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Drug War U.

Department of Drug War Studies

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

May 6, 2023



I'm still waiting for a university to take up my suggestion that they open up a Department of Drug War Studies. While I'm waiting, I thought I'd create a sample course schedule. I came up with more than a dozen classes without breaking a sweat, and there are still many topics I haven't covered: like how the Drug War censors scientists and authors, how it indoctrinates kids with the anti-scientific notion that Mother Nature's meds are evil (a viewpoint that God himself did not share); and how it militarizes police forces around the world and empowers dictators, including a self-proclaimed "Drug War Hitler" in the Philippines. But I hope I have ticked off some of the more important downsides of America's unprecedented war on godsend medicines -- or more accurately against those who would dare to use or sell them.



Professors



The hiring process for professors is in full swing. Candidates for tenure include: Dr. Carl Hart, Julian Buchanan PhD, Dawn Paley, Philip Jenkins, David Herzberg, Andrew Weil, William Richards and Daniel Pinchbeck.







Course Syllabus




DW 101. Drug War Lies. 3 Credits.






Review of the principal lies of the prohibitionists, including the anti-scientific claim that certain substances can have no positive uses for anyone, anywhere, ever. PREREQUISITE: common sense.


DW 102. The Outlawing of Philosophy. 3 Credits.






This course examines how prohibition criminalizes the use of the very substances that inspired the philosophy of William James, thereby outlawing the study of ultimate reality. PREREQUISITE: belief in academic freedom1.



DW 102. Cocaine: Demonized by Self-Interested Doctors. 3 Credits.






Sigmund Freud's REAL breakthrough was not psychoanalysis. That was just a benefit for academics and psychiatrists and counselors. His real breakthrough was that he found a cure for depression -- namely, cocaine -- which was hastily squashed by doctors who held its use to safety standards that we apply to no other substance on earth. (Cui bono, right? The doctors stood to lose trillions in the long run were cocaine to remain legal.) Who cared about the hundreds of millions of depressed around the world who could have lived productive, happy lives with the help of the divine plant of the Inca2? The drug had to be suppressed in the name of business and capitalism3.

Of course, no one asked the depressed what they thought about the drug. They say cocaine was toxic to 400 people back in the day4. What, are they statistically challenged? Aspirin kills 3,000 a year in the UK alone5 -- and 49,000 people commit suicide in the U.S. every year6, a fate that could have been avoided had we allowed them to use substances that could cheer them up in a trice. PREREQUISITE: A willingness to forget everything you ever thought about Sigmund Freud in this edited life of yours -- a life that has been edited by Drug War censorship, yea, even in academia7 8.



DW 103 The Drug War and the Psychiatric Pill Mill. 3 Credits.



Students learn the origins of the pill mill , which would not exist without the outlawing of almost all psychoactive competition. Special emphasis will be placed on the great pharmacological dystopia represented by this expensive and demoralizing paradigm, thanks to which 1 in 4 American women have been turned into Big Pharma 9 10 patients for life. PREREQUISITE: a belief that lives should be lived, not slept through.


DW 104 Drug War and Pain Management 3 Credits.


An investigation into how the Drug War puts politicians in charge of deciding how much pain relief a patient is allowed to have. Special emphasis will be placed on the fate of children undergoing surgery and/or in hospice, who must suffer merely because the doctors fear repercussions if they prescribe adequate pain relief. PREREQUISITE: A belief that government should not be in charge of doling out pain relief.


DW 201 The Drug War and Natural Law. 3 Credits.


Students will learn how the Drug War violates natural law by outlawing Mother Nature's bounty. Special emphasis will be placed on the DEA raid on Monticello in 1987 for the purpose of confiscating the poppy plants of Thomas Jefferson, as well as the Monticello 11 Foundation's failure to defend the legacy of Jefferson by allowing the raid in the first place. PREREQUISITE: a belief in the rights of the individual implicit in the American Declaration of Independence.

DW 202 Drug War Beneficiaries (AKA The Drug War: Cui Bono?) 3 Credits.



