Drug Warriors in Outer Space

Homepage of the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass

Drug Warriors in Outer Space

The world's first science-fiction satire of drug prohibition

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher (Substack version)

September 10, 2026

NEIL: That's one small step for a man... one giant leap for the United States Department of Justice.

ANNOUNCER: This is one for the record books, folks. Neil Headstrong has just made world history as the first DEA Agent to set foot on Proxima Centauri b.

HOUSTON: Telemetry go, Neil. You're looking good.

NEIL: Yeah, roger that, Houston. I'm going to have a quick look-about, kids.

[signal scrambles]

ANNOUNCER: Oh, dear. We've just lost the signal. Well, these things do happen when you're trying to communicate over a distance of 4.2 light-years.

ANNOUNCER 2: Yeah. Incidentally, Bob, how does that work?

ANNOUNCER: What do you mean?

ANNOUNCER 2: How can these guys be communicating in real-time when they're over four light-years away from each other?

ANNOUNCER: It's the magic of AI, Ben. Algorithms predict the most probable response of our astronauts based on the most probable outcome of their voyage given all known data.

ANNOUNCER 2: In that case, it's a good job that we're hearing anything at all from the astronauts. It means that the algorithms have computed that they will still be alive in four years.

[signal scrambles]

ANNOUNCER: Oh, shh! They're back.

NEIL: Yeah, Houston, we've got a problem, and you can quote me on that.

HOUSTON: How's that, Neil?

NEIL: The flora is so lush here and full of variety....

ANNOUNCER (hushed voice): For those who have just joined us, we're listening to the probable voice of Neil Headstrong, coming to us live, albeit from four years in the future, from Proxima Cenaturi b, the closest habitable planet to the Earth.

NEIL: Yeah, Houston, we're going to have to call out the bioessayists on this one. This verdant flora can only mean one thing: that the place is crawling with psychoactive substances that could have all sorts of uses on the healing front, psychologically and religiously speaking.

[signal scrambles]

ANNOUNCER: Neil now calling for his "fiddlers three," as they are lovingly known by their NASA colleagues, the first bioessayists in outer space. Let's see, I have their names here somewhere. Ah, yes, here it is: It looks like the names are... Manny, Moe... Yes, that's it: Manny, Moe and Jack.

ANNOUNCER 2: Manny, Moe and Jack? I thought their names were Moe, Larry and Curly. All right, who's the clown that's been messing with my background notes?

ANNOUNCER: These guys are DEA contractors whose job is to ingest, smoke or otherwise consume the various psychoactive substances encountered on Proxima Centauri b with a view toward determining if their use could be of any benefit whatsoever to adults back here on Terra Firma.

ANNOUNCER 2: Oh, that's nice. So they're going to make sure that the folks back home can benefit from godsend medicines from outer space! How thoughtful!

ANNOUNCER: No, Ben. The plan is to outlaw all psychoactive substances on the planet that show any signs of utility for adult human beings whatsoever, lest they should fall into the hands of our poor vulnerable white suburban young people back home.

ANNOUNCER 2: What on earth?!

ANNOUNCER: Oh, come on, Ben, how could we NOT outlaw such substances? Just think of your kids, Ben, your kids!

ANNOUNCER 2: I don't have any kids.

ANNOUNCER: Well, then think of MY kids!

ANNOUNCER 2: Yeah, I'll think of your kids, Bob: I'll think of them every time I suffer unnecessarily because America has outlawed godsend medicines from outer space!

[signal scrambles]

ANNOUNCER: Shh! A new message is coming through.

NEIL: Groundhog I, calling for his Fiddlers Three.

[signal scrambles]

ANNOUNCER: Oh, that's interesting. The official code name for the bioessayists, collectively speaking, is indeed the Fiddlers Three.

ANNOUNCER 2: And apparently Neil has gone with the quaint, if perhaps somewhat prejudicial, appellation of Groundhog.

ANNOUNCER: What's wrong with Groundhog?

ANNOUNCER 2: We've just heard the voice of Neil Headstrong talking to Commander Buzz Light-year in the SWAT 7 command module.

ANNOUNCER: That's Buzz Collins, Ben.

ANNOUNCER 2: Oh, I'm sorry about that, Bob. Somebody has been messing with my background notes!

ANNOUNCER: Neil is calling for his team of bioessayists to join him on the surface of Proxima Centauri b, where they will be inhaling, snorting, eating and smoking the various psychoactive substances on the planet to see if they receive any benefits whatsoever from doing so.

