How Drug Prohibition Causes Relapses

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How Drug Prohibition Causes Relapses

an open letter to Jeffrey A. Singer of the Cato Institute

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

June 4, 2025

In your blog entry entitled "Punishing Drug Use: The Failure of Coercive Policies in Colorado,¹" you blame relapses on the failure to address underlying psychological problems. While such factors may clearly be present in many cases of relapse, there is a far more obvious explanation for relapses in the age of the Drug War: and that is the fact that we have outlawed all the drugs that could make relapsing unnecessary.

Response from Singer

Update: June 05, 2025

Last year, I made an overly ambitious attempt to get off of the antidepressant called Effexor ² , one of those antidepressants ³ that are harder to kick than heroin ⁴ because of the way that they muck about with brain chemistry ⁵. My tapering scheme was working well until one morning I was struck with extreme gloom and began immediately thinking about returning to full-dose Effexor use. I sat there for an hour trying to avoid that fateful step, but I finally gave in -- simply because there was no alternative for me: either I continued feeling horrible or I took the Effexor, so I took the Effexor. Now, it is blazingly clear to me that I could have gotten through that short tough patch with the help of other drugs, like laughing gas ⁶ , phenethylamines, or even the occasional strategic use of an opium pipe ⁷. I could have easily avoided using Effexor again, by fighting drugs with drugs. If I lived in a free world where we taught safe and beneficial drug use, I could have cheered myself up in a trice, seen my situation anew, and gained the necessary real-time relief to keep me from relapsing. This is just psychological common sense.

Drug prohibition is the problem ⁸ . Drug prohibition naturally leads to relapses. When we ignore the role that drug prohibition plays in relapses, we are helping to normalize drug prohibition. How? By giving it a huge "Mulligan" for the problems that it causes in our daily lives.

We all have underlying pathologies of some kind when it comes to our psychological makeup, but we should not use that fact as an excuse to ignore the obvious. The Drug War has outlawed all means of psychological relief and so it should come as no surprise that recidivism is rife when it comes to drug withdrawal schemes. The answer to this problem is not to be found in the users' souls or in their brain chemistry: the answer is to be found, first and foremost, in drug prohibition itself, which outlaws all drugs that could get one through the downsides of withdrawal. Until we acknowledge this fact, our focus on the supposed psychopathology of the recidivist will always sound like victim blaming to me.

AFTERWORD

This is the problem with the Libertarian approach to drug re-legalization . Libertarians tend to underestimate both the negative effects of drug prohibition and the positive effects of drugs. They therefore end up promoting "second best" arguments against drug prohibition. They never go for the jugular, they never point out the 6,400-pound gorilla in the room: namely, the fact that drug prohibition outlaws the use of substances which, when wisely used, could prevent relapses. Indeed, drug prohibition caused dependency in the first place by refusing to teach safe use and refusing to allow for any meaningful drug choice. When we are ignorant about drugs and forced to rely on whatever the black market can make available, it is little wonder that unwanted dependencies occur.

Here are some of the reports of phenethylamine users are reported in "Pihkal" by Chemist Alexander Shulgin ⁹.

"More than tranquil, I was completely at peace, in a beautiful, benign, and placid place."

"The entire experience was exquisite. Next day, same sense of serene, quiet joy/beauty persisted for most of the day. A true healing potential."

"I acknowledged a rapture in the very act of breathing."

How can anyone miss the obvious potential of such drug use to keep us from backsliding when attempting to get off of any one substance? The problem, of course, is that in the age of the Drug War, we attempt to get people off of a problematic drug by getting them off of ALL drugs, even those used strategically and non-addictively. It is as if we were trying to get off of heart medicine and were told that the first step is to renounce aspirin. We have stupidly classed all hated substances as "drugs" and now have become to believe our own lie that these substances are all the same, that is to say, all evil, without regard for context of use.

