How National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of coca
an open letter to the National Geographic Society
by 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. You have been taught otherwise by a lifetime of censorship -- and by an FDA which dogmatically ignores all positive aspects of drug use, including increased communicative skill and endurance.
The media have done all they can to support the 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.
They also support the drug war by ignoring it. Just read any article on inner-city shootings or on the extraordinary violence that is forever breaking out in South America. It's all related to the fact that America, in its arrogance, taught the world to blame plant medicines for social problems. And there was no excuse. Liquor prohibition had already created the American Mafia: and yet the media sees no connection between the drug war and the violence judging by their news coverage.
They also have a field day superstitiously blaming drugs. It used to be PCP, ICE, oxy, crack, and now it's fentanyl... Movies are now personifying these drugs in the forms of Crack Raccoons and Meth Gators. America has become so superstitious and childish about drugs that it's sad -- 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.
More materialist nonsense. "We" are the only reason that the universe exists as a universe rather than as inchoate particles.
Trump supports the drug war and Big Pharma: the two forces that have turned me into a patient for life with dependence-causing antidepressants. Big Pharma makes the pills, and the drug war outlaws all viable alternatives.
The first step in harm reduction is to re-legalize mother nature's medicines. Then hundreds of millions of people will no longer suffer in silence for want of godsend medicines... for depression, for pain, for anxiety, for religious doubts... you name it.
America's "health" system was always screaming at me about the threat of addiction from drugs. Then what did it do? It put me on the most dependence-causing meds of all time: SSRIs and SNRIs.
Prohibitionists are also responsible for the 100,000-plus killed in the US-inspired Mexican drug war
If psychoactive drugs had never been criminalized, science would never have had any reason or excuse for creating SSRIs that muck about unpredictably with brain chemistry. Chewing the coca leaf daily would be one of many readily available "miracle treatments" for depression.
To understand why the western world is blind to the benefits of "drugs," read "The Concept of Nature" by Whitehead. He unveils the scientific schizophrenia of the west, according to which the "real" world is invisible to us while our perceptions are mere "secondary" qualities.
Jim Hogshire described sleep cures that make physical withdrawal from opium close to pain-free. As for "psychological addiction," there are hundreds of elating drugs that could be used to keep the ex-user's mind from morbidly focusing on a drug whose use has become problematic for them.
Rick Strassman reportedly stopped his DMT trials because some folks had bad experiences at high doses. That is like giving up on aspirin because high doses of NSAIDs can kill.
This massive concern for safety is downright bizarre in a country that will not even criminalize bump stocks for automatic weapons.
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)