Essay date: November 8, 2022



How the Cato Institute is Bamboozled by Drug War Propaganda

A philosophical review of The Fire Next Door by Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute




 I'm glad that Ted is writing books against the drug war, but there are better motives for doing so than the selfish fear that deadly Mexican battles  will someday come north to shoot up American cities

lthough I welcome Ted Carpenter's call for an end to the Drug War, the author cherishes some of the usual Libertarian misunderstandings about that war that I feel called upon to point out. First, he calls for the "legalization" of Mother Nature's bounty, when in fact he should be calling for its re-legalization, in recognition of the fact that denizens of Planet Earth have had free access to that extant pharmacopoeia for thousands of years, until America of all countries (a country founded on inalienable rights) determined that Americans, and indeed the world, had no natural right to the plant medicines that grow at their very feet. His silence about this fact suggests that he is not arguing against the Drug War on principle, but rather on practical grounds only, as who should say, "The Drug War would be fine if it actually stopped folks from using drugs."

To which I say, really?

If Ted truly supports that latter statement, then he is unaware of the role that such plant medicines have played in establishing entire religions, as the Vedic religion was founded to worship the psychedelic soma or as the Mayans and Inca venerated shrooms and coca respectively. With such a back story in mind, there would be nothing fine at all about a Drug War which actually succeeded in ending drug use in America and the world: to the contrary, that would represent the suppression not merely of a single religion, but of the religious impulse itself. In order to succeed, the Drug War would have to turn the entire world into one single political unit governed by a strict Christian Science sharia-- for the notion that we should abjure drugs comes not from science, but rather from Christian Science, the religion of Mary Baker Eddy, who tells us that we have a moral duty to "just say no" to drugs. And why is this a duty? Because, according to Mary, we are to receive help here-below exclusively from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Indeed, viewed in this light, the Drug War can be seen as an attempt to give Christianity (and its drugs of choice) a monopoly on providing self-transcendence in this life. That is not a consummation devoutly to be wished nor a public policy tamely to be tolerated. It is rather a call to arms for freedom-loving people around the globe.

Like most libertarians, Ted also gives the impression that drug users are basically hedonists but "what are you gonna do? Americans will have their drugs, will we or no?!"

It's little wonder that Ted has this attitude since he lives in a country (indeed a world) where it has been almost illegal to show any positive uses for the various substances that have been demonized and outlawed by botanically clueless politicians. When was the last time that Ted saw or read about a successful author like HG Wells empowering his writing with liberal swigs of Coca Wine? When did he see a TV show or movie in which a young person like Paul Stamets was cured of his childhood stuttering in one afternoon of "mushroom use"? . The fact is that Ted is under the illusion that he lives in a free country and that therefore he can judge drugs from the reality that he sees around him. But that reality has been ruthlessly purged of all mention of positive drug uses. Meanwhile, if truth be told, the drugs that we demonize today show great promise in treating Alzheimer's and soothing hotheads who might otherwise shoot up schools. But Ted, having been taught from grade school to "just say no" to mother nature's godsend medicines, takes the world around him as it is today (opioid crisis and all) as a natural baseline. He sees reports of only thugs and bums using and selling drugs and he lowers his views of those substances accordingly, failing to see that he is observing only what his drug-hating government wants him to observe: the dangerous and bad use of drugs that the Drug War itself has facilitated thanks to prohibition.

He also uncritically uses the term "hard drugs," as if it were a scientific category rather than the political pejorative that it is, based on the prejudices of botanically clueless politicians. He fails to realize that real danger, real "hardness," lies not in the drugs themselves but in our failure to educate folks as to safe use practices. Cocaine would not be a hard or dangerous drug if education was our goal, not incarceration. Even crack cocaine can be used on a non-addictive basis, but that's a fact that the Drug Warrior wants to shield us from, since their goal has never been to educate but rather to instill mindless fear. The coca leaf has been chewed by the long-lived Peruvians for hundreds of years. Yet to this very day, I know full-tenured professors who actually believe that the political category of substances known as "drugs" will fry your brain, when to the contrary the majority of them actually conduce to greater mental clarity when used wisely -- wise use, however, being something that the Drug Warrior makes a living out of trying to prevent.