One sign that Libertarians do not (sufficiently) get it is their tendency to talk about drug prohibition as if it had failed. This implies that drug prohibition might have been fine if it had only worked. Nothing could be further from the truth. Drug prohibition is the outlawing of religious states, of the philosophical states that William James told us to investigate, of the relaxed and inspired states that have endless glaringly obvious benefits once we jettison the drug-demonizing mindset of the Drug Warrior. The whole prohibition mindset is wrong. I am talking here about that anti-scientific mindset that tells us that drugs can be judged "up" or "down" in advance of use, and that a substance that can be misused by a white young person when used at one dosage for one reason, must not be used by anybody at any dosage for any reason. This is the evil mindset that must be conquered. Instead, Libertarians say essentially: "You Drug Warriors had some lofty goals, but alas, we cannot ever force people to give up naughty drugs."

With friends like these, the drug relegalization ¹⁰ movement scarcely needs enemies.

Besides, who says that the Drug War has failed? It has succeeded, judging by the goals of the original xenophobic and racist Drug Warriors who outlawed opium in 1914. Since then, drug prohibition has succeeded by taking the world's mind off of social problems. It has succeeded by arresting and otherwise disempowering minorities and free thinkers. It has succeeded by giving judges and politicians an excuse to pedal back Constitutional freedoms and to invade countries at will on the pretext of "fighting drugs." By throwing millions in jail, drug prohibition has succeeded in rigging elections in favor of paleolithic Drug Warriors. Now, with the introduction of drug testing ¹¹ by employees, Americans are even forced to feel a certain way about the world. How much more success do we want the Drug War to have before we recognize that it is a cancer on the body politic and had no right to succeed in the first place?

Author's Follow-up:

June 04, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up

Dr. Singer was kind enough to respond, and substantively at that. I will not presume to print his entire response, but it begins as follows:

"Thank you for your open letter. I think your points are well-taken. However, you unfairly suggest that libertarians underestimate the positive effects of drugs."

Singer then suggests three books that illustrate the openness of the Libertarian mind on these points:

1) Singer's own brand-new release entitled "Your Body, Your Health Care"¹²
2) Jacob Sullum's "Say Yes: In Defense of Drug Use"¹³
3) Carl Hart's "Drug Use for Grown-Ups.¹⁴"

Here is my reply to Dr. Singer's reply.

Thanks much for your detailed response.

I am sure that many Libertarians understand these things, but I am not sure that they are sufficiently emphasizing them.

Also, I do not consider my arguments to be "moral" in nature, but rather just common sense: the type of common sense that I never see in essays about drugs. Utilitarian arguments are important, but I believe that the Drug War will never end until we expose the anti-scientific philosophy of the prohibitionist mindset itself, the mindset that tells us that drugs can be judged "up" or "down" in the first place. This is the mindset that tells us that a drug that can cause problems for a white young person when used at one dose for one reason, must not be used by anyone at any dose for any reason. I believe we need to attack this counterproductive concept, and not merely the problems that it causes. If we fail to do this, then gains made in this generation based on utilitarian ¹⁵ ¹⁶ ¹⁷ arguments will be vetoed by the Chicken Littles of future generations. It would take only one sufficiently lurid news story to bring that relapse about. And so the Drug War will continue until we drive a stake through its heart by discrediting the whole unspoken philosophy behind prohibition, this idea that we can judge drugs "up" or "down" and that drug prohibition has no downsides, nor drug use any upsides.

Carl Hart is to be praised for his courage. However, he himself sees no benefits to drug use except for recreational purposes. He is a materialist, and so he makes it clear in the opening of his book that drugs are not for people with emotional issues. In other words, if I have trouble getting off Effexor, I am told that I should go and see the very person who got me on dependence-causing "meds" in the first place -- I should go see my materialist doctor. This means that Carl, at least, is completely blind to the obvious holistic benefits of drug use. One can hardly blame him, however. Between his materialist education and the censorship of mass media, he has seen or read very little that would indicate that drugs can do anything but destroy lives. Carl clearly saw through that lie, but he has yet to notice the larger truth, that drugs have obvious therapeutic benefits for a vast array of conditions -- benefits that are obvious based on common sense and which do not require microscopic evidence to be acknowledged.

