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How Ecstasy could end mass shootings



by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher





March 26, 2021

Ecstasy helps humans love each other. Time to use it therapeutically on hot heads.

It's hard to end mass shootings in America, because we're not allowed to come up with any solution that involves guns in any way. So we're hobbled from the start. It's like we're being asked to solve one of those crazy logic problems that says: "Using two match sticks, make 10 triangles... but you're not allowed to touch the match sticks at any time."

But I do have one idea of how to end -- or at least to seriously decrease -- mass shootings without (heaven forbid) inconveniencing gun owners in any way, shape or form. Here's the solution:

Force all haters to undergo talk therapy while under the influence of MDMA, aka Ecstasy. That's it. Problem solved (or at least seriously dented).

Why? Because the Drug Ecstasy has a long history of promoting pro-social feelings. The drug single-handedly brought about peace, love and understanding in Britain in the 1990s, when E-using folks of every ethnic group happily joined together on the dance floor to celebrate life without regard for racial, social or ethnic distinctions, a unity never witnessed before in the British Isles. That dance floor utopia would still be going on today except that Drug Warriors blamed one single solitary death on E, and used that as an excuse to crack down on the drug. The result: dancers switched from Ecstasy to anger-facilitating drugs such as alcohol and crack cocaine, and concert producers had to hire special forces troops to police their venues.

Yet another "victory" for the Drug War.

Of course, the Drug Warriors failed to notice that the E-related death which inspired their crackdown was caused by the Drug War itself. Why? Because the Drug War suppresses research on substances like Ecstasy, making it impossible to establish guidelines for safe use. Nor did they stop to think that Ecstasy was, in fact, FANTASTICALLY SAFE compared to alcohol, which racked up 5,460 deaths in Great Britain in 2020 alone* -- deaths over which the purblind British Drug Warrior never lost a moment of sleep, let alone launched a nationwide campaign to demonize alcohol.

So the good news is that Ecstasy could drastically decrease mass shootings if we were to use it therapeutically to treat angry people.

The bad news is that America is unlikely to hear this penny drop for many decades to come. Why not? Because guns are not the only thing that Americans are hung up about. They're hung up about the politically created scapegoat called "drugs" as well, unable to wrap their minds around the fact that the substances we dogmatically demonize today could actually be used for the good of a hate-filled humanity, if not to save us from nuclear annihilation, then at least to render mass shootings fewer and farther between.

Until America ends its illogical policy of substance demonization, Americans will remain as confused about mass shootings "as the Egyptians in their fog" as Shakespeare says, vainly trying to think of solutions to this problem that do not involve either guns OR drugs... a self-created dilemma that makes the above-mentioned matchstick problem sound solvable by comparison.

*https://thehill.com/policy/international/europe/537505-alcohol-related-deaths-hit-record-high-in-uk-amid-coronavirus



The Links Police

Do you know why I stopped you? That's right, because the Drug War gives me carte blanche to be a noxious busybody. That, and I wanted to give you a few more links showing how drugs can help us stop mass shootings, as soon as we drop the drug-war ideology of substance demonization, that is.

How the Drug War killed Leah Betts: How the British government discouraged research that could have saved Leah Betts, meanwhile shutting down the rave scene Camelot and replacing it with gangsters and crack
Saying Yes to Drugs: Say YES to empathogens like Ecstasy and Psilocybin, which teach haters how to love their fellow human being.
How the Drug War Blinds us to Godsend Medicine: By outlawing psychoactive plants, the Drug War dooms the chronic depressive to a lifetime addiction to brain-numbing Big Pharma 'meds.'
Open letter to Professor Troy Glover at Waterloo University: The rave scene is not about leisure: it's about peace, love and understanding and the Drug Warrior's attempt to get rid of that utopia by superstitiously demonizing politically hated substances
MDMA for Psychotherapy: How MDMA fights depression through anticipation, and how reductionists ignore the factd


May 25, 2022




By the way, MDMA is already being fast-tracked by the FDA as a treatment for PTSD and depression. Of course, "fast-tracked" is a relative term. Brian is 64 years old, and he's been waiting his whole life for the FDA to approve medicines that grow at his very feet -- so there is nothing "fast" at all about the FDA approval process. But for those who doubt the ability of MDMA (aka Ecstasy) to change hearts, check out How the Drug War killed Leah Betts: How the British government discouraged research that could have saved Leah Betts, meanwhile shutting down the rave scene Camelot and replacing it with gangsters and crack -- or better yet watch the documentary "One Nation" by concert promoter Terry "Turbo" Smith, in which we hear the following "rave reviews" about the peace and harmony that MDMA brought to the British dance floor in the 1990s (before Drug Warriors criminalized the drug and alcohol-fueled violence ensued).

