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How Science News Reckons Without the Drug War

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

January 28, 2023



a Letter to the Editor at Science News

Science News continues to reckon without the Drug War. We live in an age in which we have outlawed almost all the psychoactive medicines with which humankind has improved its mood in the past. And yet the magazine continues to publish articles about human psychology without even mentioning this fact.

April 2025 Update

Of course, Science News can be forgiven, in a way, for when it comes to psychology, they are writing about a field which itself has failed to acknowledge the very existence of the Drug War, let alone the many ways in which its ideology of substance demonization limits our concept of how we might best treat mood and mind problems.

Take your January 28 article about human flourishing. Author Sujata Gupta tells us that "positive psychologists tend to believe that anyone can flourish." If all drugs were legal, as has been the status quo of humanity until 1914, this statement could be judged on its own terms; but in the age of the Drug War, such a statement represents a tacit endorsement of the belief of Mary Baker Eddy, that we do not need drugs - indeed, that drugs are so superfluous to human happiness that prominent psychologists need not even acknowledge their existence, much less the fact that they have been outlawed by one's own government. This silence on the part of psychologists is both disappointing and anti-scientific, for in outlawing time-honored psychoactive medicine, the government has effectively dictated the direction in which psychologists are allowed to go when seeking answers to psychological issues, namely, in a direction that conforms with the anti-drug prejudices of Christian Science.

In the same article, psychologist Oksana Yakushko tells us that she is "troubled by the sociopolitical implications of selling this positive psychology ideology in a world where human beings are consistently abused, traumatized and stressed because they are not white, wealthy, able-bodied, Western, heterosexual, etc." One thing that does not seem to trouble her, however, is the fact that the Drug War has outlawed all the medicines which could obviate the need for this self-help positive psychology in the first place.

Did HG Wells and Jules Verne need to learn how to flourish in the abstract in order to write great stories? No, they relied on the inspirational power of coca wine. Did the Peruvian Indians need to learn how to flourish in the abstract in order to survive for millennia as a unique culture? No. They found social cohesion and inner strength through the daily chewing of the coca leaf.

The Drug War exists and continues to outlaw psychoactive medicine to this day. Until Science News recognizes that fact in its articles, it is going to continue giving its readers the false impression that today's modern psychologists are working from a natural baseline1.



Author's Follow-up:

April 05, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




Am I the only one who sees what is going on here? Psychologists and philosophers are reckoning without substance prohibition! The Soma 2 of the Hindu religion inspired and elated. Writing about the mindset of the Vedic people of 1500 BCE would make no sense without reference to the drug. Here is just one of the seemingly endless references to the divine substance in the Rig Veda.

"Soma, 3 send us a good and happy mind, send energy and mental power."


Yet almost all scientists and science magazines that reference human psychology do so with the implicit understanding that psychoactive substances simply do not exist -- the kinds of substances that inspired the following user reports in Pihkal, for instance:

"I acknowledged a rapture in the very act of breathing."

"I felt that the experience continued for many days, and I feel that it is one of the most profound and deep learning experiences I have had."

"The breakthrough I had... was of the highest value and importance for me."

"An energetic feeling began to take over me. It continued to grow. The feeling was one of great camaraderie, and it was very easy to talk to people."


They totally ignore all such transformative drug use and deign to tell us whether or not human beings can flourish naturally in life, when the real question is obviously: Will the government ALLOW them to flourish naturally in life? or will they not rather outlaw the kinds of substances that inspired the Hindu religion!

Trump was right, albeit for the wrong reasons. We have a kind of fake science today, at least when it comes to the study of mind and mood. We do so from the point of view that substance prohibition is a natural baseline -- which it so demonstrably is NOT!

The fact is, no one has ever had the freedom, the money and the desire to study all psychoactive substances in the world from the viewpoint of psychological common sense, as opposed to the purblind viewpoint of behaviorists who are dogmatically blind to all obvious benefits of drug use. We can never opine advisedly on the ability of the mind to help us flourish in life until we legalize the search for such power on the mind's part, until we re-legalize and study the substances that the Drug Warrior has taught us to demonize a priori.

Meanwhile, drug prohibition is NOT a natural baseline from which to write articles on such subjects. If science magazines insist on referring to the work of researchers who think otherwise, then these magazines are obliged by their own scientific standards to admit this assumption in a disclaimer, such as:

"This article was written from the standpoint of Drug War ideology, which holds that outlawed substances can have no beneficial uses. The author(s) therefore ignore the well-documented power of drugs to inspire and elate."

You will find, in fact, that our libraries are full of books written by authors who ignore the Drug War. Were authors to recognize the glaringly obvious power of drugs to elate, then all books about suicide 4 prevention would be primarily about ending substance prohibition, as would all books about shock therapy, as would all books about police violence, etc. In other words, the self-censorship of scientists referenced above is part of a bigger problem: namely, a whole world full of authors whose works have been dumbed down by their kneejerk adherence to the Drug War lie: the lie which tells us that outlawed substances can have no beneficial uses for anyone, for any reason, at any dosage, at any time, ever.









Notes for essay entitled How Science News Reckons Without the Drug War:

1: How psychologists gaslight us about beneficial drug use DWP (up)
2: Blue Tide: The Search for Soma: a philosophical review of the book by Mike Jay DWP (up)
3: “Blue Tide - Mike Jay.” 2025. Mike Jay. May 18, 2025. https://mikejay.net/books/blue-tide/. (up)
4: Why Americans Prefer Suicide to Drug Use DWP (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




My depression would disappear overnight if religiously intolerant America would just allow me to live as freely as Benjamin Franklin.

Drug prohibition fails even on its own terms. Instead of protecting white American young people, it has exiled them to the city streets where they are sacrificed on the altar of the American religion of substance demonization.

All the problems that folks associate with drugs are caused by prohibition. Thousands were not dying on the streets when opioids were legal in America. It took prohibition to bring that about.

A law proposed in Colorado in February 2024 would have criminalized positive talk about drugs online. What? The world is on the brink of nuclear war because of hate-driven politics, and I can be arrested for singing the praises of empathogens?

And so, by ignoring all "up" sides to drugs, the DEA points to potential addiction as a knock-down argument for their prohibition. This is the logic of children (and uneducated children at that). It is a cost-benefit analysis that ignores all benefits.

In response to a tweet that "some drugs cannot be used wisely for recreational purposes": The problem is, most people draw such conclusions based on general impressions inspired by a media that demonizes drugs. In reality, it's hard to imagine a drug that cannot theoretically be used wisely for recreation at some dose, in some context.

Someone tweeted that fears about a Christian Science theocracy are "baseless." Tell that to my uncle who was lobotomized because they outlawed meds that could cheer him up -- tell that to myself, a chronic depressive who could be cheered up in an instant with outlawed meds.

It's a category error to say that scientists can tell us if psychoactive drugs "really work." It's like asking Dr. Spock of Star Trek if hugging "really works." ("Hugging is highly illogical, Captain.")

In a free world, almost all depressed individuals could do WITHOUT doctors: these adult human beings could handle their own depression with the informed intermittent use of a wide variety of psychoactive substances.

I can't imagine Allen Ginsberg writing "Howl!" while under the influence of mood-damping drugs like Inderal and Prozac -- but then maybe that's the point: the powers-that-be do not want poets writing poems like "Howl!"


Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






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