Alexander Shulgin made these benefits clear in "Pihkal," with such user reports as: "I experienced a rapture in the very act of breathing."

And yet Shulgin himself was a materialist, at least when working for Big Pharma ¹⁸ ¹⁹ . He did not think that mere rapture would help the depressed. He felt he needed to find a drug that worked via known "pathways" and had predictable results and which would, ideally, require a lifetime of use. This is clear from the "notes to self" that he included in the technical section of his book. In other words, he was blind to common sense uses of drugs thanks to materialism ²⁰ and the requirements of his profit-driven employers. He seemed to think that chronic depressives came from Mars and that we were therefore unamenable to such earthly incentives as bliss and rapture.

The way I see it, Shulgin and Hart are gaslighting ²¹ me ²². They are telling me that obvious holistic drug benefits are illusory and that I must rely on my materialist doctor instead to make targeted interventions based on my brain chemistry. Cui bono? Certainly not myself.

Thanks for your rapid response. I will not elaborate any further for fear of taking up your time. However, I would be happy to discuss these matters in further detail if and when you are interested.

Best Wishes,
Brian

PS I have put your book ²³ on my reading list, as well as that of Jacob Sullum ²⁴.

Author's Follow-up:

June 05, 2025

Hi, Jeff. This will be my last unsolicited email. I do not mean to pester you. I just wanted to share my opinion that Milton Friedman undervalued and underestimated the principled objections to drug prohibition. Consider the following citation in Doug Bandow's "From Fighting the Drug War to Protecting the Right to Use Drugs."

"I readily grant that the ethical issue is difficult and that men of good will may well disagree. Fortunately, we need not resolve the ethical issue to agree on policy. Prohibition is an attempted cure that makes matters worse for both the addict and the rest of us. Hence, even if you regard present policy toward drugs as ethically justified, considerations of expediency make that policy most unwise.²⁵"

This quote demonstrates that the key concern in drug debates, at least in 1972, was how to deal with addicts. This is just how the Drug Warriors want the issue to be framed, under the tacit assumption that drugs are a problem. They demonize substances under the catchall term of "drugs" and then they wield that assumption-laden terminology like a cudgel to attack opponents. No need for arguments on their part, they merely need to utter the pejorative word "drugs" with a certain amount of disdain and condescension. Merely to use the word "drugs" is henceforth to imply that drugs are a problem, indeed are THE problem. Friedman plays into the hands of this demonization by essentially signing off on this lopsided view of the drug debate, this idea that it is all about the problem of addicts -- addicts, incidentally, that drug prohibition itself creates by refusing to educate, refusing to regulate and refusing to re-legalize drug alternatives and so keep users from overdoing it on any one substance.

Friedman essentially "signs off" on this lopsided framing of the drugs debate in terms of the negative effects of drugs and drug use. He essentially says, "Yes, drugs may be considered evil, but we can lessen their negative impacts by legalizing them."

Such arguments yield enormous ground to the Drug Warriors. "See?" they say. "Even our opponents agree that drugs are dangerous!" Instead of tacitly endorsing Drug War fear mongering, Friedman should have rejected the very terms of the debate, insisting instead that the outlawing of drugs is the outlawing of religions -- nay, of the religious impulse itself -- as is clear from the fact that the Hindu religion owes its existence to the use of a drug that inspired and elated. Friedman also seems unaware of the massive censorship that takes place because of drug prohibition and its attendant propaganda. Almost every book written these days on consciousness and emotions is shallow because the authors fearfully avoid all references to drugs and what their use might tell us about the topics in question. Science News continues to tell us that depression is a tough nut to crack, always failing to point out that we have outlawed all the substances that could cheer up a depressed person "in a trice." Such problems cannot be confronted by adducing quantitative reports illustrating the marginal benefits of freedom over intolerance: we need to argue on principle that freedom of religion ²⁶ is important, that freedom of academia is important.

