How the Drug War has turned the entire world into one big Christian Science theocracy
ome of us believe with the fictional Sherlock Holmes (and the very real HG Wells, Marcus Aurelius, and Benjamin Franklin) that improving and expanding the mind is a categorical imperative rather than a mortal sin. For us, the real sin is to fail to maximize one's potential in life. So where can we go to practice our religion, to be all that we can be, to "know ourselves" in the Platonic acceptation of that phrase? Surely we can vote with our feet and simply leave the Christian Science theocracies, wherein all the empowering substances from coca to opium are demonized rather than safely leveraged for the good of human beings and of humanity.
But not so. For so powerful is the propaganda of Drug War America, combined with the hidden biases of reductive materialism which scorn all non-quantifiable healing, that the vast majority of powerful psychoactive substances are illegal EVERYWHERE ON THE PLANET, from the North Pole to the South Pole, from Bogata to Beijing, this despite the fact that many of them grow at our very feet.
Surely, this status quo represents a crime against humanity, especially as it outlaws substances that could tame humanity's violence-prone heart and thus help us avoid the eventual nuclear annihilation toward which our species seems inevitably headed.
Then, for God's sake, speak up! If not on behalf of human potential and world peace, then on behalf of the many silent and unrecognized victims of Drug War ideology: the thousands of black Americans who die in inner cities every year thanks to drug-war prohibition, the dying children who go without godsend medicine in hospices, the victims of the ongoing civil war in Mexico that America creates and profits from in an unconscionable effort to keep boots on the ground south of the border -- or your own parents, who die in agony (by being "taken off of life support") because our Christian Science drug-war sensibilities will not allow us to give them morphine even on their death beds.
Brian Quass
You may ask, what is this Drug War propaganda that is so effective as to turn the entire planet into Christian Scientists with respect to psychoactive medicine?
Answers:
1) The propaganda of omission in the media, in which positive uses of criminalized substances are never mentioned in movies, TV shows or print.
2) The propaganda of omission in academia, in which positive uses of criminalized substances are never mentioned in drug-related research papers, with all such studies dealing only with abuse and misuse.
3) The propaganda of amnesia, in which we ignore historical incidents that clash with Drug War sensibilities, such as the psychedelic-fueled Eleusinian mysteries and the fact that the Vedic-Hindu religion was inspired by psychoactive plant medicine.
4) The propaganda of lies, in which groups like the Partnership for a Drug Free America tell us that the drugs which have inspired entire religions will actually "fry the brain" (whereas if any drugs fry the brain, they are the Big Pharma meds upon which 1 in 4 American women are chemically dependent for life!) The lies of the DEA, which, since 1973, has been telling us that drugs that have inspired entire religions somehow have no positive uses whatsoever (a blatant lie, insomuch as every drug on the planet has some positive use for someone, somewhere, at some time, as even the deadly Botox has positive uses, both in cosmetic surgery and in the treatment of spastic diseases like dysphonia).
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.
ome of us believe with the fictional Sherlock Holmes (and the very real HG Wells, Marcus Aurelius, and Benjamin Franklin) that improving and expanding the mind is a categorical imperative rather than a mortal sin. For us, the real sin is to fail to maximize one's potential in life. So where can we go to practice our religion, to be all that we can be, to "know ourselves" in the Platonic acceptation of that phrase? Surely we can vote with our feet and simply leave the Christian Science theocracies, wherein all the empowering substances from coca to opium are demonized rather than safely leveraged for the good of human beings and of humanity.
