How the Internet Archive Censors Free Speech about Drugs
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
February 28, 2025
ebsites like the Internet Archive take the concept of "Kafkaesque" to a whole new level. They use algorithms written by anonymous techies to flag Drug War protest and remove it from the public discourse. Then they feel no compunction to discuss the issue with the authors of the banished material.
Three days ago, I reviewed a NIDA article about MDMA "abuse" by pointing out that NIDA was a political organization because it refuses to consider both the upsides of drug use and the downsides of prohibition. The Archive algorithms told me they had detected "spam" in my review and would not allow it to be published.
Spam?
I invite the reader to take a look at the review I had written (below) and tell me how anyone could call it spam. The Archive's algorithms were obviously written with a goal of suppressing free speech on the subject of drugs. This suspicion is not allayed by the fact that the Archive has been ghosting me ever since they blocked my review. When I wrote them a few months ago about a technical problem that I was having with donating to them, they responded so quickly that my head was spinning. When I object about their censorship of free speech, they go silent for days.
I can understand that the Archive might not want to render their site controversial by allowing free speech on the subject of drugs, but if that is the case, they should not be soliciting reviews of their stored content.
Instead of discussing the censorship with me, the Archive chose the cowardly option of hiding behind algorithms to remove drug-war opponents from the public discourse.
Bill Gates once mused that "The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow." I think rather it is becoming the self-congratulatory echo chamber for bad ideas.
Banned
The following is my Banned Review of the NIDA article on the Internet Archive entitled "Research Report Series 2017 MDMA (Ecstasy) Abuse"1.
The government study of drugs is HUGELY biased. Their researchers ignore all the benefits of drugs as well as all the downsides of prohibition. Their only job is to demonize drug use by holding it to a safety standard that we apply to no other activity on planet Earth: not to free climbing, not to drag-racing, and certainly not to gun shooting or drinking alcohol. Speaking of alcohol, it kills 178,000 a year according to the CDC2, and yet the government invites us to fear drugs like Ecstasy, which have killed no one. The only deaths related to Ecstasy are those caused by the Drug War, which refuses to educate about safe use and to regulate product.
Ecstasy brought UNPRECEDENTED peace, love and understanding to the dance floors of Britain in the 1990s, but Drug Warriors do not like peace, love and understanding. And so Drug Warriors cracked down on the use of Ecstasy, after which violence SKYROCKETED at rave concerts as dancers switched to the anger-facilitating drug called alcohol, and concert organizers had to bring in special forces troops to keep the peace. Special forces3!
NIDA is just a propaganda arm of the U.S. government -- and will remain so until it recognizes the glaringly obvious benefits of drugs -- as well as the glaringly obvious downsides of prohibition, thanks to which America's inner cities have been turned into shooting galleries and the rule of law is now a joke in much of Latin America. 60,000 Mexicans have been "disappeared" thanks to the Drug War over the last 20 years4, and yet NIDA wants to outlaw a drug whose only crime is that it brought about unprecedented peace, love and understanding.
We don't need a National Institute on Drug Abuse. We need a National Institute on Drug USE -- an agency that recognizes the benefits of drugs and the downsides of prohibition.
It may be objected that I am expecting a lot from a presumably large organization such as the Internet Archive when I demand that it respond quickly to my complaints. The censorship of my article only happened a few days ago after all. But these are no ordinary complaints. These are complaints about my basic freedoms as an American citizen, viz my right to take part in public dialogue about issues vital to the republic. Nor did the Archive take long in ejecting me from the public forum. That was the eerie part. They did so instantaneously based on the implicit suspicions of a totally anonymous techie -- one who, like all Americans, was raised since childhood in the drug-hating ideology of the Drug War and grew up in a world in which the media never published any positive accounts of drug use. This was a world in which he was never told of the opium use of Benjamin Franklin, nor of the DEA raid on Monticello to confiscate the poppy plants of Benjamin's "dealer," Thomas Jefferson5, nor of the fact that psychedelic medicine inspired the very creation of the Hindu religion, nor that coca inspired the indigenous people of Peru.
And yet this anonymous techie, who is probably less than half my age, is going to decide on his own that my ideas are "beyond the pale" when it comes to drugs? To the contrary, the modern western idea of drugs is beyond the pale. This deadly hysterical approach that the west has adopted took shape beginning just over 100 years ago, whereas humankind has lived for tens of thousands of years without the wholesale demonization and criminalization of naturally occurring medicines. If anyone is beyond the pale it is the NIDA scientist who pretends that this unprecedented prohibition is a natural baseline for drug-related research, that drugs can fairly be seen to have no positive benefits. If anyone is beyond the pale it is the NIDA scientist who sees no downsides in drug prohibition, despite the fact that it has created violence and torture out of whole cloth and destroyed American liberties -- including free speech. How ironic when you consider that folks like Gates and Kurzweil saw such a rosy online world in which new ideas could thrive and grow. Instead, the Internet as made censorship efficient and given publishers a way to block unwelcome ideas and social criticism through the craven use of algorithms written by anonymous cowards.
Author's Follow-up: February 28, 2025
The Archive got back to me and, as expected, they said that the article had to cover specifics. But my whole point was that NIDA is not qualified to opine authoritatively on such topics as MDMA.