Instead, Friedman set Libertarians off on a job of number hunting, to adduce facts and figures that would supposedly convince Drug Warriors that drug prohibition was counterproductive from the standpoint of public health. The flaw in this approach is obvious, however. It assumes that Drug Warriors are actually interested in public health. That is not the case. They are actually interested in disempowering minorities and winning elections by appealing to the fears of an under-educated electorate. As Julian Buchanan points out, the Drug War has not failed, it is rather succeeding with flying colors -- not because it is improving human health (to the contrary, it has resulted in 67,000 gunfire deaths in American inner cities over the last ten years) -- it is succeeding because it is removing hundreds of thousands of minority voters from the voting rolls (either literally or as a practical matter) and thereby handing elections to fascists. It is succeeding because it is increasing the relevance of guns and violence, meanwhile discrediting all "peace and love" movements. Both Summers of Love in the anglophone world were shut down with the help of drug law. Nixon cracked down on peace and harmony in the 1970s by outlawing psychedelics; British MPs cracked down on the peaceful rave scene in the 1990s by cracking down on Ecstasy. If Drug Warriors were really interested in public health, they would not be destroying movements whose successful propagation could steer hate-filled Homo sapiens away from nuclear self-destruction.

The whole problem with America is that it is disinterested in principles. The Bill of Rights was set up to ensure that passions of the moment did not infringe on fundamental rights -- and yet Drug Warriors have wielded the assumption-laden cudgel of "drugs" (and the metaphor of "war") to convince us that any democratic principle can be jettisoned in the name of fighting this supposed scourge. We need to engage in principled pushback that denies the main premise of the Drug Warrior's argument, the idea that drugs in the abstract are a scourge. We need to be pointing out the endless obvious ways in which specific drug use can be beneficial (indeed, HAS been beneficial) -- meanwhile attacking the absurd notion that we can talk meaningfully about "drugs" in the abstract. This is the whole problem with the drug prohibition mindset: it tells us that drugs can be judged "up" or "down," without regard for context. It tells us that: a drug that can be misused by a white young person at one dose when used for one reason, must not be used by anyone at any dose for any reason. Someone has to finally speak up for the hundreds of millions of souls who go without godsend medicine merely because the drugs in question could theoretically be misused by America's young people, those young people whom America refuses "on principle" to teach about safe use. Someone needs to give voice to these silent victims of the Drug War who suffer in silence behind closed doors and who are never considered as stakeholders in drug criminalization debates.

Instead of speaking the obvious, however, we focus on expediency, naively assuming that the hardcore Drug Warriors have any interest whatsoever in the health of the electorate -- unless that electorate is white and conservative.

I fear that America is, even now, reaping the whirlwind for this indifference to principle as we head toward an oligarchy of the white and elite.

Until we argue from principle, any advances we make in the name of expediency will be subject to veto by fear mongering politicians. This is what happened in Oregon when Drug Warriors descended on the state to overturn drug decriminalization.

Arguing from expediency becomes increasingly problematic in an age where everyone seems to have "their own facts." Only by insisting on the existence of fundamental freedoms -- like the freedom of thought and academia -- can we touch the heartstrings of the mainstream, a mainstream that clearly senses that our drug policy is absurd but which has not yet found the language to push back -- because the Drug Warriors control the language of the debate, above all by their creation of this "straw man" that they call "drugs" -- a word whose mere uncritical usage implies a jaundiced view of psychoactive substances.

