How drug warriors have destroyed America's faith in the power of education
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
August 15, 2025
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
The 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.
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?!
Wade Davis writes that cocaine was outlawed because 400 people consumed toxic doses worldwide. What about the 49,000 that commit suicide every year because we have outlawed drugs that could cheer them up!!!
Attention People's magazine editorial staff:
Matthew Perry was a big boy who made his own decisions. He didn't die because of ketamine or because of evil rotten drug dealers, he died because of America's enforced ignorance about psychoactive drugs.
For most drugs, dependency is a bug. For Big Pharma antidepressants, it is a feature.
Do drug warriors realize that they are responsible for the deaths of young people on America's streets? Look in the mirror, folks. People were not dying en masse from opium overdoses when opiates were legal. It took your prohibition to accomplish that! Stop arresting, start teaching safe use!
The line drawn between recreational and medical use is wishful thinking on the part of drug warriors. Recreation, according to Webster's, is "refreshment or diversion," and both have positive knock-on effects in the lives of real people.
In the Atomic Age Declassified, they tell us that we needed hundreds of thermonuclear tests so that scientists could understand the effects. That's science gone mad. Just like today's scientists who need more tests before they can say that laughing gas will help the depressed. Science today is all about ignoring the obvious.
The drug war is a scare campaign to teach us to distrust mother nature and to rely on pharmaceuticals instead.
"The Harrison [Narcotics] Act made the drug peddler, and the drug peddler makes drug addicts.” --Robert A. Schless, 1925.
This is why "rock stars" use drugs: not just for performance anxiety (which, BTW, is a completely UNDERSTANDABLE reason for drug use), but because they want to fully experience the music, even tho' they may be currently short on money and being hassled by creditors, etc.
Even prohibition haters have their own list of drugs that they feel should be outlawed. They're missing the point. We should not drugs "up or down" any more than we should judge penicillin or aspirin in that way.
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.
The 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.
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