no access
How organizations like Mad in America normalize drug prohibition
How organizations like Mad in America normalize drug prohibition
An open Letter to Robert Whitaker
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
April 27, 2026
Any regular reader of this site -- all two of them, in fact -- will know that I am constantly complaining about the failure of movers-and-shakers in the mainstream world to engage with the endless philosophical issues that I raise in my essays. But I have recently discovered that there are at least two things worse than being ghosted on this subject, and that is being told, 1, that one has no standing on these issues, that board-certified healthcare professionals and academics are the real experts, and 2, that one is not raising particularly compelling arguments in the first place.
This is the reception that my article1 about assisted suicide for the depressed met with at Mad In America2, a website and organization devoted to helping the depressed to push back against the psychiatric pill mill. They (i.e., Robert Whitaker and staff) claim that I am not an objective source. Apparently Claire Brosseau3 must die because I do not sound objective when I point out that there are drugs that could make her want to live. It's like I have just run into the fire brigade and warned them of a fire down the street and been ignored because I was shouting and therefore not viewing the world rationally. Sometimes there are reasons to shout; sometimes there is no time to wait for a disinterested party to view the situation godlike from some ivory tower or other.
Besides, I wasn't shouting in said article, though I was certainly writing passionately, partly because I care about the Claire Brosseaus of the world, and partly because, if state-assisted suicide is right for Claire, then it's right for myself as well, since we are both chronic depressives for which the "miracle" drugs of Big Pharma did not work. When psychiatrists and pundits sign off on Claire's right to assisted suicide, they are essentially inviting me to "end it all" as well. But unlike Claire, I am not so willing to normalize drug prohibition that I will go to my grave rather than hold it accountable for its role in depressing me in the first place. I will hold drug prohibition responsible for the evils that it causes, even if no one else will.
But I should not be surprised that Robert Whitaker would not immediately grasp the relevance of drug prohibition to the debate over assisted suicide for the depressed. He does not even recognize the relevance of drug prohibition to his own organization. Mad in America is all about the shortcomings of the psychiatric pill mill, and yet the pill mill owes its very existence to drug prohibition, which gave a monopoly to Big Pharma on the creation and sale of mind and mood medicine. If Robert's goal is to get people off of Big Pharma meds, his organization should be all about ending drug prohibition in the name of healthcare freedom. Instead, he seems to consider drug prohibition as a niche issue, meriting, perhaps, an occasional post by a cautious and well-respected academic suggesting that we should maybe no longer arrest people for sourcing drugs from a non-doctor but rather send them to re-education camps where they can learn the error of their ways. And so, like the organizer of almost every other social justice organization in the country, Robert refuses to hold drug prohibition publicly responsible for the evil that it causes.
This is how Robert -- like almost everybody else in the social justice movement -- helps to normalize drug prohibition. Their silence on the topic leaves the impression that there are no downsides to drug prohibition, from which it follows in the public mind that there need not be any particular hurry to end it.
Key Takeaways:
The psychiatric pill mill would not exist but for drug prohibition.
Mad in America refuses to hold drug prohibition responsible for the problems that it causes.
Any organization that really had the interests of the depressed at heart would be fighting first and foremost for our right to use Mother Nature's medicines. Everything else is a side show.
In a compassionate world, we would give laughing gas kits to the suicidal just as we now give epi pens to those with severe allergies.
Getting off some drugs could actually be fun and instructive, by using a variety of other drugs to keep one's mind off the withdrawal process. But America believes that getting off a drug should be a big moral battle.
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.
"Users" can be kept out of the workforce by the extrajudicial process of drug testing; they can have their baby taken from them, their house, their property -- all because they do not share the intoxiphobic attitude of America.
Racist drug warriors make cities dangerous with drug prohibition -- then they use that danger as an excuse to send in the National Guard.
Everyone's biggest concern is the economy? Is nobody concerned that Trump has promised to pardon insurrectionists and get revenge on critics? Is no one concerned that Trump taught Americans to doubt democracy by questioning our election fairness before one single vote was cast?
When psychiatrists write about heroin, they characterize dependency as enslavement. When they write about antidepressants, they characterize dependency as a medical duty.
The Drug War is a religion. The "addict" is a sinner who has to come home to the true faith of Christian Science. In reality, neither physical nor psychological addiction need be a problem if all drugs were legal and we used them creatively to counter problematic use.
Had we really wanted to "help" users, we would have used the endless godsends of Mother Nature and related synthetics to provide spirit-lifting alternatives to problem use. But no one wanted to treat users as normal humans. They wanted to pathologize and moralize their use.
Drug warriors aren't just deciding for us about drugs. They're telling us that we no longer need Coleridge poems, Lovecraft stories, Robin Williams, Sherlock Holmes, or the soma-inspired Hindu religion.
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.
Any regular reader of this site -- all two of them, in fact -- will know that I am constantly complaining about the failure of movers-and-shakers in the mainstream world to engage with the endless philosophical issues that I raise in my essays. But I have recently discovered that there are at least two things worse than being ghosted on this subject, and that is being told, 1, that one has no standing on these issues, that board-certified healthcare professionals and academics are the real experts, and 2, that one is not raising particularly compelling arguments in the first place. 
(up)