Homepage of the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass
blog icon orange rss icon with stylized radio waves bird icon for twitter bird icon for twitter substack icon


back navigation arrow forward navigation arrow


El Chapo Crappo

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

July 7, 2021



The 1932 movie "Scarface" starts with on-screen text calling for a crackdown on armed gangs in America. There is no mention of the fact that a decade's worth of Prohibition had created those gangs in the first place.

It as if Americans saw the violence as a business opportunity for Hollywood, not a national scourge caused by a disastrous drug policy.

Apropos...

Just found a review of the book "El Chapo: The Untold Story of the World's Most Notorious Drug Lord" on the Small Wars Journal Website, reviewer Malcolm Beith.

Of course, the title says it all: just as the Drug War demonizes plant medicines, it must also demonize those who dare to sell them. Now, I wouldn't be surprised if El Chapo himself was morally challenged (to put it mildly), but that is beside the point. The US CREATED the El Chapo's of the world by its colonialist war on plant medicines that are not popular in the west. Think of it: you criminalize plants worldwide that have been used responsibly by other cultures for millennia, and then you are shocked that there's violent pushback? The real villains are Richard Nixon and every racist US politician who insists that it makes sense to demonize plant medicine instead of studying it to learn how to ensure the safest possible use.

At any rate: here is the comment that I posted beneath Malcolm Beth's review of "El Chapo":

The Real Villain is the United States of America and its racist Drug War, which dictates to the world what plant medicines it can use -- thus establishing Christian Science as a world religion and violating natural law. The US is the colonialist bad guy who tells other countries to outlaw plant medicines that have been used responsibly by other cultures for millennia, so that the world can be safe for the two most deadly drugs of all: alcohol and tobacco. And when Drug Warriors aren't busy invading other countries on the pretext of enforcing these colonialist drug laws, they're reading books like "El Chapo" to get a thrill out of all the guns and violence that the Drug War itself brings into the world. Someday the world will wake up and realize that the Drug War itself is causing all the problems it purports to solve. Then we will exchange the Drug Enforcement Agency for the Drug Education Agency and start learning how to use plant medicines safely rather than to demonize them like so many fanatical Christian Scientists.


Author's Follow-up: July 11, 2022





I came close to dissing Anthony Blair of The Sun this morning for his sensational article on the "Golden Age of Cocaine," which struck me at first sight as drug-war agitprop. In fact, I even sent an angry Tweet (which I soon deleted) -- before I read the final paragraph or so, in which the comments by journalist and author Toby Muse somewhat appeased my angst about the article in question. Still, the overall effect of the article was to turn the Drug War into tabloid entertainment, thereby obscuring the fact that the "clans" about which we are reading were created out of whole cloth by substance prohibition. And why? So that the west could outlaw a substance that the Incas considered to be a god and that authors like HG Wells and Jules Verne considered to be indispensable to their success as authors.

To my relief (and embarrassment), Toby does admit at the end of this article that prohibition has been a colossal failure, with far more cocaine use going on today than Richard Nixon ever dreamt of 50 years ago. But Toby is still biased by Drug War ideology, for he suggests that countries need to do a better job in reducing the demand for such substances as cocaine 1 2 . But that is wrong, for there is a real reason why folks want to use substances like the coca plant and other psychoactive meds: they want to transcend the limitations of the "sober" self, so to speak. Humanity has always sought to do that. Indeed, the psychoactive substances that we demonize today (like coca) have inspired entire religions. So it is a fool's task (not to mention the task of a despot) to try to get humanity to give up on the desire for self-transcendence and personal improvement.

The answer to the supposed "drug problem" (which the drug-war itself has created and turned into a scapegoat for all social problems) is to educate people about psychoactive medicines, not to demonize those medicines and incarcerate those who dare to use them in their search for personal or spiritual transcendence. For let's remember that the caveman strategy of America's Office of National Drug Control Policy is to REFUSE TO EVEN CONSIDER any positive uses for criminalized substances. In other words, the ONDCP is a state instrument of Drug War propaganda, one dedicated to keeping the world ignorant about meds that have inspired entire religions.

Time for education, not criminalization; facts, not fear.

Author's Follow-up: April 1, 2023


Americans would not have much entertainment if it were not for drug prohibition. Most cops shows would not exist, because the police would run out of heads to crack. We need prohibition to incentivize exciting violence. It's kind of funny, when you think how Drug Warriors say it's wrong to glorify drugs3, but they have no problem in glorifying the violence that drug prohibition creates. In fact, most movies 4 5 and cops shows make it seem like you're a nobody if you do not pack heat.



?205?
?297?
?31?
?325?
?332?









Notes:

1: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
2: “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)
3: Glorifying Beneficial Drug Use DWP (up)
4: Glenn Close but no cigar DWP (up)
5: Running with the torture loving DEA DWP (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




Another problem with MindMed's LSD: every time I look it up on Google, I get a mess of links about the stock market. The drug is apparently a godsend for investors. They want to profit from LSD by neutering it and making it politically correct: no inspiration, no euphoria.

Someone tweeted that fears about a Christian Science theocracy are "baseless." Tell that to my uncle who was lobotomized because they outlawed meds that could cheer him up -- tell that to myself, a chronic depressive who could be cheered up in an instant with outlawed meds.

If MAPS wants to make progress with MDMA they should start "calling out" the FDA for judging holistic medicines by materialist standards, which means ignoring all glaringly obvious benefits.

Outlawing substances like laughing gas and MDMA makes no more sense than outlawing fire.

Someday, the First Lady or Man will tell kids to "just say no to prohibition." Kids who refuse will be required to watch hours' worth of films depicting gun violence, banned religions, civil wars, and adults committing suicide for want of medicine that grows at their very feet.

I'm told antidepressant withdrawal is fine because it doesn't cause cravings. Why is it better to feel like hell than to have a craving? In any case, cravings are caused by prohibition. A sane world could also end cravings with the help of other drugs.

The outlawing of coca and opium is a crime against humanity.

People magazine should be fighting for justice on behalf of the thousands of American young people who are dying on the streets because of the drug war.

M. Pollan says "not so fast" when it comes to drug re-legalization. I say FAST? I've gone a whole lifetime w/o access to Mother Nature's plants. How can a botanist approve of that? Answer: By ignoring all legalization stakeholders except for the kids whom we refuse to educate.

Even fans of sacred medicine have been brainwashed to believe that we do not know if such drugs "really" work: they want microscopic proof. But that's a western bias, used strategically by drug warriors to make the psychotropic drug approval process as glacial as possible.


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






back navigation arrow forward navigation arrow
Book Cover

Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

This book features 150 annotated images, designed to force brainwashed Americans to confront the fact that drug prohibition is wrong. Here is what author Richard Parrish II says of the book's compiler: "The drug prohibition philosopher provides first-hand, principled, persuasive, and insightful arguments against the current drug prohibition regime..."

Purchase Your Copy
Book Cover

Drama lovers: collect full-cast recordings of classic plays

In my spare time, when I am not shaming drug warriors for their heartless drug policies, I create full-cast recordings of classic plays using the latest in synthetic voices licensed by the Natural Reader company. Snag your copy of my production of Volpone, by Ben Jonson... and follow me on Payhip for more where that came from, including classics like The Post Office, The Double Dealer and The Inspector General. -- Yours in all-too-justified outrage, the Drug War Philosopher @ abolishthedea.com.

Purchase Your Copy



No cookies, no ads paid for by amoral and immoral billionaires (or trillionaires).


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.


Copyright 2026, Brian Ballard Quass Contact: quass@quass.com

tombstone for American Democracy, 1776-2024, RIP (up)