How the Drug War is Threatening Intellectual Freedom in England
an open letter to British Philosophers
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 3, 2023
I sent the following letter today to Professor Tom Stoneham at York University -- as well as ALL the members of the Oxford University Department of Philosophy (one by one, mind, not by bulk mail), with the exception of Senior Fellow Ian Rumfitt. (It seems Senior Fellows are not required to post their email addresses on the Oxford website. Well, that's frustrating. But then I suppose he's earned it... [sigh] Still, one would hope he'd be open to new ideas. But then who am I to dictate terms? It's just that... No, no, I am silent. I'm sure the honorable gentleman knows what he's about. It's just that... But mum's the word.)
I am writing to you on a matter of great concern to the field of philosophy, namely, the fact that England is preparing to outlaw the use of laughing gas. As you know, this is the substance whose use inspired the philosophy of William James. In regard to such experiences, James wrote: "No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded."
And yet disregard them we must thanks to Drug War prohibition.
I believe that all philosophers, tenured or otherwise, should speak up against this outlawing of intellectual progress. As distasteful as it is, we must speak up against the Drug War. We must encourage government to start educating its citizens about safe use rather than continuing to pursue a policy of prohibition which outlaws human progress and criminalizes the very investigations that James would ask us to pursue. This change of course is all the more urgent when we consider the body count of the current policy, which even as we speak is killing thousands a day thanks to the corrupted and uncertain drug supply that prohibition guarantees.
Moreover, those who advocate the prohibition of substances like laughing gas never take into account all the stakeholders in such a decision. They are blind to the hundreds of millions of the depressed, for instance, who must go without a godsend substance thanks to our statistically lopsided focus on abuse and misuse. Besides, the hundreds of millions (in the US, billions) that we spend on arresting people could easily be spent on educating those people about safe use.
For these and endless other reasons, I believe, in fact, that the Drug War is the philosophical problem par excellence of our time and that philosophy as a field can no longer ignore it without becoming complicit in the way that it censors philosophy and the human sciences in general.
If these ideas strike the least chord with you, I urge you to speak up on behalf of intellectual freedom and ask your government to begin educating potential substance users rather than arresting them. We should be able to follow up on the philosophical leads of philosophers like William James without our governments ordering us to cease and desist.
June 3, 2023 Brian was bothered by the inability to reach Senior Fellow Professor Rumfitt, at least in part, by the fact that most of the other members of the Oxford Philosophy Department looked like they were about ten years old. Not that this should disqualify them, of course. I fancy I was a bit of a clever clogs at that age myself. I'm just sayin'... Or rather Brian is just sayin'...
Typical. I have received not one single response from Oxford. It never ceases to amaze me how many academics worldwide have just said no to freedom of research.
Author's Follow-up: December 1, 2023
Westerners have no right to complain about high suicide rates. They have made it clear with their harebrained laws that they would rather folks commit suicide than to use most psychoactive substances. It's Mary Baker Eddy on steroids. It's Christian Science Sharia. As for Oxford, probably shouldn't single them out, since William James' alma mater, Harvard, is also silent about the ongoing attempt to classify laughing gas as a dirty evil rotten drug.
Author's Follow-up:
May 04, 2025
It has been almost two years since I importuned Tom Stoneham on the subject of nitrous oxide. He has not yet seen his way clear to respond to me, but hope springs eternal, at least on this side of the Atlantic.
His silence is remarkable, however, considering that he himself is a specialist on the philosophy of George Berkeley. Tom does not seem to realize that drug prohibition outlaws precisely those drugs whose strategic use could help us understand the issues with which Berkeley dealt: the investigation of the ontological nature of the concepts of mind and matter. These things can be directly investigated by philosophers with the informed use of psychoactive substances. Indeed, this is the kind of research that William James urged us to undertake (see "Varieties of Religious Experience12" and "The Will to Believe.3" He discusses the subject in connection with the so-called "anesthetic revelation" by philosopher B.P. Blood4. But I fear folks like Tom assume that drug law is all about outlawing hedonism -- and therefore fail to see the obvious ways in which drug prohibition has outlawed philosophical investigation itself, to say nothing of human progress. I say this because it certainly could not be that British philosophers are AFRAID to speak up about drugs and on behalf of academic freedom?
Or could it?
In case Tom wishes to learn more about how the Drug War outlaws his freedom to philosophize, I invite him to read my recent essay on the topic entitled (naturally enough) How the Drug War Outlaws Philosophy.
Open Letters
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.
The search for SSRIs has always been based on a flawed materialist premise that human consciousness is nothing but a mix of brain chemicals and so depression can be treated medically like any other physical condition.
It is consciousness which, via perception, shapes the universe into palpable forms. Otherwise it's just a chaos of particles. The very fact that you can refer to "the sun" shows that your senses have parsed the raw data into a specific meaning. "We" make this universe.
Prohibition is a crime against humanity. It forces us to use shock therapy on the severely depressed since we've outlawed all viable alternatives. It denies medicines that could combat Alzheimer's and/or render it psychologically bearable.
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 DEA outlawed MDMA in 1985, thereby depriving soldiers of a godsend treatment for PTSD. Apparently, the DEA staff slept well at night in the early 2000s as American soldiers were having their lives destroyed by IEDs.
In 1886, coca enthusiast JJ Tschudi referred to prohibitionists as 'kickers.' He wrote: "If we were to listen to these kickers, most of us would die of hunger, for the reason that nearly everything we eat or drink has fallen under their ban."
Prohibitionists have nothing to say about all other dangerous activities: nothing about hunting, free climbing, hang-gliding, sword swallowing, free diving, skateboarding, sky-diving, chug-a-lug competitions, chain-smoking. Their "logic" is incoherent.
I'm told antidepressant withdrawal is fine because it doesn't cause cravings. Why is it better to feel like hell than to have a craving? In any case, cravings are caused by prohibition. A sane world could also end cravings with the help of other drugs.
Ug! Fire bad!
There were 4,731 fire-related deaths in America in 2023.
Learn more at the Partnership for a Death Free America.
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 the Drug War is Threatening Intellectual Freedom in England: an open letter to British Philosophers, published on June 3, 2023 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 the Drug War is Threatening Intellectual Freedom in England: an open letter to British Philosophers, published on June 3, 2023 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)