ANNOUNCER 2: That's right, they have been charged with the task of flagging all psychoactive substances on the planet that could have any potential beneficial uses whatsoever for Homo sapiens on Planet Earth.

ANNOUNCER: So that they can outlaw those substances as quickly as possible, thereby saving the entire universe from unwanted dependency and god-awful drug use.

ANNOUNCER 2: Speaking of dependency, Bob, don't you take the dependence-causing Big Pharma antidepressant called Effexor every single day of your life?

ANNOUNCER: That's different, Ben, and you know it. I am thereby taking care of my mental health, not taking some lousy god-awful drug! Humph!

ANNOUNCER 2: (whispering) Dream on, Bob.

ANNOUNCER: What did you say, Ben?

ANNOUNCER 2: Uh... I said let's go hobnob.

ANNOUNCER: That's what I thought you said... Well, not that exactly, but... Oh, you know what I mean!

ANNOUNCER 2: While we're waiting for the Fiddlers Three to join Neil Headstrong on Planet Centauri b, let's take a break for an important message.

[commercial break]

WOMAN: People ask me, How can you be in favor of exterminating hippopotami? I take one look at my poor little white children and ask myself, How could I not?

ANNOUNCER: The hippopotamus is the world's most deadly animal. It kills up to 3,000 people every year. Tell your representative to support the Tainy-Dipschitz bill to exterminate hippopotami worldwide.

WOMAN: How could I not?

ANNOUNCER: This message brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.

ANNOUNCER 2: And now we take you back to Proxima Centauri b, where Neil Headstrong has just met up with his bioessayists -- Manny, Moe and Jack -- code name: The Fiddlers Three.

[signal scrambles]

NEIL: Manny, you and Moe take the high road over there and Jack and I will take the low road over here.

MANNY: And we'll be in seventh heaven before ye.

NEIL: Manny! Watch your mouth! Just imagine what message you are sending to our poor defenseless suburban white kids back home.

MANNY: Aye, I almost forgot. Hee, wee lads and lassies, just say nae to it. Wait, whaur is the bloody camera? Oh, right here. Just say nae to drugs, kids.

ALL: Just say no to drugs!

MANNY: Now then, let's find the good stuff.

NEIL: Manny!

MANNY: For operational purposes, I mean.

[signal scrambles]

ANNOUNCER: Fortunately, we do not have to wait for the crew to test the local flora. With the magic of AI, we can fast forward to the conclusions that they almost certainly drew from their exploration.

[signal scrambles]

MOE: Well, for starters, we've got to launch a universe-wide crackdown on a substance that I've labeled as Moe-7. It not only screwed my head on straight, cognitively speaking, but had I used it just one more time, I am convinced that I would have felt absolutely comfortable with my place in the universe.

MANNY: Oh, and we can't have that, now, can we?

MOE: Yes, indeed. Just one more toke on Moe-7, and I would have been good to go, psychologically speaking.

NEIL: Whew! That's a close call. Imagine if that had gotten into the hands of spiritual seekers back home. There's no telling what threat that might have posed to the Christian religion, and to us God-fearing Baptists in particular.

MANNY: Not to mention the wee lads and lassies.

NEIL: Oh, yes, and the kids!

MANN: Aye, the wee ones, God bless 'em!

MOE: How about you, Jack? Did you find any godsends?

JACK: Let's put it this way, Moe. I am no longer an atheist.

[gasping]

NEIL: That does it: this entire planet is on lockdown. Houston, we're going to need an entire interplanetary SWAT team forwarded to Proxima Centauri stat. This planet is simply bristling with substances that could be misused by white American young people.

HOUSTON: Roger that, Groundhog. Command is scrambling to comply.

[signal scrambles]

ANNOUNCER: And the plot thickens.

ANNOUNCER 2: You heard it here first, folks: Proxima Centauri, the nearest habitable planet to Earth, is on drug lockdown as DEA agents work to ensure that no adults whatsoever shall benefit in any way from the psychoactive flora that it contains.

ANNOUNCER: You say that like it's a bad thing, Ben. Just keep thinking of those poor defenseless white kids who could inadvertently get ahold of such substances and ruin their lives.

ANMNOUNCER 2: Oh, you mean in the same way that they might ruin their lives by inadvertently getting ahold of a gun and shooting themselves or their parents?

ANNOUNCER: All right, that's torn it. Do you want a piece of me, Ben?