"It was the first time that black-and-white people had integrated on a level... and everybody was one." -- DJ Ray Keith.



"It was black and white, Asian, Chinese, all up in one building," -- MC GQ.



"Everyone's loving each other, man, they're not hating." - DJ Mampi Swift.


The DEA outlawed MDMA/Ecstasy in 1985, against the advice of its own legal counsel. The result: American soldiers have gone without a godsend medicine for PTSD for almost 40 years now.






Author's Follow-up: September 22, 2022

Wow. I've just told America how to end school shootings. That's a tough act to follow, but I think I can do better yet. What if I were to tell you that there is a plant medicine that could end depression? It's been used by the Peruvian Indians for millennia, for whom it was considered divine. I'm talking about the coca leaf. You know? The so-called 'drug' that Americans have ignorantly demonized by conflating it with the cocaine alkaloid that it contains (all so that the US could keep boots on the ground in Latin America). But to ban coca because it contains cocaine is like banning peaches because they contain prussic acid: i.e., it's boneheaded and wrong. See W. Golden Mortimer's book on this topic, if you value facts over fear and truth over government propaganda.


Related tweet: October 24, 2022



"Drugs are horrific," huh? Does he (Rishi Sunak) mean MDMA, which could help end school shootings, or soma, which inspired the Hindu religion, or coca, which was enjoyed by the long-lived Inca for millennia?

MDMA/Ecstasy






The FDA approves of brain-damaging shock therapy but will not approve MDMA for soldiers with PTSD. This is the same FDA that signs off on the psychiatric pill mill upon which 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life. This is the same FDA that approves Big Pharma drugs whose advertised side effects include death itself! (Can somebody say "follow the money"?)

  • Another Academic Toes the Drug Warrior Line
  • Constructive criticism of the MAPS strategy for re-legalizing MDMA
  • Even Terence McKenna Was Wrong About MDMA
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war
  • Hello? MDMA works, already!
  • How Ecstasy could end mass shootings
  • How the Drug War killed Leah Betts
  • Introduction to the Drug War Philosopher Website at AbolishTheDEA.com
  • MDMA and Depression
  • MDMA for Psychotherapy
  • Using Ecstasy in Church




  • Next essay: America's Obsession with Fascist Drug War Movies
    Previous essay: Drugs: the great American scapegoat
    More Essays Here








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    Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs

    Psychiatrists keep flipping the script. When it became clear that SSRIs caused dependence, instead of apologizing, they told us we need to keep taking our meds. Now they even claim that criticizing SSRIs is wrong. This is anti-intellectual madness.
    After over a hundred years of prohibition, America has developed a kind of faux science in which despised substances are completely ignored. This is why Sci Am is making a new argument for shock therapy in 2023, because they ignore all the stuff that OBVIOUSLY cheers one up.
    That's another problem with "following the science." Science downplays personal testimony as subjective. But psychoactive experiences are all ABOUT subjectivity. With such drugs, users are not widgets susceptible to the one-size-fits-all pills of reductionism.
    Check out the 2021 article in Forbes in which a materialist doctor professes to doubt whether laughing gas could help the depressed. Materialists are committed to seeing the world from the POV of Spock from Star Trek.
    The idea that "drugs" have no medical benefits is not science, it is philosophy, and bad philosophy at that. It is based on the idea that benefits must be molecularly demonstratable and not created from mere knock-on psychological effects of drug use, time-honored tho' they be.
    There is an absurd safety standard for "drugs." The cost/benefit analysis of the FDA & co. never takes into account the costs of NOT prescribing nor the benefits of a productive life well lived. The "users" are not considered stakeholders.
    Doc to Franklin: "I'm sorry, Ben, but I see no benefits of opium use under my microscope. The idea that you are living a fulfilled life is clearly a mistake on your part. If you want to be scientific, stop using opium and be scientifically depressed like the rest of us."
    More materialist nonsense. "We" are the only reason that the universe exists as a universe rather than as inchoate particles.
    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.
    If fearmongering drug warriors were right about the weakness of humankind, there would be no social drinkers, only drunkards.
    More Tweets






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    You have been reading an article entitled, How Ecstasy could end mass shootings published on March 26, 2021 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)