I've already found leisure to dilate on the anti-democratic impact of drug-war movies like 'Running with the Devil,1' in which the DEA agent is the (ahem) 'hero' who combats those bad guy plant sellers by torturing them and shooting them in cold blood. Although this kind of movie deserves to be panned for its ideological toxicity, don't hold your breath waiting for critics to bash the movie on that score. And as far as parental watch dog groups are concerned, count on them to lambaste such pics for nudity, violence, and naughty words, but don't expect to hear a peep about the pro-fascist message of such DEA propaganda. Johnny must not swear, of course, but if he wants to torture and murder folks who traffic in Mother Nature's plants, more power to him.
But there is another genre of pictures that helps sell the pro-fascist Drug War sensibility to gullible Americans: namely, comedies such as 'Harold & Kumar go to White Castle,' in which illegal plant substances are uniquely associated with sexual abandon and blatant irresponsibility. Such films would be innocuous enough in a culture that spoke honestly about drugs -- that recognized both their benefits and ills -- but in our drug-war society, which dogmatically recognizes only the misuse of outlawed substances, such movies reinforce the Drug Warrior supposition that there is no sensible reason to use the plants that the government has chosen to criminalize. So as Neil Patrick Harris snorts cocaine off the tush of a pole dancer while driving Harold's car through off-road vegetation, one can just hear the 'lock-em-up' conservative in the audience saying to himself: 'You see? Aren't drugs just the worst thing in the world?!' And so we lie to ourselves to keep this Drug War myth going. We ignore responsible use of banished plants and erase such use from history.
Nowhere is this historical revisionism more striking than in the case of Freud's use of cocaine 2, because, properly considered, Freud's cocaine use calls into question most of modern psychiatry's pieties (such as 'no pain, no gain,' 'we must treat the REAL causes,' 'feel-good drugs are bad,' etc.) It begs the question: if Freud fought off fatigue and depression with cocaine , abjuring theoretical psychoanalysis for that purpose, and thereby amassing a prolific vocational output that led to an unprecedented degree of self-actualization in his life, why should the rest of us be forced by law to treat our similar problems with the latest popular theoretical therapy? Why can't we, too, avail ourselves of the real politik of plant-based therapy to attain self-fulfillment?
Of course, the modern psychiatrist will chide: 'But that's just treating the symptoms, that's not treating the REAL illness,' to which we say 'So what?' Despite materialist claims to the contrary, we do not know any one single cause for depression and fatigue, and indeed it is thanks to our determination to find this highly improbable El Dorado that we now have a nation of addicts, addicted to pills that claimed (falsely as it turns out) to correct a chemical imbalance peculiar to the depressed3.
Besides, isn't the goal of psychiatry to grant the patient a life of self-actualization? In that case, cocaine 45 worked a treat for Freud, not by giving him that self-fulfillment directly (not by targeting some supposititious self-fulfillment chemical!), but by arousing in him the psychophysical baseline condition that permitted him to succeed on his own. That was not a copout for Freud, but if we insist on calling it so, then God grant us all such a copout that leads to professional self-fulfillment in life.
Back to H&K:
A cop says: 'I just found enough dope in the car to put these skateboard punks in jail for the next couple of years.'
And the Drug Warrior in the audience cheers.
But think how costly this sense of satisfaction is : By putting away punks, we have denied godsend medicines to the elderly, the depressed, the victims of PTSD.
It's this focus on punishing (and/or protecting) punks through substance prohibition -- aided by Hollywood's selective depiction of drug use as exclusively hedonistic -- that denies the psychologically desperate the plant medicines that could make their lives livable, often enjoyable, again.
God grant Americans can someday be satisfied with punishing a punk's bad actions alone, not their mere possession of plants. That way, when we do punish them, we're not also punishing the psychologically needy as we do today, forcing them by law to eschew Mother Nature's therapies in favor of addictive Big Pharma 67 pills that need to be taken every single day for life.
The protection and/or punishment of the punks of the world must stop taking precedence over the psychological needs and, indeed, rights of the vast majority of humanity, for we're not talking about privileges here: we're talking about the resurrection of the earthling's natural birthright to the plants and fungi that grow at their very feet.
Author's Follow-up:
November 24, 2025
Whew! I just breathed a sigh of relief! I just re-read this essay of mine for the first time in six years and was delighted to find that I still agree with everything I said! I always fear that my early essays on these topics will be unnecessarily apologetic since my knowledge on the subject has grown considerably since I first started philosophically analyzing drug prohibition back in 2019. And yet I can safely say that I covered all the most important bases above. This is almost surprising to me, since I had not yet even read Sigmund Freud's "On Cocaine8" back in 2019. I knew, however, that Freud had found cocaine to be a godsend, and unlike most chronically depressed Americans, I took this fact to be a tacit indictment of the healthcare industry which was currently profiting from my lifetime dependence on underperforming antidepressants -- all because self-interested doctors were holding cocaine use to safety standards that they applied to no other activity on earth.