Ted also uncritically quotes the DEA, the organization that lost its credibility decades ago when it knowingly poisoned pot smokers with paraquat, a weed killer that causes Parkinson's disease, and then went on to criminalize MDMA against the advice of its own legal counsel, thereby denying American soldiers a godsend treatment for PTSD. He quotes this corrupt self-serving organization as saying that legalization increases use.

To which I say, So what? The DEA never had the right to outlaw Mother Nature in the first place. That's a violation of the Natural Law upon which America was founded, as John Locke clearly states in his Second Treatise on Government.

But even if we renounce our American legacy by consigning natural law to the trash bin of history (as Reagan sought to do in 1987 when he ordered the DEA to raid Monticello to confiscate... wait for it, folks... poppy plants!) the following question still remains:

Will "drug" re-legalization kill more people, destroy more societies, censor more scientists, throw more people in jail and militarize more police forces than does substance prohibition?

Of course not. It's not even close.

Surely no American truly believes that legalization will kill more people than does the ongoing prohibition, thanks to which entire wars are afoot around the globe even as we speak. Therefore we have to conclude that their support of continuing the Drug War is based on racism and xenophobia, the hysterical fear that a policy change will put "our little Johnny" at risk, instead of the hundreds of thousands of little Pedros south of the border who have historically been counted on to pay the price for the Drug War's ruinous status quo.

Finally, I'm glad that Ted is writing books against the Drug War, but there are better motives for doing so than the selfish fear that deadly Mexican battles will someday come north to shoot up American cities. Given all the principled reasons why we should have ended the Drug War years ago, it's embarrassing that the Drug War's ultimate demise may be brought about by our rank fear of the Frankenstein that we ourselves created here in America over 100 years ago now, when, based on racist hysteria, we established the deadly precedent of outlawing the psychoactive bounty of Mother Nature.

Next essay: Capitalism and the Drug War Pt 2
Previous essay: Richard Rudgley condemns 'drugs' with faint praise

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In 1987, the Monticello Foundation invited the DEA onto the property to confiscate Thomas Jeffersons poppy plants, in violation of the Natural Law upon which the gardening fan had founded America

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href="https://www.abolishthedea.com/">AbolishTheDEA.com

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You have been reading essays by the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass, at abolishthedea.com. Brian is the founder of The Drug War Gift Shop, where artists can feature and sell their protest artwork online. He has also written for Sociodelic and is the author of The Drug War Comic Book, which contains 150 political cartoons illustrating some of the seemingly endless problems with the war on drugs -- many of which only Brian seems to have noticed, by the way, judging by the recycled pieties that pass for analysis these days when it comes to "drugs." That's not surprising, considering the fact that the category of "drugs" is a political category, not a medical or scientific one.

A "drug," as the world defines the term today, is "a substance that has no good uses for anyone, ever, at any time, under any circumstances" -- and, of course, there are no substances of that kind: even cyanide and the deadly botox toxin have positive uses: a war on drugs is therefore unscientific at heart, to the point that it truly qualifies as a superstition, one in which we turn inanimate substances into boogie-men and scapegoats for all our social problems.

The Drug War is, in fact, the philosophical problem par excellence of our time, premised as it is on a raft of faulty assumptions (notwithstanding the fact that most philosophers today pretend as if the drug war does not exist). It is a war against the poor, against minorities, against religion, against science, against the elderly, against the depressed, against those in pain, against children in hospice care, and against philosophy itself. It outlaws substances that have inspired entire religions, Nazifies the English language and militarizes police forces nationwide.

It bans the substances that inspired William James' ideas about human consciousness and the nature of ultimate reality. In short, it causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, meanwhile violating the Natural Law upon which Thomas Jefferson founded America. (Surely, Jefferson was rolling over in his grave when Ronald Reagan's DEA stomped onto Monticello in 1987 and confiscated the founding father's poppy plants.)

If you believe in freedom and democracy, in America and around the world, please stay tuned for more philosophically oriented broadsides against the outrageous war on godsend medicines, AKA the war on drugs.

