Szasz: by Randall C. Wyatt"0

• Szasz, Thomas "Our Right to Drugs: The case for a free market" 1992 Praeger

• Tyler, George R. "Billionaire Democracy: The Hijacking of the American Political System" 2016 Pegasus Books

• Watts, Alan "The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness" 1965 Vintage

Wedel, Janine "Unaccountable: How the Establishment Corrupted Our Finances, Freedom and Politics and Created an Outsider Class"2014 Pegasus Books

Weil, Andrew "From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs"2004 Open Road Integrated Media

• 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.