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How drug warriors have destroyed America's faith in the power of education

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

August 15, 2025




cartoon drawing of ostrich with head in sand, with caption reading: 'Drugs? What drugs?'The War on Drugs has destroyed America's faith in the power of education. In fact, it has made us think of education as WRONG in and of itself, at least when it comes to drugs! This fact alone should make freedom-loving Americans renounce prohibition on principle, as an affront to the core ideas upon which democracy is based: first and foremost, the idea that education is actually a GOOD thing.

Florida state Senator Paula Hawkins is the poster child for this new self-imposed Dark Ages in America. Paula is (or rather was) the Nancy Reagan crony who stood up in her state legislature in the middle of the drug-hating 1980s and waved a copy of Andrew Weil's classic book in the air, "From Chocolate to morphine 1 : Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs.2" Hawkins was incensed that Weil's book dared to tell the honest facts about drugs and drug use from a viewpoint other than that of a fearmongering prohibitionist 3. She wanted to have the book banned from school libraries and even sought to have Andrew Weil himself silenced. Fortunately, these attempts on her part ultimately backfired in at least two enormous ways: first by giving the book much-needed publicity among the general public, and second by drawing the world's attention to the disturbing fact that drug prohibition implies (and even ultimately requires) the outlawing of free speech -- and of factual education itself4.

THE NEW RIP VAN WINKLE


cartoon drawing of the famous rural rustic, Rip Van Winkle, from the eponymous story by Washington IrvingThe materialists of the western world are like Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle when it comes to drugs. They are just now awakening from an intoxiphobic slumber that has lasted millennia. It never even occurred to us during this dogmatic downtime of ours that we should actively seek out and use psychoactive medicines for the psychosocial benefit of humankind. We are just now, in the 21st century after Christ, beginning to realize what the indigenous peoples of the world have known all along: that the world is full of psychoactive substances with obvious beneficial effects: substances found in lichen, fungi, animals, trees, flowers -- yea, even in our own so-called "sober" biochemistry. Unfortunately, our response to this newly discovered truth about the world, that it is a world full of drugs, has been the response of a frightened ostrich. We have refused to accept the world as it is and have used censorship and fearmongering to remake the world in accordance with our jaundiced perception of it. Rather than acknowledging the fact that nature is full of potential godsend medicines, we have the hubris to travel the globe to physically destroy such substances, so great is our pathological desire to re-create the world so that it accords with our drug-hating prejudices.

CONCLUSION

Seen in this light, we should not be surprised at the attempts of Drug Warriors to deny the benefits of education itself. Education is anathema to those who wish to rewrite history in accordance with western prejudices. What Hawkins and company insist upon is indoctrination about drugs, not education.


musclebound ogre with long red beard wearing a conical cap with the word 'dunce on it'.  Caption below reads: Medicamento bellator, 'Drug Warrior'
If the dunce cap fits, wear it. What else can you call worrywarts who ignore all the downsides of their prohibitionist impulses and are completely clueless about the endless potential upsides of mind- and mood-improving medicines?!











Notes for essay entitled How drug warriors have destroyed America's faith in the power of education:

1: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)
2: Weil, Andrew, and Winifred Rosen. 2004. From Chocolate to Morphine : Everything You Need to Know about Mind-Altering Drugs. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. (up)
3: The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Dr. Andrew Weil (#350) The Tim Ferriss Show, 2018 (up)
4: Speak now or forever hold your peace about drug prohibition DWP (up)




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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




We should place prohibitionists on trial for destroying inner cities.

The drug war is being used as a wrecking ball to destroy democratic freedoms. It has destroyed the 4th amendment and freedom of religion and given the police the right to confiscate the property of peaceful and productive citizens.

When Americans "obtain their majority" and wish to partake of drugs safely, they should be paired with older adults who have done just that. Instead, we introduce them to "drug abusers" in prerecorded morality plays to reinforce our biased notions that drug use is wrong.

If they're going to throw doctors in jail for prescribing too much pain medication, they should also throw them in jail for prescribing too LITTLE.

High suicide rates? What a poser! Gee, I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that the US has outlawed all substances that elate and inspire???

The massive use of plea deals lets prosecutors threaten drug suspects into giving up their rights to a fair trial.

I'm going to get on the grade-school circuit, telling kids to say no to horses. "You think you can handle horses, kids? That's what Christopher Reeves thought. The fact is, NOBODY can handle horses!!!"

I wonder if Nixon knew what a favor he was doing medical capitalism when he outlawed psychedelics. Those drugs can actually cure things, and there's no money in that.

Drug testing should flag impairment only. Any other use is a flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment.

The healthcare industry turns all the emotional downsides of drug prohibition into "illnesses."


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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