Brian Quass
The Drug War Philosopher
abolishthedea.com

PS The drug war has not failed: to the contrary, it has succeeded, insofar as its ultimate goal was to militarize police forces around the world and help authorities to ruthlessly eliminate those who stand in the way of global capitalism. For more, see Drug War Capitalism by Dawn Paley. Oh, and did I mention that most Drug Warriors these days would never get elected were it not for the Drug War itself, which threw hundreds of thousands of their political opposition in jail? Trump was right for the wrong reasons: elections are being stolen in America, but the number-one example of that fact is his own narrow victory in 2016, which could never have happened without the existence of laws that were specifically written to keep Blacks and minorities from voting. The Drug War, in short, is a cancer on the body politic.

Rather than apologetically decriminalizing selected plants, we should be demanding the immediate restoration of Natural Law, according to which "The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being." (John Locke)

Selected Bibliography

  • Andrew, Christopher "The Secret World: A History of Intelligence" 2019 Yale University Press
  • Aurelius, Marcus "Meditations" 2021 East India Publishing Company
  • Bandow, Doug "From Fighting The Drug War To Protecting The Right To Use Drugs"2018
  • Barrett, Damon "Children of the Drug War: Perspectives on the Impact of Drug Polices on Young People"2011 IDEBATE Press
  • Bilton, Anton "DMT Entity Encounters: Dialogues on the Spirit Molecule"2021 Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
    • Blum, Richard "Society and Drugs" 1970 Jossey-Bass
  • Boullosa , Carmen "A Narco History: How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the 'Mexican Drug War'"2016 OR Books
  • Brereton, William "The Truth about Opium / Being a Refutation of the Fallacies of the Anti-Opium Society and a Defence of the Indo-China Opium Trade"2017 Anna Ruggieri
  • Burns, Eric "1920: The year that made the decade roar"2015 Pegasus Books
  • Carpenter, Ted Galen "The Fire Next Door: Mexico's Drug Violence and the Danger to America"2012 Cato Institute
    • Carroll, Lewis "Alice in Wonderland: The Original 1865 Edition With Complete Illustrations By Sir John Tenniel" 2021 Amazon
  • Chesterton, GK "Saint Thomas Acquinas"2014 BookBaby
    • Cohen, Jay S. "For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health" 2011 Tarcher/Putnam
    • De Quincey, Thomas "Confessions of an English Opium Eater" 1995 Dover
    • Ellsberg, Daniel "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner " 2018 Bloomsbury Publishing
    • Fadiman, James "The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys " 2011 Park Street Press
  • Filan, Kenaz "The Power of the Poppy: Harnessing Nature's Most Dangerous Plant Ally"2011 Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
    • Fleming, Thomas "A Disease in the Public Mind: Why We Fought the Civil War" 2014 Da Capo Press
    • Friedman, Milton "Wall Street Journal" 1989 WSJ
    • Fukuyama, Francis "Liberalism and Its Discontents" 2022 Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  • Gianluca, Toro "Drugs of the Dreaming: Oneirogens"2007 Simon and Schuster
    • Gootenberg, Paul "Cocaine: Global Histories" 1999 Routledge
    • Gottleib, Anthony "The Dream of Enlightenment: the Rise of Modern Philosophy" 2016 Liveright Publishing Corporation
  • Griffiths, William "Psilocybin: A Trip into the World of Magic Mushrooms"2021 William Griffiths
  • Hofmann, Albert "The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and Its Applications"2005 Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
    • Holland, Julie "Good Chemistry: The Science of Connection, from Soul to Psychedelics" 2020 HarperWave
    • Huxley, Aldous "The Doors of Perception / Heaven and Hell" 1970 Penguin Books
  • Irwin-Rogers, Keir "Illicit Drug Markets, Consumer Capitalism and the Rise of Social Media: A Toxic Trap for Young People"2019
  • James, William "The Varieties of Religious Experience"1902 Philosophical Library
    • Jenkins, Philip "Synthetic Panics: The Symbolic Politics of Designer Drugs" 1999 New York University Press
    • Johnson, Paul "The Birth of the Modern" 1991 Harper Collins
    • Leary, Timothy Ralph Metzner "The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead " 1964 University Books