A survey of the many businesses and organizations that profit from substance prohibition, including the pharmaceutical industry, psychiatrists, corrections workers, and police forces. PREREQUISITE: a sincere desire to unmask self-interest in the body politic. (To learn how politicians profit from the Drug War, see DW 403 How Drug Laws Help Steal Elections for Conservatives)

DW 204 The Fallacy of Saving Junior. 3 Credits.


Many Drug Warriors tell us that prohibition will be worth it if it saves one child. This child, of course, is usually a white American, however. The fact that prohibition kills12 thousands of Blacks and Mexicans is not considered, nor the fact that the kind of substances being prohibited have inspired entire religions. The course will attempt to account for this hypocrisy with reference to racism, xenophobia, Machiavellian politics, drug-war brainwashing, and/or the deplorable state of public education, thanks to which rational deliberation is not exactly the forte of John Q Public. Finally, students will methodically rip to pieces the laughable presupposition that fearmongering (as opposed to a top-notch education) will protect poor widdle Johnny Whitebread in the first place, especially in light of the iron law of prohibition (which see the upcoming course on this topic) thanks to which drug dangers increase in proportion as drug laws get tougher. PREREQUISITE: A desire to see beyond the blinders placed on every American by Drug War brainwashing since they were grade schoolers and were first told to say no to the godsend medicines that God himself told us were good.

DW 205 The Unconstitutional Idiocy of 'Drug Free Zones'. 3 Credits.

Students will consider how the presence of Drug Free Zones around schools teaches children the superstitious notion that substances can be bad "in and of themselves," without reference to how or why or when or where they are used. The professor will then demonstrate how Catholic orthodoxy has always insisted that evil resides in people, not in things. This means that the Drug War mentality behind the signs is not simply anti-scientific, but it advances a religious viewpoint as well, albeit a jaundiced one, and is therefore a clear violation of the constitutionally mandated separation of Church and State, at least insofar as the school in question is operated with the help of government funding. PREREQUISITE: A desire to call those Christian Science zealots to account for indoctrinating our children in their drug-hating faith.

DW 252 The War on Drugs in Ancient Greece and Rome. 3 credits.

The psychedelic-fueled Eleusinian mysteries lasted almost 2,000 consecutive years and inspired the philosophy of men like Plato, Plutarch and Cicero13. It was banned in 392 CE by Emperor Theodosius I as a threat to Christianity. The class will explore the all-too-obvious parallels between this pagan-bashing emperor's edict and the drug prohibition of today. Special emphasis will be placed on the violation of religious freedom inherent in this religiously fueled criminalization of mind medicine. PREREQUISITE: A desire to restore religious freedom in America, and worldwide for that matter.


DW 301 Materialism and the Drug War. 3 Credits.


Students learn how prohibition bolsters a materialist understanding of the world by outlawing substances whose use conduces to a more holistic view of reality. Students will also learn how materialism 14 blinds researchers to godsend medicines, by demanding "real" (i.e. reductionist) "cures," and pooh-poohing the mere subjectively reported feelings of the substance user. It will be shown how this purblind focus resulted in the psychiatric pill mill 15 , by creating substances that mucked about with brain chemistry, creating the largest single outbreak of chemical dependency in the modern world. PREREQUISITE: the brains God gave you -- or at any rate, the brains that did not originate out of blind chance for no real reason whatsoever, as materialists would have it.

DW 302 The Naïve Psychology of the Drug War. 3 Credits.


In the age of the Drug War, psychologists downplay or ignore the power of anticipation and virtuous circles16. They have to, because otherwise they would see that ANY substance that elates and inspires has, by definition, a potential therapeutic role and is not, as the Drug Warrior claims, devoid of any positive uses whatsoever. Students will also see how the phenomenon of "choking" cries out, as it were, for the strategic use of uplifting drugs, with a goal of creating a virtuous circle for the afflicted individual. PREREQUISITE: a desire to wrench the godsend medicines out of the grasping hands of materialists.


DW 303 Addicted to Nonsense. 3 Credits.


