in response to the misguided billboard campaign of Cindy DeMaio and Rachel's Angels
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
April 14, 2025
was bouncing along on poorly maintained I-295 through Philadelphia, yesterday, being force-fed enormous billboards hawking the benefits of alcohol, chiropractors, and lawyers. This was jarring enough from multiple perspectives and I resolved never to take that route again from Jersey to Virginia, even if it was toll-free. But just when I had made my peace with the existing irritations, another one arose which was more jarring than the rest, more jarring than any of the many linear asphalt cracks or poorly patched potholes on my penny-pinching route. For I began encountering a series of in-your-face billboards plastered with the portraits of smiling white young people and bearing the words "Fentanyl kills" and "Fentanyl steals loved ones."
"Oh, really?" I thought to myself. "An inanimate object does all that? By such logic, we could say that alcohol not only kills, but it massacres. Alcohol, after all, kills 178,000 a year according to the CDC, and yet liquor consumption is glorified with pride of place on many a nearby billboard."
These anti-Fentanyl signs were infuriating to me, because they promote the attitude that powers the War on Drugs, the belief that substances can be bad in and of themselves without regard to context of use. That is simply a superstition. Saying "Fentanyl kills" is just like saying "Fire bad!" It is a childish way of looking at the world. It is all about demonizing a thing by thinking only of its downsides and never of its upsides.
So as I bounced my way toward Maryland and the well-paved and commercial-free I-70 bypass near Washington, D.C., I resolved to write the organization responsible for those Fentanyl-bashing billboards when I arrived home and to kindly request that they change their tune. The organization in question turned out to be Rachel's Angels begun by Cindy DeMaio to honor her daughter and to ensure that her Fentanyl-related death was not in vain. While I condole Cindy for her loss, I am duty-bound to point out that her approach to fighting back is ill-advised and counterproductive in the extreme. Drug policy made Fentanyl a killer. Indeed, modern opiates exist thanks to the outlawing of opium, which was used peaceably at home until racist politicians decided to outlaw the drug that all ancient physicians had considered to be a panacea.
Open Letter to Rachel's Angels.
With all due respect, young people were not dying in the street from opiate use when opium was legal, before it was outlawed by racist politicians. Fentanyl only kills in the sense that cars kill or alcohol kills. They kill when people are uneducated and lack alternatives and receive product of unknown quality and quantity -- all of which problems are brought about by drug prohibition!
Prohibition is the problem. It outlaws many inherently non-addictive alternatives to opiates. Even opiates can be used safely and without addiction, although the media refuses to publish any examples of that fact and the Drug Warrior refuses to teach safe and non-addictive use!!! In fact, the White House, since the Nixon years, has helped censor sitcoms and other TV shows to conform to the drug-blaming ideology of the Drug Warrior, so that Americans will not even think that safe and non-addictive use is possible.
When we blame drugs rather than drug policy, we wage a Drug War that has revoked American liberties and destroyed the rule of law in Latin America. It has handed the presidency to Donald Trump by jailing over a million Blacks for gun violence directly brought about by drug prohibition itself. Guns first entered the hood thanks to liquor and drug prohibition.
Drug prohibition has also given racist police officers carte blanche to be as evil as they want to be. The racist officers know this. That's why the police who killed George Floyd were shouting, "Just say no to drugs!" Meanwhile, minority kids die every day from drive-by shootings caused by drug prohibition.
There are positive uses even for cyanide, even for Fentanyl. When we outlaw substances based on misuse, we deny people godsend medicine, like the children in hospice in India where morphine is difficult to find and use thanks to U.S.-inspired fears about opiate use.
The Hindu religion was inspired by drug use. Drugs are not the problem. Bad drug laws and a lack of education are the problems.
Every life is sacred, but that includes the lives of minorities like 15-year-old Niomi Russell, who was killed by a drive-by shooting in D.C. in 2024 thanks to drug prohibition, and that includes the 60,000 Mexicans who have been "disappeared" over the last two decades thanks to the War on Drugs.
