How black comedies have become reality in Drug-War North America

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How black comedies have become reality in Drug-War North America

What the case of Claire Brosseau tells us about the evils of drug prohibition

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

February 13, 2025

In the 1987 movie "Heathers," the school counselor at Westerburg High speaks the following deadpan advice to Veronica, a rich white student who is depressed because of the ups-and-downs of teenager politics:

"Whether to kill yourself," quoth Pauline, "is one of the most important decisions a teenager has to make."

This was a hilarious line in 1987, because it was understood by the viewer as a patently absurd line, something that a counselor would never say to a depressed student. Fast forward 40 years, however, and this line takes on a grim new meaning when we are now talking about providing medically assisted suicide for the depressed while yet refusing to let the depressed use the drugs that could make them want to live. How can it be that no one recognizes this monstrosity -- this height of Christian Science PERFIDY even.

Movie poster for Heathers, showing Winona Ryder and Kevin Bacon embracing. — In 'Heathers,' the counselor warns Veronica: "Whether to kill yourself is one of the most important decisions a teenager has to make.' This advice has gone mainstream now that we have legalized assisted suicide without re-legalizing drugs.

I used to be forgiving for psychiatrists who refrained from standing up for their patients' right to godsend medicine, but now we live in a world in which that failure to provide healing is leading DIRECTLY TO STATE-ASSISTED DEATH!!

This is the bizarre dystopia that we have come to by following the drug-war ideology of substance demonization to its logically absurd conclusion: namely, to the point that we think it is actually better to be dead than to use the substances that the western world has demonized as "drugs."

Why am I the only one in the world who is calling this to the attention of the pundits -- and the Stephanie Nolens of the world who write articles on this subject while completely ignoring what it tells us about America's deadly attitude toward drugs ¹ -- and yet Stephanie Nolen is the New York Times healthcare reporter? Since when has unnecessary suicide become healthy, Stephanie?

We were already well on the road to this path because our doctors have long advocated brain-damaging shock therapy for the depressed while refusing to fight for the right of their patients to use substances that improve mentation and actually create new neurons in the brain -- all without damaging that organ. I simply cannot believe that I am the only one who recognizes this problem, wherefore I am determined to create a new non-profit organization called Depressed Patients for the end of Drug Prohibition -- the policy that now invites us to kill ourselves with the help of the state - but not to use drugs that might make us want to live!

Assisted Suicide for the Depressed

Key Takeaways:

Psychiatrists discuss assisted suicide for the depressed without discussing drug prohibition which outlaws substances that could make suicide unnecessary.
The attitude that suicide was just another healthcare option used to be black comedy; now it is mainstream ideology.

Notes:

1: Nolen, Stephanie, and Chloë Ellingson. 2025. “Claire Brosseau Wants to Die. Will Canada Let Her?” The New York Times, December 29, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/29/health/assisted-death-mental-illness-canada.html. (up)

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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

Wonder how America got to the point where we let the Executive Branch arrest judges? Look no further than the Drug War, which, since the 1970s, has demonized Constitutional protections as impediments to justice.

Google founders used to enthuse about the power of free speech, but Google is actively shutting down videos that tell us how to grow mushrooms -- MUSHROOMS, for God's sake. End the drug war and this hateful censorship of a free people.

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."

For those who want to understand what's going on with the drug war from a philosophical point of view, I recommend chapter six of "Eugenics and Other Evils" by GK Chesterton.

The front page of every mycology club page should feature a protest of drug laws that make the study of mycology illegal in the case of certain shrooms. But no one protests. Their silence makes them drug war collaborators because it serves to normalize prohibition.

The main form of drug war propaganda is censorship. That's why most Americans cannot imagine any positive uses for psychoactive substances, because the media and the government won't allow that.

When we place the FDA in charge of deciding whether a psychoactive drug should be re-legalized or not, we are asking them to decide on things like the relative importance of appreciating a sunset, a task for which the FDA has no expertise whatsoever.

There was no opioid crisis when Americans were free to smoke opium nightly in their homes. Now scientists around the country are making money hand over fist by "solving" the problem in a politically correct way, without even mentioning the drug prohibition that caused it.

The UN of today is in an odd position regarding drugs: they want to praise indigenous societies while yet outlawing the drugs that helped create them.

I should have added to that last post: "I in no way want to glorify or condone drug demonization."

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

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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.

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