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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 (Substack version)

February 13, 2026





“In the following winter began that agitation for the repeal of the laws prohibiting suicide which bore its final fruit in the month of April, 1920, when the first Government Lethal Chamber was opened on Washington Square. 1”

— Robert W. Chambers The King in Yellow



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 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.

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 drugs2 -- 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!

AUTHOR'S UPDATE, SEPTEMBER 2026

I wrote the above essay back in February of 2026, and I have so far encountered no online pundit who will admit that there is any connection between assisted suicide and the fact that we have outlawed all drugs that can inspire and elate. I won't even attempt to defend that connection here; anyone who fails to immediately see it is simply unaware of the cutting-edge state of pharmacology and ethnobotany. Perhaps most depressingly of all, Mad in America, the website that supposedly champions the rights of the med-dependent depressed, refuses to even cover this story, despite founder Robert Whitaker's published commitment to keep his substack updated as regards the latest relevant news stories. Robert does not think that I have any standing, never mind the fact that I have been med-dependent for longer than any of his other site participants. He does not want to hear how I feel; he wants to hear how a board-certified healthcare professional thinks I SHOULD feel. This is my view, at any rate. Robert wants to help the med-dependent depressed, he does not want to learn from them. If I'm not qualified to speak for the med-dependent depressed, however, then why is a mere journalist?






Key Takeaways:






Notes for essay entitled 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:

1: Chambers, Robert W. (Robert William). n.d. “The King in Yellow.” Https://Www.Gutenberg.Org/Files/8492/8492-h/8492-h.Htm. Accessed August 17, 2026. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8492/pg8492-images.html. (up)
2: 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




There are endless ways that psychoactive drugs could be creatively combined to combat addiction and a million other things. But the drug warrior says that we have to study each in isolation, and then only for treating one single board-certified condition.

All drugs have potential positive uses for somebody, at some dose, in some circumstance, alone or in combination. To decide in advance that a drug is completely useless is an offense to reason and to human liberty.

Did the Vedic People have a substance disorder because they wanted to drink enough soma to see religious realities?

The very idea of a DEA Museum creeps me out. It makes me want to say, like a Valley girl: "Ok, like... this is so wrong on so many levels."

The FDA will be accepting comments through September 20th on the subject of ways to fight PTSD. PTSD@reaganudall.org Ask them why they support brain-damaging shock therapy but won't approve drugs like MDMA that could make ECT unnecessary.

"There has been so much delirious nonsense written about drugs that sane men may well despair of seeing the light." -- Aleister Crowley, from "Essays on Intoxication"

"Like Christians burning mosques and temples to spread the word of Jesus, modem drugabuseologists burn crops to spread the use of alcohol." -- Ceremonial Chemistry, p. 48

One merely has to look at any issue of Psychology Today to see articles in which the author reckons without the Drug War, in which they pretend that banned substances do not exist and so fail to incorporate any topic-related insights that might otherwise come from user reports.

Besides, why should I listen to the views of a microbe?

SWAT raids have increased by 15,000 percent from the late 1970s to today, resulting in 50,000 to 80,000 SWAT raids annually in the US alone. --War On Us


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

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