Five Ways that the drug war causes the problems that it claims to solve
The Drug War creates an enormous interest in "drugs" (aka Mother Nature's psychoactive plant medicines) by constantly harping on them as the root of all evil, in a way that no other society has ever done since the beginning of time.
The Drug War creates drug cartels in the same way that liquor prohibition created the mob.
The Drug War outlaws thousands of godsend psychoactive plant medicines that are far less addictive than Big Pharma meds, while incentivizing unscrupulous black marketeers to sell the most addictive synthetic substances possible.
The Drug War creates violence: including the Mexican Drug War that killed 85 Mexican civilians per day in 2018.
The Drug War guarantees impurity of drug supplies, and not just because unscrupulous dealers "cut" their product with toxic substances either: the DEA itself deliberately poisoned marijuana crops in the 1980s by spraying them with paraquat, a weed killer that has since been shown to cause Parkinson's Disease.
Conclusion: "drugs" are the modern boogeyman and scapegoat: it is what we talk about when we want to demonize bad behavior without having to discuss the social problems that created it, such as lack of education, not simply about drugs but about common sense and personal responsibility. It is also what we talk about when we want to remove a population from the voting rolls by tossing them in jail and removing their voting rights. The Drug War is thus simply a political ploy which helps the hypocritical beer-swilling Drug Warrior steal elections in order to keep the mendacious and anti-scientific Drug War mentality in full force. Why? In order to benefit the special interests who profit from it: including Big Pharma, the American Psychiatric Association, Big Liquor, Law Enforcement, and the Corrections Industry.
Author's Follow-up: October 14, 2022
And these five points only scratch the surface. The Drug War's ideology of substance demonization has forced children in hospice to experience unnecessary pain because some hospitals refuse to administer morphine, for the unscientific reason that they think the drug is evil in and of itself. Yes, the Drug Warrior would rather have children suffer than to re-legalize plant medicine. And then there are the depressed who have to undergo shock therapy because we have outlawed all the godsend medicines that might have helped them. In fact, the truth is exactly opposite from the lies of the Partnership for a Drug Free America. It is the Drug War that literally fries brains thanks to the ECT that it makes necessary by outlawing medical godsends. The Drug Warrior would rather have school shootings and nuclear war than to legalize godsend medicine. MDMA could turn the world peaceful, but the Drug Warrior does not want peace. Ecstasy brought peace and love to the multi-ethnic dance floor in 1990s Britain, but Drug Warriors cracked down on the safe drug "E," all because of a handful of deaths which were caused by the Drug Warriors refusal to develop safe use guidelines. The result? The dance floor devolved into liquor-fueled violence and rave safety had to be enforced by special forces troops!
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.
And these five points only scratch the surface. The Drug War's ideology of substance demonization has forced children in hospice to experience unnecessary pain because some hospitals refuse to administer morphine, for the unscientific reason that they think the drug is evil in and of itself. Yes, the Drug Warrior would rather have children suffer than to re-legalize plant medicine. And then there are the depressed who have to undergo shock therapy because we have outlawed all the godsend medicines that might have helped them. In fact, the truth is exactly opposite from the lies of the Partnership for a Drug Free America. It is the Drug War that literally fries brains thanks to the ECT that it makes necessary by outlawing medical godsends. The Drug Warrior would rather have school shootings and nuclear war than to legalize godsend medicine. MDMA could turn the world peaceful, but the Drug Warrior does not want peace. Ecstasy brought peace and love to the multi-ethnic dance floor in 1990s Britain, but Drug Warriors cracked down on the safe drug "E," all because of a handful of deaths which were caused by the Drug Warriors refusal to develop safe use guidelines. The result? The dance floor devolved into liquor-fueled violence and rave safety had to be enforced by special forces troops! 