Unfortunately, it is not just my fellow depressives who are unable to connect the seemingly obvious dots between drug prohibition and their complete disempowerment in life. Even our most progressive thinkers are blind as a bat when it comes to the immensely fraught topic of "drugs" in drug-hating America.
In his April 2025 article for Rolling Stone magazine, "The Secret History of Coca,910" Wade Davis implies that cocaine was justifiably outlawed because it was found to have resulted in 400 cases of cocaine toxicity worldwide. 400 cases.
This shows how completely bamboozled Americans are when even the obvious enemies of the Drug War, our best and brightest, draw such statistically-challenged conclusions about drug use.
Davis worries about the 400 people who could not use cocaine wisely -- but he seems to have no concern for the HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE who COULD use cocaine wisely and thereby end their chronic depression entirely -- END IT -- and this without becoming a ward of the healthcare state, with all the time, money and humiliation that such a status entails! For here is another thing that even drug-war enemies do not understand: the fact that modern antidepressants cause extreme dependency -- and that some of these drugs -- like the Effexor that I am on -- can not be kicked AT ALL. My own psychiatrist tells me that Effexor has been found to have a 95% recidivism rate 11 for long-term users -- and I have found from personal experience that going without the drug brings about cognitive impairment12!
No one can claim to know the full evil of the Drug War without recognizing the fact that it has unnecessarily turned the depressed into patients for life -- and forced them to "treat" a condition that they could have effectively "cured" with drugs like cocaine had prohibition not denied them access to the plant medicine of Mother Nature -- which prohibition itself was a crime against humanity and a violation of the natural law upon which Thomas Jefferson founded America13.
But somehow the 400 cases of cocaine toxicity are all that matters -- not only to Drug Warriors but also to their most vocal critics!
Have they forgotten that liquor results in 178,000 deaths a year in the United States alone14? Do they realize that 49,000 Americans commit suicide every year15 and that most of those deaths would have been AVOIDED had America refused to outlaw cocaine and had promoted its use instead for the severely depressed? Do they even realize that numbers like 178,000 and 49,000 are greater than 400?
America's Drug War propaganda has destroyed their ability to think straight.
I was never a good student in economics class in high-school, yet I no longer feel badly about that fact, not after discovering that our best and brightest routinely draw such statistically-challenged conclusions about drugs. It makes me wonder if our expert number crunchers are really such experts after all. If they really believe that 400 cases of cocaine-related downsides are all that matter in evaluating the drug, then I would hate to have them as financial advisors. I can hear them now:
"Brian, we have just sold off your entire portfolio of food stocks after learning that foodborne illness kills over 900 people a year in America alone!!!16"
The Holy Trinity of the Drug War religion is Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and John Belushi. "They died so that you might fear psychoactive substances with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength."
National Geo published an article entitled "Coca: a Blessing and a Curse." Coca was never a curse. Most people used it wisely, just as most people drink wisely. Doctors demonized it because it really worked and it could put them out of business. https://abolishthedea.com/sigmund_freuds_real_breakthrough_was_not_psychoanalysis.php
Imagine if there were drugs for which dependency was a feature, not a bug. People would stop peddling that junk, right? Wrong. Just ask your psychiatrist.
Most enemies of inner-city gun violence refuse to protest against the drug prohibition which caused the violence in the first place.
Folks point to the seemingly endless drugs that can be synthesized today and say it's a reason for prohibition. To the contrary, it's the reason why prohibition is madness. It results in an endless game of militaristic whack-a-mole at the expense of democratic freedoms.
Psychedelics and entheogens should be freely available to all dementia patients. These medicines can increase neuronal plasticity and even grow new neurons. Besides, they can inspire and elate -- or do we puritans feel that our loved ones have no right to peace of mind?
My depression would disappear overnight if religiously intolerant America would just allow me to live as freely as Benjamin Franklin.
There would be almost no recidivism for those trying to get off drugs if all drugs were legal. Then we could use a vast variety of drugs to get us through those few hours of late-night angst that are the bane of the recidivist.
If we let "science" decide about drugs, i.e. base freedom on health concerns, then tea can be as easily outlawed as beer. The fact that horses are not illegal shows that prohibition is not about health. It's about the power to outlaw certain "ways of being in the world."
Freud's real discovery was that drugs like cocaine could make psychiatry UNNECESSARY for the vast majority of people. The medical establishment hated the idea -- so they judged the drug based on its worst possible use!
Although this kind of movie deserves to be panned for its ideological toxicity, don't hold your breath waiting for critics to bash the movie on that score. And as far as parental watch dog groups are concerned, count on them to lambaste such pics for nudity, violence, and naughty words, but don't expect to hear a peep about the pro-fascist message of such DEA propaganda. Johnny must not swear, of course, but if he wants to torture and murder folks who traffic in Mother Nature's plants, more power to him.
No one can claim to know the full evil of the Drug War without recognizing the fact that it has unnecessarily turned the depressed into patients for life -- and forced them to "treat" a condition that they could have effectively "cured" with drugs like cocaine had prohibition not denied them access to the plant medicine of Mother Nature -- which prohibition itself was a crime against humanity and a violation of the natural law upon which Thomas Jefferson founded America13.
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