Addiction is a political term in the age of the Drug War. This class shows how "addiction treatment" is based on a host of false assumptions and has the goal of both medicalizing and pathologizing the user's implicit protest against the stingy pharmacopoeia of Prohibition America. The professor will point out the affinity between modern addiction treatment and Christian Science, pointing out how addiction treatment today is basically an attempt to get the "addict" off all drugs, whereas the goal should be the self-actualization of the so-called addict. The professor will explain how the very concept of addict would not exist in a world in which all medicines were legal and we were taught how to use them safely and for maximum psychological and/or physical benefit. PREREQUISITE: The brains God gave you and that the Drug Warrior tries to deprive you of through constant indoctrination -- mainly by censoring all talk (in media and otherwise) about the POSITIVE uses of "drugs."


DW 304 Sigmund Freud and the Drug War. 3 Credits.


Freud17 did not treat his own depression with psychotherapy: he went for the real politik of cocaine 18 . No wonder, considering that psychotherapy leads its practitioners to ignore obvious treatments (like the intermittent use of medicines that elate and inform) and to push instead for a lengthy far-distant "cure" based on a highly speculative theory about primordial urges, combined with the dubious claim that merely understanding those urges will prove therapeutic.

DW 344 Objective News Coverage and the Drug War. 3 Credits.


This course is targeted at journalists but is open to all students. The professor will draw attention to the anthropomorphic nature of modern news coverage about drugs (which we're told are "killers" and "scourges"), reminding the student that psychoactive substances are inanimate and that good and evil reside in human beings and their actions, not in "drugs." Emphasis will be placed on how today's superstitious reportage diverts public attention from the real killer: namely, prohibition, which, in this century alone, has killed thousands of African-American kids, resulted in over 100,000 deaths in Mexico, and destroyed the rule of law in Central America. PREREQUISITE: At least a grain of common sense.


DW 401 12-Step Programs as Christian Science Indoctrination. 3 Credits.


The goal of 12-step programs is to enforce a hypocritically defined sobriety, based on the unspoken assumption that Mother Nature's psychoactive pharmacy is evil and should not be employed. This, however, is a religious judgment insofar as God himself said otherwise in Genesis. Students will see how the requirement of embracing a "higher power" and shunning "drugs" represents a Christian Science agenda, not some logical protocol that suggests itself naturally to an unbiased mind.


DW 402 Drug War as a War against kids and world peace 3 Credits.


As utopian as it will sound in the age of a Drug War, the most plausible way of ensuring world peace and preventing school shootings is to popularize the use of empathogens, substances (like MDMA 19 and shrooms) that help folks feel compassion toward their fellow human beings. Students will analyze the fanaticism that makes most Drug Warriors prefer prohibition to the safety of their kids and the longevity of the human race.

DW 403 How the Drug War Steals Elections for Conservatives. 3 Credits.


A review of how drug laws resulted in the election of Donald Trump by removing millions of Blacks from the voting rolls.


DW 404 Drug War? What Drug War? 3 Credits.


Thousands of Blacks are killed every year in American inner cities thanks to gun violence 20 , most of which, as Ann Heather Thompson wrote, would not exist without the Drug War. And yet most media coverage of inner-city violence today never mentions the Drug War. Students will examine the motives and presuppositions behind this dereliction of duty on the part of the modern media. In particular, class will discuss Lisa Ling's CNN documentary about Chicago gun violence 21 , in which she never even mentions the War on Drugs. No, not once. She mentions "drugs" only a couple of times and in such a way as to suggest that she embraces the usual Drug War narrative about those substances being evil in and of themselves.

DW 405 Pissed Off about Drug Testing. 3 Credits.


Students will examine drug testing 22 as the extrajudicial enforcement of the drug-hating precepts of Mary Baker Eddy, noting that such testing rarely punishes anyone for impairment, but simply for their previous use of substances that have inspired entire religions in the past and have been used by other cultures for millennia. Special emphasis will be placed on the spiteful sneakiness of this practice, which can deny a citizen the right to earn a living in the United States, all without so much as even charging him or her with a crime. Students will analyze the Drug War as an end run around constitutional protections and a violation of the Natural Law upon which Thomas Jefferson founded America. PREREQUISITE: common sense and a desire for the re-establishment of due process and reasonable search in America, not to mention the outlawing of a form of cruel and unusual punishment which denies Americans the right to feed their families, all without formal charges or a trial.

?253?

Labs




DW 401-L DMT Testing 3 Credits.