ANNOUNCER 2: Oh, now you get upset, now that I'm treating your precious guns the same way that you always treat drugs?

ANNOUNCER: Heresy!

ANNOUNCER 2: Heresy? I'll show you heresy!

[clatter, screaming]

[old-fashioned movie projector grinds to a halt]

TEACHER: Would somebody open the blinds, please.

GIRL: I will!

TEACHER: What did you think about this example of the science-fiction genre, class?

BOY: I don't think it was very believable.

BOY 2: Me neither.

GIRL: Yeah.

TEACHER: Why not?

BOY: Because the media companies would never hire an announcer who would defend drug use out in the open like that.

TEACHER: Good point. Any other ideas? Yes, Clancy?

GIRL: And why would the DEA be sending agents out into space in the first place?

TEACHER: Well, I think that the author was trying to show the irony of our present attitude about drugs here on Planet Earth.

GIRL: Yeah. He's kind of like saying, "If we really believe that our attitude toward drugs is sensible, then the next logical step is to send DEA agents into space to ensure that the planets that we discover do not have any substances that could be misused by young people."

TEACHER: Right. And if they do contain such substances, then the DEA would have to grow its multibillion-dollar budget into the trillions so that it can track down evil drugs all over the universe and outlaw everything that could be misused by children.

BOY: Uh... right. I liked it better when you just told us to say no to drugs. All this nuance bothers me.

TEACHER: Yes, indeed. Thinking is hard, isn't it, Billy?

[kids laugh]

PROFESSOR: I hope you enjoyed that little video presentation.

[moderate applause]

INSTRUCTOR: Now then, what do you think about the reaction of this fictional class to a fictional space mission?

MAN: I think that last kid has a point: keep it simple: we should just say no to drugs.

WOMAN: Were we watching two separate films? Surely, the point of this video presentation was that drug attitudes are insane.

[applause]

WOMAN: Thank you!

MAN: Yeah, the author was clearly using the rhetorical strategy of the reductio ad absurdum, showing us that if we really believe in our cramped and superstitious attitude about drugs, then logic would require us to take our fearmongering with us to other planets, indeed to the entire universe.

WOMAN: Yeah, and since doing so would be so patently silly, it follows that our attitude about drugs is patently silly.

[applause]

MAN: Whoo-whoo-whoo!

WOMAN: Yes!

INSTRUCTOR: Well, that's all the time we have today for Philosophy and Science Fiction 304. Next time, we will be discussing a new theory about reality. It tells us that we are actually all just actors, so to speak, in a video that is being watched by an advanced life form, you know, like those Star Trek aliens whose brains are so obviously overdeveloped that it's hard to look at them without either laughing or spewing.

[laughter]

[needle scratches record]

Volpon 2: Scribditch blek?

Hordash 7: Fizz! Blek scribditch.

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

The worst form of government is not communism, socialism or even unbridled capitalism. The worst form of government is a Christian Science Theocracy, in which the government controls how much you are allowed to think and feel in life.

William James knew that there were substances that could elate. However, it never occurred to him that we should use such substances to prevent suicide. It seems James was blinded to this possibility by his puritanical assumptions.

Almost every mainstream article about psychology and consciousness is nonsense these days because it ignores the way that drug prohibition has stymied our investigation of such subjects.

The FDA uses reductive materialism to justify and normalize the views of Cortes and Pizarro with respect to entheogenic medicine.

Prohibition is wrong root and branch. It seeks to justify the colonial disdain for indigenous healing practices through fearmongering.

Drug War propaganda is all about convincing us that we will never be able to use drugs wisely. But the drug warriors are not taking any chances: they're doing all they can to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It's almost impossible not to have a problem with drugs in a world in which the government is spending over $50 billion a year to render drug use problematic.

Even prohibition haters have their own list of drugs that they feel should be outlawed. They're missing the point. We should not drugs "up or down" any more than we should judge penicillin or aspirin in that way.

Drug warriors are too selfish and short-sighted to fight real problems, so they blame everything on drugs.

The drug war is a way for conservatives to keep America's eyes OFF the prize. The right-wing motto is, "Billions for law enforcement, but not one cent for social programs."

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

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Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

The Partnership for a Death Free America is a proud sponsor of The Drug War Philosopher website @ abolishthedea.com.

tombstone for American Democracy, 1776-2024, RIP

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Drug Warriors in Outer Space

The world's first science-fiction satire of drug prohibition

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

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