Finally, I do not think anyone understands how fully the drug prohibition mindset has outlawed free speech in America, if not worldwide ²⁷. Any attempts to point out the positive uses of drugs online or in print is rejected by mainstream media as "giving medical advice," the idea being that we should see materialist doctors to find out what mind and mood medicine makes sense for us. This is why it was a category error to place materialist doctors in charge of mind and mood medicine in the first place. Materialists are behaviorists when it comes to human emotion and are therefore dogmatically indifferent to anecdote, history and common sense. It is all just a little too convenient that this supposedly health-minded censorship of speech serves to favor the interests of the foot-dragging status quo when it comes to the obvious and time-honored benefits of drugs.

--

AFTERWORD

It is amazing that Milton Friedman ever entertained the idea that Drug Warriors were arguing from good faith in the first place. They clearly had no interest in public health given their insistence that guns be unregulated. Had their interest been in public health, they would have been demanding the outlawing of liquor, which kills 178,000 Americans a year. And yet Milton seemed to think that these racist clowns were amenable to statistical arguments. He failed to realize that the Drug War is not about health -- it is not even about drugs: it is rather an effort on behalf of racist politicians (with the help of brainwashed and befuddled liberals) to turn America into a police state, a sort of Fahrenheit 452, in which the government does not merely control what we can think, but controls how and how much we can think by controlling the state of our digestive systems.

This should be a grade-A outrage for Libertarians. Instead, Friedman treats the Drug War as a serious attempt to keep America healthy -- failing to realize the Orwellian world that would result were the Drug War to succeed. We are living that Orwellian world today: a world in which one can be removed from the workforce for violating the drug sensibilities of Mary Baker-Eddy, a world in which merely suggesting positive uses for drugs is ground for being censored, a world in which almost all drug-related honesty is absent from non-fiction writing, a world in which we brainwash Americans from childhood by censoring all positive talk about drugs.

"If we argue from principle, then it is moot whether drug prohibition works, because it is problematic what should count as its 'working.' The very existence of such a mass movement of scapegoating-- uniting a diverse people in a common hatred-- may be regarded as evidence that, simply put, it is working." --Thomas Szasz, from Our Right to Drugs, p. 110 ²⁸

"More often than not, the effective treatment of pain requires neither clinics nor doctors, but only a free market in drugs. However, such pharmaceutical freedom would make our highly paid pain researchers and pain clinicians unnecessary and unemployed." --Thomas Szasz, from Our Right to Drugs, p. 142 ²⁹

See my review of Jeffrey Singer's book -- link the footnotes below.³⁰

Addiction

Notes for essay entitled How Drug Prohibition Causes Relapses: an open letter to Jeffrey A. Singer of the Cato Institute:

1: 2025. Cato.org. 2025. https://www.cato.org/blog/punishing-drug-use-failure-coercive-policies-colorado. (up)
2: How Drug Prohibition makes it impossible to get off of Effexor and other Big Pharma drugs DWP (up)
3: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
4: Hall, Wayne, and Megan Weier. 2016. “Lee Robins’ Studies of Heroin Use among US Vietnam Veterans.” Addiction 112 (1): 176–80. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.13584. (up)
5: Richard Louis Miller. 2017. Psychedelic Medicine : The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, and Ayahuasca. Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press. (up)
6: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
7: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
8: Drug Prohibition is the Problem, not Drugs: what the movers and shakers get wrong in the drug re-legalization debate DWP (up)
9: Shulgin, Alexander T, and Ann Shulgin. 2019. Pihkal : A Chemical Love Story. Berkeley, Ca: Transform Press. (up)
10: “National Coalition for Drug Legalization.” n.d. National Coalition for Drug Legalization. https://www.nationalcoalitionfordruglegalization.org/. (up)
11: Drug Testing and the Christian Science Inquisition DWP (up)
12: https://www.cato.org/people/jeffrey-singer. 2025. “Your Body, Your Health Care.” Cato Institute. April 8, 2025. https://www.cato.org/books/body-health-care. (up)
13: Sullum, Jacob. 2025. “Saying Yes by Jacob Sullum: 9781585423187 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books.” PenguinRandomhouse.com. 2025. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/288705/saying-yes-by-jacob-sullum/. (up)
14: “Drug Use for Grown-Ups by Dr. Carl L. Hart: 9781101981665 | PenguinRandomHouse.Com: Books.” n.d. PenguinRandomhouse.Com. Accessed August 29, 2026. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/534657/drug-use-for-grown-ups-by-dr-carl-l-hart/. (up)
15: We have an absolute right to use drugs DWP (up)
16: Why John Stuart Mill is irrelevant to the drug debate DWP (up)
17: Drug Prohibition should be protested on principle, not on utilitarian grounds DWP (up)
18: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
19: LaMattina, John. n.d. “Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of the FDA’s Drug Division Budget?” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2022/09/22/why-is-biopharma-paying-75-of-the-fdas-drug-division-budget/. (up)
20: How materialists lend a veneer of science to the lies of the drug warriors DWP (up)
21: The Semmelweis Effect in the War on Drugs DWP (up)
22: How psychologists gaslight us about beneficial drug use DWP (up)
23: https://www.cato.org/people/jeffrey-singer. 2025. “Your Body, Your Health Care.” Cato Institute. April 8, 2025. https://www.cato.org/books/body-health-care. (up)
24: Sullum, Jacob. 2025. “Saying Yes by Jacob Sullum: 9781585423187 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books.” PenguinRandomhouse.com. 2025. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/288705/saying-yes-by-jacob-sullum/. (up)
25: Shpancer, Noam. 2022. “Depression Is Not Caused by Chemical Imbalance in the Brain | Psychology Today.” Www.psychologytoday.com. July 24, 2022. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/202207/depression-is-not-caused-chemical-imbalance-in-t (up)
26: Freedom of Religion and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
27: Speak now or forever hold your peace about drug prohibition DWP (up)
28: Szasz, Thomas. 1992. Our Right to Drugs. Praeger. (up)
29: Szasz, Thomas. 1992. Our Right to Drugs. Praeger. (up)
30: Your Body, Your Health Care: a philosophical review of the new book by Jeffrey A. Singer DWP (up)

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Now the US is bashing the Honduran president for working with "drug cartels." Why don't we just be honest and say why we're REALLY upset with the guy? Drugs is just the excuse, as always, now what's the real reason? Stop using the drug war to disguise American foreign policy.

Had the DEA been active in the Punjab and 1500 BCE, there would be no Hindu religion today.

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

Americans love to hate heroin. But there is no rational reason why folks should not use heroin daily in a world in which we consider it their medical duty to use antidepressants daily.

The New York Times gets it wrong again. Yes, kratom, like all drugs, has downsides. The problem is not kratom, it's drug prohibition which limits choice. Nor are young people the only stakeholders in the debate, as the Times always assumes.

Americans are starting to think that psychedelics may be an exception to the rule that drugs are evil -- but drugs have never been evil. The evil resides in how we think, talk and legislate about drugs.

We drastically limit drug choices, we refuse to teach safe use, and then we discover there's a gene to explain why some people have trouble with drugs. Science loves to find simple solutions to complex problems.

In a free world, almost all depressed individuals could do WITHOUT doctors: these adult human beings could handle their own depression with the informed intermittent use of a wide variety of psychoactive substances.

Laughing gas is the substance that gave William James his philosophy of reality. He concluded from its use that what we perceive is just a fraction of reality writ large. Yet his alma mater (Harvard) does not even MENTION laughing gas in their bio of the man.

Drug warriors have taught us that honesty about drugs encourages drug use. Nonsense! That's just their way of suppressing free speech about drugs. Americans are not babies, they can handle the truth -- or if they cannot, they need education, not prohibition.

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How Drug Prohibition Causes Relapses

an open letter to Jeffrey A. Singer of the Cato Institute

Author's Follow-up:

June 04, 2025

Author's Follow-up:

June 05, 2025

Addiction

Ten Tweets

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Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

Diary of a Drug Fiend