How Drug Prohibition Leads to Excessive Drinking and Smoking

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How Drug Prohibition Leads to Excessive Drinking and Smoking

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

June 6, 2025

I stopped by a convenience store yesterday and noticed a huge sign behind the counter: "Nicotine is an addictive drug. This is because it changes the brain."

This warning, as the fine print makes clear, is displayed thanks to a court ruling. (I say "fine print," but the sign is so large that even this introductory blurb reads like a banner headline.)

This made me stop and think, why do we never see a sign like the following at psychiatrist's offices:

"SSRIs are dependence-causing drugs. This is because they change the brain."

That latter claim has been clearly demonstrated in the work of Richard Whitaker, who reveals how antidepressants ¹ cause the very chemical imbalances that they are purported to fix ².

The Jekyll and Hyde nature of America's attitude toward drugs is made clear by such over-the-top warnings about tobacco: on the one hand, we're screaming "Danger!" On the other, we're screaming, "Just let me buy what the hell I want to buy!" And the former court-supported warnings get louder every year. It seems it won't be long before stores are required to hire someone to personally lecture a would-be purchaser about the dangers of nicotine before allowing them to buy a pack of cigarettes.

This got me thinking about the relationship between nicotine and drug prohibition.

In my childhood in the '60s and '70s, I was subject to a barrage of television commercials ³ teaching me that cigarette smoking causes addiction and cancer. I now see in hindsight that this public health campaign helped to normalize the idea of drug prohibition in my mind by getting me used to the idea that the government and the courts had a role in protecting me from making bad decisions.

What I had yet to realize was that drug prohibition itself is what made tobacco the go-to drug for most Americans in the first place! It did this by outlawing all alternatives. Opium smoking drastically decreases the desire for tobacco smoking (and alcohol, for that matter), as does the use of certain phenethylamines synthesized by Alexander Shulgin, as is clear from the user reports that the chemist cites in "Pihkal.⁴" And yet we legalize tobacco while outlawing all less inherently risky drug use, in the same way that we legalize alcohol while outlawing all less inherently risky drug use.

This is what America cannot get through its thick puritanical skull: that drug prohibition causes the very problems that we assume that it will solve. Drug prohibition has always been based on the assumption that less drug use is always better -- but that is demonstrably false, not least because drug use has inspired entire religions ⁵! In a sane world, we would use the least harmful drugs in the wisest possible way, and this is made impossible by drug prohibition.

What are the prohibitionists thinking? They seem to be expecting that someday people will be happy to do without any mood-enhancing substances of any kind, but that is a bizarre, anti-scientific, ahistorical and inhumane goal. It can only be maintained seriously by a Christian Scientist as a matter of religious faith. To enforce such laws is, in fact, the enforcement of the Christian Science religion as the law of the land. Such tyranny makes no more sense than outlawing drugs for physical conditions, under the theory that no one "really" needs those either, provided only that they were "right with God."

Drug prohibition has not ended drug use in America. To the contrary, it has ensured that only the most dangerous possible drug use is practiced. Why? Because we have outlawed everything else!

As with any essay on the idiocy of drug prohibition, there is so much more that could and should be said on this topic. But I will spare the reader any more obvious truths in this particular post. Let me end, however, by citing a quote from William H. Brereton in the Truth About Opium, published in 1822 to counter the absurd lies of the Anti-Opium Society.

"Nicotine, the alkaloid of tobacco, is simply a deadly and rapid poison, useful only to the assassin. Morphia, the alkaloid of opium, is only poisonous when taken in an excessive quantity; whether used internally or injected under the skin, it is the most wonderful anodyne and sedative known. I fully believe that, when medical men come to study opium and opium smoking more fully, it will become the established opinion of the faculty that opium smoking is not only perfectly harmless, but that it is most beneficial, so that it may ultimately not only put down spirit drinking, but perhaps supersede, to a great extent, tobacco.⁶"

Of course, this quote will be hard for Americans to believe, since they have been protected from their birth from learning anything about the benefits of drug use -- just as they have been shielded from learning anything about the endless downsides of drug prohibition.

AFTERWORD

Even Psychology Today now acknowledges that SSRIs do not fix chemical imbalances. In fact, in a 2022 PT article ⁷ by Noam Shpancer Ph.D., the author tells us that "We don't know how antidepressants work." I would agree, except to add that "We don't know that they work at all," except perhaps to make the user satisfied with a lack of self-realization in life. Some might even claim that they keep some folk from committing suicide, but they only do so by limiting their possibilities in life. If we really wanted to help the depressed, we would let them thrive on the wise use of phenethylamines and opium and coca, all of which are inherently less dangerous than alcohol and tobacco, at least in a world in which we teach safe use and regulate product -- a world in which we replace the hateful Drug Enforcement Agency with a Drug Education Agency, staffed by what I call pharmacologically savvy empaths ⁸.

Pharmacologically Savvy Empaths

Notes:

1: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
2: Whitaker, Robert. 2011. “Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker: 9780307452429 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books.” PenguinRandomhouse.com. 2025. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/189611/anatomy-of-an-epidemic-by-robert-whitaker/. (up)
3: Television Commercials and Drugs DWP (up)
4: Pihkal 2.0: Finding drugs that work for users rather than for pharmaceutical companies DWP (up)
5: How the Drug War Outlaws Religion DWP (up)
6: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
7: 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)
8: Replacing Psychiatry with Pharmacologically Savvy Shamanism DWP (up)

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Just saw a prosecutor gloating about the drug dealers she has taken down.How much is she getting paid to play whack-a-mole?

Here's the first step in the FDA process for evaluating a psychoactive drug: Ignore all glaringly obvious benefits.

The best step we could take in harm reduction is re-legalizing everything and starting to teach safe use. Spend the DEA's billions on "go" teams that would descend on locations where drugs are being used stupidly -- not to arrest, but to educate.

Scientists are responsible for endless incarcerations in America. Why? Because they fail to denounce the DEA lie that psychoactive substances have no positive medical uses. This is so obviously wrong that only an academic in an Ivory Tower could believe it.

The Drug War shows us that American democracy is fundamentally flawed. Propaganda and fearmongering has persuaded Americans to give up freedoms that are clearly enunciated in the U.S. Constitution. We need a new democracy in which a Constitution actually matters.

There's more than set and setting: there's fundamental beliefs about the meaning of life and about why mother nature herself is full of psychoactive substances. Tribal peoples associate some drugs with actual sentient entities -- that is far beyond "set and setting."

What is the end game of the drug warrior? A world in which no one wants drugs? That's not science. It's the drug-hating religion of Christian Science. You know, the American religion that outsources its Inquisition to drug-testing labs.

America takes away the citizen's right to manage their own depression by making opium and cocaine illegal. Then psychiatrists treat the resulting epidemic of depression and anxiety by damaging the patient's brain with shock therapy.

No wonder the "Justice" Department relies on plea deals; otherwise juries could use nullification to free those charged with mere drug possession.

Healthline posted an article in 2021 about the benefits of getting off of antidepressants. They did not even mention the biggest benefit: NO LONGER BEING AN ETERNAL PATIENT -- no longer being a child in the eyes of an all-knowing healthcare system.

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How Drug Prohibition Leads to Excessive Drinking and Smoking

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