How National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of coca
an open letter to the National Geographic Society
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
May 21, 2024
Dear National Geographic Society:
Your 2013 article is biased against the Inca and their use of coca. The title reads "Inca Child Sacrifice Victims Were Drugged: Mummy hair reveals that young victims were heavy users of coca and alcohol" by Brian Handwerk1. The implication is that the sacrifice victims were made compliant and drowsy via coca. But that is not what coca does. It sharpens one's senses. Does your author think that one can be "drugged" by drinking coffee? And what does he mean by "heavy users of coca"? The Inca WERE heavy users of coca, and the child was at the age of maturity, when they are allowed to chew their first quid. Sure, they are "heavy users" by prudish American standards, but not by Inca standards.
You also defame coca in an article entitled: "Coca: A Blessing and a Curse."2 That's a political statement on your part, not fact. Coca is not a curse, prohibition is the curse! It has consigned coca growers to a life of poverty and caused a civil war in Mexico.
Author's Follow-up: May 21, 2024
I submitted the above comment to the National Geographic Society today on their contact page3. The site returned the message "YOUR CASE WAS CREATED. We'll get back to you soon." Past experience suggests that they won't actually do that, but watch this space for updates just in case the moon should indeed turn blue.
Author's Follow-up: June 14, 2024
Surprise! Nat Geo has not gotten back to me yet. Only fancy!
Cocaine can be used wisely, believe it or not. Just ask Carl Hart. Or Graham Norton, the UK's quixotic answer to Johnny Carson. Just ask the Peruvian Indians, who have chewed the coca leaf for stamina and inspiration since Pre-Inca days. You have been taught to hate cocaine by a lifetime of censorship -- and by an FDA which dogmatically ignores all positive aspects of drug use, just as they ignore all downsides to prohibition.
Laws are never going to stop westerners from using cocaine, nor should they. Such laws are not making the world safe. To the contrary, laws against cocaine have made our world unthinkably violent! It has created cartels out of whole cloth, cartels that engage in torture and which suborn government officials, to the point that "the rule of law" is little more than a joke south of the border.
This is the enormous price tag of America's hateful policy of substance prohibition: the overthrow of democratic norms around the world.
The eerie bit is that most leading drug warriors understand this fact and approve of it. Too much democracy is anathema to the powers-that-be.
So... "Is cocaine use good or bad?" The question does not even make sense. Cocaine use is a blessing for some, just a little fun for most, and a curse for a few. Just like any other risky activity.
Wonder how America got to the point where we let the Executive Branch arrest judges? Look no further than the Drug War, which, since the 1970s, has demonized Constitutional protections as impediments to justice. The media has played its role with movies like "Running with the DEA," "The Crisis" and "The Runner." In the first of these three, the DEA are the "good guys" for murdering a suspect in cold blood. In the second, the DEA plants evidence to cover up the murder of a drug suspect by an indignant mother. And in the third, a white detective stages a raid that kills a young Black teenager that said detective refers to as "a waste of space."
The Drug War is all about making us hate -- making us hate anybody except for the folks that brought about the violence and drug problems in the first place: the damned prohibitionists who, having failed to outlaw liquor, turned their scapegoating on every less dangerous substance in the world.
Meanwhile, the media have done all they can to support this drug war by holding the use of outlawed substances to safety standards that are never applied to any other risky activity on earth, meanwhile ignoring the fact that prohibition encourages ignorance and leads to contaminated drug supply. Thousands of American young people die each month because of unregulated supply and ignorance, not from drugs themselves.
The media also supports the drug war by failing to hold it accountable for all the problems that it causes. Just read any article on inner-city shootings -- today's journalists will trace the problem to a lack of jobs or to global warming, to anything but the drug war which incentivized violence in the first place. As for violence overseas, we're told that it's caused by evil rotten drug cartels -- without any acknowledgement that it was American drug policy that created those cartels out of whole cloth, just as liquor prohibition created the Mafia here in the States.
Meanwhile, the media have a field day superstitiously blaming drugs. It used to be PCP, ICE, oxy, crack, and now it's fentanyl... It's all part of the DEA's tried-and-true formula to stay relevant, as academic Philip Jenkins clearly demonstrates in "Synthetic Panics": Take a local drug problem and publicize it so that it goes national. Then work with a film crew at "48 Hours" to show that the drug in question threatens the white American middle class. Then go to Congress, hat in hand, and accept billions to 'solve' the latest drug problem.
And Americans fall for it every time. In fact, their gullibility seems to be increasing over time. They love to hate drugs, so much so that drugs have become the new horror trope. Recent movies have taken to personifying "evil" drugs in the forms of Crack Raccoons and Meth Gators. It's sad that America has become so superstitious and childish about drugs -- and the media can take much of the blame.
Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.
I don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.
Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the drug war ideology of substance demonization.
UNESCO celebrates the healing practices of the Kallawaya people of South America. What hypocrisy! UNESCO supports a drug war that makes some of those practices illegal!
Cop and detective shows are loaded with subtle drug war propaganda, including lines like, "She had a history of drug use, so..." The implication being that anyone who uses substances that politicians hate cannot be trusted.
Two of the biggest promoters of the psychedelic renaissance shuffle their feet when you ask them about substance prohibition. Michael Pollan and Rick Strassman just don't get it: prohibition kills.
First we outlaw all drugs that could help; then we complain that some people have 'TREATMENT-RESISTANT DEPRESSION'. What? No. What they really "have" is an inability to thrive because of our idiotic drug laws.
3:51 PM · Jul 15, 2024
The Drug War is the ultimate example of strategic fearmongering by self-interested politicians.
Like when Laura Sanders tells us in Science News that depression is an intractable problem, she should rather tell us: "Depression is an intractable problem... that is, in a world wherein we refuse to consider the benefits of 'drugs,' let alone to fight for their beneficial use."
Your drug war has caused the disappearance of over 60,000 Mexicans over the last 20 years. It has turned inner cities into shooting galleries. It has turned America into a penal colony. It has destroyed the 4th amendment and put bureaucrats in charge of deciding if our religions are "sincere."
Mad in America publishes stories of folks who are disillusioned with antidepressants, but they won't publish mine, because I find mushrooms useful. They only want stories about cold turkey and jogging, or nutrition, or meditation.
Well, today's Oregon vote scuttles any ideas I might have entertained about retiring in Oregon.
I should have added to that last post: "I in no way want to glorify or condone drug demonization."
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, How National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of coca: an open letter to the National Geographic Society, published on May 21, 2024 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)
You have been reading an article entitled, How National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of coca: an open letter to the National Geographic Society, published on May 21, 2024 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)
