by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
March 26, 2021
here is no drug problem in America. There never has been. However there is a HUGE problem with how America deals with drugs. Instead of learning about them and teaching Americans how to use them wisely and for good purposes -- such as religious inspiration, creativity and increased mental focus, the way that "drugs" have been used since caveman days -- we demonize such substances and blame every possible social problem on them. Why? Because if we were to acknowledge that drugs aren't a real problem, we'd have to look at the real causes of our problems with drugs: namely, modern cynicism, unfettered capitalism, and America's scientistic expectation that all "drugs" should act like aspirin, that we should simply take them and wait placidly for some specific effect, with no effort on our part to make ourselves open to the drug-aided inspiration and epiphany that we're expecting. And of course when this naive attitude inevitably leads to "bad trips," we blame the substance rather than our inability to use it wisely.
And so American politicians blame "drugs" for all of America's problems, thereby shooting the messenger that's trying to tell us that Americans are immature and improperly educated. Other nations have been deeply awed by psychoactive substances to the point of creating entire religions around them and the hints of cosmic truth that their ingestion provides. But Americans titter like grade-schoolers at such substances and imagine ways of harnessing them to achieve carnal self-fulfillment. At least that's the image that the Drug Warriors seek to perpetuate, desperate as they are to hide the fact that so-called "drugs" have ever been used for anything but evil. And so we see nothing but horrifying depictions of hedonist "drug use" on television, drug "fiends" shooting up with dirty needles and scumbag thugs "snorting blow" as loudly as they possibly can.
Check out the unintentionally hilarious scene in the drug-war propaganda film called "Crisis" from 2021, wherein Jake, the self-righteous undercover DEA agent, is shuttling a nefarious "drug dealer" (is there any other kind?) across town in an unmarked police car as the latter horrible "druggie" snorts like a disgruntled water buffalo, frequently swiping his forefinger under his nose, just in case the audio clues are insufficient to convince the viewer that the bad guy in question has been "doing" that evil drug par excellence called cocaine. (Oh, the shameless hussy!) The producers do everything but insert a lower-third graphic reading "rotten evil druggie" with an arrow pointing upward at the offender's constantly wriggling proboscis. One thinks for a moment that the indignant Christian Science good guy in the driver's seat is going to lose his cool, come out from undercover and shout, "Oh, hell no," as he slams on the brakes and begins to pummel his passenger for daring to flaunt his terrible evil drug use in such a noisy and plebeian fashion, like an open invitation for SWAT teams to start raiding his home at once and start kicking his grandmother in the face. ("And here's another kick for raising that scumbag son of yours!")
Meanwhile we censor our history books to expunge the fact that folks like Marco Polo, Benjamin Franklin, and Marcus Aurelius used opium; that MesoAmericans employed coca and psychedelics in their religious rituals, and above all the fact that Sigmund Freud himself considered cocaine to be a godsend cure for his depression.
America is in such deep denial about its childish inability to handle "drugs" that it has forced the entire world to adopt its own jaundiced attitude about the plant medicine that grows unbidden around us. Desperate to ignore the fact that there's a problem with our own attitudes toward psychoactive substances, we not only demonize such substances but we insist that the entire world do the same, on penalty of our Army marching into their countries unbidden to burn the plants and fungi that we have turned into scapegoats for our own social problems. Nor do corrupt politicians have the least incentive to change this status quo, since they know that drug laws can be used like poll taxes to suppress voting by minorities simply by targeting them with "drug-related" felonies in order to remove them from the voting rolls -- plus, we can invade countries at will, merely by associating its leadership in any way with the sale of non-western medicine. Just the excuse that an imperialist government needs to carry on business as usual despite today's ostensible anti-colonial sentiment.
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Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs
Immanuel Kant wrote that scientists are scornful about metaphysics yet they rely on it themselves without realizing it. This is a case in point, for the idea that euphoria and visions are unhelpful in life is a metaphysical viewpoint, not a scientific one.
Psychiatrists never acknowledge the biggest downside to modern antidepressants: the fact that they turn you into a patient for life. That's demoralizing, especially since the best drugs for depression are outlawed by the government.
The DEA conceives of "drugs" as only justifiable in some time-honored ritual format, but since when are bureaucrats experts on religion? I believe, with the Vedic people and William James, in the importance of altered states. To outlaw such states is to outlaw my religion.
We need a few brave folk to "act up" by shouting "It's the drug war!" whenever folks are discussing Mexican violence or inner city shootings. The media treat both topics as if the violence is inexplicable! We can't learn from mistakes if we're in denial.
The best step we could take in harm reduction is re-legalizing everything and starting to teach safe use. Spend the DEA's billions on "go" teams that would descend on locations where drugs are being used stupidly -- not to arrest, but to educate.
Americans believe scientists when they say that drugs like MDMA are not proven effective. That's false. They are super effective and obviously so. It's just that science holds entheogenic medicines to the standards of reductive materialism. That's unfair and inappropriate.
Peyote advocates should be drug legalization advocates. Otherwise, they're involved in special pleading which is bound to result in absurd laws, such as "Plant A can be used in a religion but not plant B," or "Person A can belong to such a religion but person B cannot."
What is the end game of the drug warrior? A world in which no one wants drugs? That's not science. It's the drug-hating religion of Christian Science. You know, the American religion that outsources its Inquisition to drug-testing labs.
The Cabinet of Caligari ('62) ends with a shameless display of psychiatric triumphalism. Happy shock therapy patients waltz freely about a mansion in which the "sick" protagonist has just been "cured" by tranquilizers and psychoanalysis. Did Robert Bloch believe his own script?
Scientists are responsible for endless incarcerations in America. Why? Because they fail to denounce the DEA lie that psychoactive substances have no positive medical uses. This is so obviously wrong that only an academic in an Ivory Tower could believe it.
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The latest hits from Drug War Records, featuring Freddie and the Fearmongers!
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Drugs: the great American scapegoat: for all social ills, published on March 26, 2021 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