    • Lovecraft, HP "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" 1970 Del Rey Books
  • Mariani, Angelo "Coca and its Therapeutic Application, Third Edition"1896 Gutenberg.org
    • Mate, Gabriel "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction" 2009 Vintage Canada
    • Maupassant, Guy de "Le Horla et autres contes fantastiques - Guy de Maupassant: Les classiques du fantastique " 2019
    • McKenna, Terence "Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution " 1992 Bantam
  • Miller, Richard Lawrence "Drug Warriors and Their Prey: From Police Power to Police State"1966 Bloomsbury Academic
    • Miller, Richard Louis "Psychedelic Medicine: The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, and Ayahuasca Kindle " 2017 Park Street Press
  • Mortimer MD, W. Golden "Coca: Divine Plant of the Incas"2017 Ronin Publishing
  • Newcombe, Russell "Intoxiphobia: discrimination toward people who use drugs"2014 academia.edu
    • Noe, Alvin "Out of our Heads" 2010 HiII&Wang,
    • Paley, Dawn "Drug War Capitalism" 2014 AK Press
  • Partridge, Chiristopher "Alistair Crowley on Drugs"2021 uploaded by Misael Hernandez
    • Pinchbeck, Daniel "When Plants Dream" 2019 Watkins Publishing
    • Poe, Edgar Allan "The Essential Poe" 2020 Warbler Classics
    • Pollan, Michael "How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence " 2018 Penguin Books
    • Reynolds, David S. "Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville " 1988 Oxford University Press
    • Richards, William "Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences Hardcover" 2015 Columbia University Press
    • Rosenfeld, Harvey "Diary of a Dirty Little War: The Spanish-American War of 1898 " 2000 Praeger
  • Rudgley, Richard "The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Substances"2014 Macmillan Publishers
    • Russell, Kirk "Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered" 1967 Arlington House
    • Schlosser, Erich "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety" 2014 Penguin
    • Sewell, Kenneth Clint Richmond "Red Star Rogue: The Untold Story of a Soviet Submarine's Nuclear Strike Attempt on the U.S. " 2006 Pocket Star
    • Shirer, William "The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler" 2011 RosettaBooks
  • Shulgin, Alexander "PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story"1991 Transform Press
  • Shulgin, Alexander "The Nature of Drugs Vol. 1: History, Pharmacology, and Social Impact"2021 Transform Press
    • Slater, Lauren "Blue Dreams: The Science and the Story of the Drugs that Changed Our Minds" 2019 Boston
  • Smith, Wolfgang "Cosmos and Transcendence: Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief"0
  • Smith, Wolfgang "Physics: A Science in Quest of an Ontology"2022
  • St John, Graham "Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT"2021
    • Straussman, Rick "DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences " 2001 Park Street Press
    • Streatfield, Dominic "Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography" 2003 Picador USA
    • Swartzwelder, Scott "Buzzed: The Straight Facts About the Most Used and Abused Drugs from Alcohol to Ecstasy" 1998 W.W. Norton
    • Szasz, Thomas "Ceremonial Chemistry: the ritual persecution of drugs, addicts, and pushers" 1974 Anchor Press/Doubleday
  • Szasz, Thomas "Interview With Thomas Szasz: by Randall C. Wyatt"0
    • Szasz, Thomas "Our Right to Drugs: The case for a free market" 1992 Praeger
    • Tyler, George R. "Billionaire Democracy: The Hijacking of the American Political System" 2016 Pegasus Books
    • Watts, Alan "The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness" 1965 Vintage
  • Wedel, Janine "Unaccountable: How the Establishment Corrupted Our Finances, Freedom and Politics and Created an Outsider Class"2014 Pegasus Books
  • Weil, Andrew "From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs"2004 Open Road Integrated Media
    • Whitaker, Robert "Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America " 2010 Crown
    • Zinn, Howard "A People's History of the United States: 1492 - present" 2009
    • Zuboff , Shoshana "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power" 2019 Public Affairs
    Site and its contents copyright 2023, by Brian B. Quass, the drug war philosopher at abolishthedea.com. For more information, contact Brian at quass@quass.com.