Students will ingest DMT during the first part of the lab. Then they will write a detailed description of their experience along with thoughts relevant to the probable ontological status of the phenomena encountered. Students will then discuss the potential meanings of the DMT experience as a group, bearing in mind the observation of William James that: "No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded." REQUIRED TEXTS: DMT Trip Reports - Experience What It's Like Taking 5 Meo Dimethyltrptamine by Alex Gibbons and The Variety of Religious Experience by William James.

Location: Alexander Shulgin lab


Required texts














Notes for essay entitled Drug War U.: Department of Drug War Studies:

1: Coverup on Campus DWP (up)
2: Scribd.com: Coca: Divine Plant of the Incas Mortimer MD, W. Golden, Ronin Publishing, Berkeley, California, 2017 (up)
3: What the drug war tells us about American capitalism DWP (up)
4: Cocaine is a Blessing, not a Curse DWP (up)
5: “Daily Aspirin Linked To More Than 3,000 Deaths Per Year, Scientists Warn.” 2017. HuffPost UK. June 14, 2017. https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/daily-aspirin-causes-more-than-3000-deaths-per-year-scientists-warn_uk_593fb481e4b0b13f2c6daa10. (up)
6: National Institute of Mental Health. 2025. “Suicide.” National Institute of Mental Health. March 2025. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide. (up)
7: “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)
8: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
9: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
10: LaMattina, John. n.d. “Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of the FDA’s Drug Division Budget?” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2022/09/22/why-is-biopharma-paying-75-of-the-fdas-drug-division-budget/. (up)
11: The Dark Side of the Monticello Foundation DWP (up)
12: Prohibition's Death Toll: Alcohol's Deadly Legacy (up)
13: The Eleusinian Mysteries: A Gateway to the Afterlife in Greek Beliefs (up)
14: How materialists lend a veneer of science to the lies of the drug warriors DWP (up)
15: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
16: How psychologists gaslight us about beneficial drug use DWP (up)
17: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
18: “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)
19: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
20: Firearm Violence in the United States Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Johns Hopkins University (up)
21: Firearm Violence in the United States Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Johns Hopkins University (up)
22: Drug Testing and the Christian Science Inquisition DWP (up)
23: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)
24: McKenna, Terence. 2026. “History Ends in Green.” The Library. 2026. https://www.organism.earth/library/document/history-ends-in-green. (up)
25: What the drug war tells us about American capitalism DWP (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




"The Harrison [Narcotics] Act made the drug peddler, and the drug peddler makes drug addicts.” --Robert A. Schless, 1925.

When scientists refuse to report positive uses for drugs, they are not motivated by power lust, they are motivated by philosophical (non-empirical) notions about what counts as "the good life." This is why it's wrong to say that the drug war is JUST about power.

The Drug War treats doctors like potential criminals and it treats the rest of us like children. Prohibition does not end drug risks: it just outsources them to minorities and other vulnerable populations.

Wade Davis wrote in Rolling Stone that cocaine was outlawed because 400 people consumed toxic doses worldwide. SO WHAT?! 178,000 people die from alcohol every year in America alone.

"Arrest made in Matthew Perry death." Oh, yeah? Did they arrest the drug warriors who prioritized propaganda over education?

FDA drug approval is a farce when it comes to psychoactive medicine. The FDA ignores all the obvious benefits and pretends that to prove efficacy, they need "scientific" evidence. That's scientism, not science.

I have dissed MindMed's new LSD "breakthrough drug" for philosophical reasons. But we can at least hope that the approval of such a "de-fanged" LSD will prove to be a step in the slow, zigzag path toward re-legalization.

The scheduling system is a huge lie designed to give an aura of "science" to America's colonialist disdain for indigenous medicines, from opium, to coca, to shrooms.

The idea that "drugs" have no medical benefits is not science, it is philosophy, and bad philosophy at that. It is based on the idea that benefits must be molecularly demonstratable and not created from mere knock-on psychological effects of drug use, time-honored tho' they be.

That's why I created the satirical Partnership for a Death Free America. It demonstrates clearly that drug warriors aren't worried about our health, otherwise they'd outlaw shopping carts, etc. The question then becomes: what are they REALLY afraid of? Answer: Free thinkers.


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






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