America's attitudes and laws are the problem, not drugs. We have got to stop playing "whack-a-mole" with inanimate substances like Fentanyl, PCP, Ice, etc., and address the real problems: a lack of education, a lack of alternatives, and a lack of government regulation of drug supply.
Sincerely Yours
PS 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life on antidepressants. The antidepressant that I am on is harder to kick than heroin. The medical peddlers who sold me that "junk" never told me that it would make me a patient for life -- and yet no one is complaining on MY behalf. To the contrary, they are telling me to "just take your meds."
PPS Opiates cause less cravings than nicotine. See Andrew Weil's book, "From Chocolate to Morphine."
The Drug War is all about fearmongering rather than solving problems. It causes suicides by outlawing all drugs that could inspire and elate without causing addiction. It causes unnecessary shock therapy for the depressed, by outlawing all alternatives. It denies godsend meds to the autistic, meds that could help them feel compassion for others!
For these reasons and many more, I urge you to start demanding education and a regulated drug supply instead of launching a war on an inanimate substance like Fentanyl.
Fearmongering
Saying things like "Fentanyl kills!" makes just as much sense as saying "Fire bad!"
The drug war is the ultimate case of fearmongering. And yet academics and historians fail to recognize it as such. They will protest eloquently against the outrages of the witch hunts of yore, but they are blind to the witch hunts of the present. What is a drug dealer but a modern service magician, someone who sells psychoactive medicine designed to effect personal ends for the user? They are simply providing an alternative to materialistic medicine, which ignores common sense and so ignores the glaringly obvious value of such substances.
Rather than protesting prohibition as a crackdown on academic freedom, today's scientists are collaborating with the drug war by promoting shock therapy and SSRIs, thereby profiting from the monopoly that the drug war gives them in selling mind and mood medicine.
Talking about being in denial: drug warriors blame all of the problems that they cause on "drugs" and then insist that the entire WORLD accept their jaundiced view of the natural bounty that God himself told us was good.
We've all been taught since grade school that human beings cannot use psychoactive medicines wisely. That is just a big fat lie. It's criminal to keep substances illegal that can awaken the mind and remind us of our full potential in life.
There are a potentially vast number of non-addictive drugs that could be used strategically in therapy. They elate and "free the tongue" to help talk therapy really work. Even "addictive" drugs can be used non-addictively, prohibitionist propaganda notwithstanding.
Capitalism requires disease-mongering -- and disease-mongering requires the suppression of medicines that work holistically, that work by improving mood and elating the individual AND THEREFORE improving their health overall.
America is insane: it makes liquor officially legal and then outlaws all the drugs that could help prevent and cure alcoholism.
When folks die in horse-related accidents, we need to be asking: who sold the victim the horse? We've got to crack down on folks who peddle this junk -- and ban books like Black Beauty that glamorize horse use.
When Americans "obtain their majority" and wish to partake of drugs safely, they should be paired with older adults who have done just that. Instead, we introduce them to "drug abusers" in prerecorded morality plays to reinforce our biased notions that drug use is wrong.
Drug use is judged by different standards than any other risky activity in the western world. One death can lead to outrage, even though that death might be statistically insignificant.
"My faith votes and strives to outlaw religions that use substances of which politicians disapprove."
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, Fentanyl does not steal loved ones: Drug Laws Do: in response to the misguided billboard campaign of Cindy DeMaio and Rachel's Angels, published on April 14, 2025 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)
was bouncing along on poorly maintained I-295 through Philadelphia, yesterday, being force-fed enormous billboards hawking the benefits of alcohol, chiropractors, and lawyers. This was jarring enough from multiple perspectives and I resolved never to take that route again from Jersey to Virginia, even if it was toll-free. But just when I had made my peace with the existing irritations, another one arose which was more jarring than the rest, more jarring than any of the many linear asphalt cracks or poorly patched potholes on my penny-pinching route. For I began encountering a series of in-your-face billboards plastered with the portraits of smiling white young people and bearing the words "Fentanyl kills" and "Fentanyl steals loved ones." 
You have been reading an article entitled, Fentanyl does not steal loved ones: Drug Laws Do: in response to the misguided billboard campaign of Cindy DeMaio and Rachel's Angels, published on April 14, 2025 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)