If Archive had posted an article by the NAZI party, would I not be allowed to point out why we should not be listening to such a source and rather explain why they are evil? I dismissed NIDA on the grounds that they are evil insofar as their attitude toward drugs is anti-scientific, ignoring as it does both obvious drug benefits and obvious prohibition downsides, and that this anti-science has evil consequences in the real world.
Internet Archive Censorship
The Internet Archive runs censorship algorithms on autopilot. They flagged my criticism of a NIDA article as 'spam.' They could not even tell me why the algorithm called it spam, but they refused to overrule the algorithm. They apparently fail to realize that algorithms are written by real people based on real assumptions -- and that an algorithm is clearly wrong when it trashes legitimate opinion as 'spam.' Here is the letter that I wrote to the staff to complain of their censorship. I sent this letter to at least 20 separate staffers, to give it at least some chance of being attended to -- for experience shows that the vast majority of people at such organizations will ghost you should you bring up a drug-related topic.
I paste the letter below now without further comment....
Amir Esfahani et al. 3-30-25
c/o The Internet Archive
300 Funston Ave
San Francisco, CA 94118
Dear Mr. Esfahani:
I am writing to protest the Internet Archive's use of algorithms to censor free speech about drugs.
I recently wrote a review of a NIDA article on Internet Archive entitled "Research Report Series 2017 MDMA (Ecstasy) Abuse." In my review, I pointed out the biases of NIDA and how they ignore all glaringly obvious benefits of psychoactive substances. The review was blocked by your algorithms as "spam."
Spam? I am used to being banned and blocked for speaking the truth about drug policy, but how exactly do my comments (see below) qualify as spam? Perhaps you could ask the programmer who wrote the algorithms and get back to me?
When I protested to IA, I received no response until I threatened a lawsuit -- even though I had received same-day service when my questions concerned donating to your site. An anonymous member of your "Internet Archive Team" finally got back to me by email and told me that they themselves were uncertain why my review was blocked. This alone should have been grounds for permitting my review to be published! Instead, they seemed to think that the algorithm that blocked me was infallible and should not be second guessed. In fact, they said that IA made a point of not intervening personally in censorship decisions and relied totally on their algorithms.
WHAT? Do you not realize that algorithms are written by actual people based on actual assumptions? Your censorship algorithms should not be on autopilot. You should be tracking down the algorithm maker and asking them why they are flagging free speech about drugs as "spam."
The team member speculated that my review might have lacked specifics about the article in question, but that is a sham excuse for censoring me. There are plenty of reviews on IA that do not mention specifics but rather praise the authors. Why then am I blocked for suggesting that the authors of an IA article are biased on the subject about which they write?
It is "chilling" to have one's review blocked in real-time by a faceless algorithm. When you take such a drastic step, you have a responsibility to make the reason as clear as possible to the would-be posters and not to simply flag their comments with a mendacious catch-all term such as "spam." If you want some pointers for how to use censorship algorithms fairly, consistently, and in a user-friendly way, just ask and I will provide you with some common-sense suggestions.
Meanwhile, I ask you to please publish my review and to stop suppressing it for algorithmic reasons that you yourselves admit you do not understand.
Yours Truly...................
The following is my Banned Review of the NIDA article on the Internet Archive entitled "Research Report Series 2017 MDMA (Ecstasy) Abuse."
The government study of drugs is HUGELY biased. Their researchers ignore all the benefits of drugs as well as all the downsides of prohibition. Their only job is to demonize drug use by holding it to a safety standard that we apply to no other activity on planet Earth: not to free climbing, not to drag-racing, and certainly not to gun shooting or drinking alcohol. Speaking of alcohol, it kills 178,000 a year according to the CDC, and yet the government invites us to fear drugs like Ecstasy, which have killed no one. The only deaths related to Ecstasy are those caused by the Drug War, which refuses to educate about safe use and to regulate product.
Ecstasy brought UNPRECEDENTED peace, love and understanding to the dance floors of Britain in the 1990s, but Drug Warriors do not like peace, love and understanding. And so Drug Warriors cracked down on the use of Ecstasy, after which violence SKYROCKETED at rave concerts as dancers switched to the anger-facilitating drug called alcohol, and concert organizers had to bring in special forces troops to keep the peace. Special forces!
NIDA is just a propaganda arm of the U.S. government -- and will remain so until it recognizes the glaringly obvious benefits of drugs -- as well as the glaringly obvious downsides of prohibition, thanks to which America's inner cities have been turned into shooting galleries and the rule of law is now a joke in much of Latin America. 60,000 Mexicans have been "disappeared" thanks to the Drug War over the last 20 years, and yet NIDA wants to outlaw a drug whose only crime is that it brought about unprecedented peace, love and understanding.
We don't need a National Institute on Drug Abuse. We need a National Institute on Drug USE -- an agency that recognizes the benefits of drugs and the downsides of prohibition.
The Drug War is all about censorship. If you don't believe it, just ask yourself how many movies and magazine articles you've seen about the safe and wise use of opium, or of coca, or of MDMA, or of psychedelics. As Carl Hart reminds us, most people use these drugs wisely, but you will not see such use portrayed in movies or books. Instead, you will see books and movies in which drugs are personified as evil incarnate in the form of "Cocaine Bears" and "Meth Gators." This is because the drug-war propaganda of censorship has rendered Americans childish about drugs. The American government is all about keeping us infantile in this way. The government is engaged in a full-blown campaign of drug-related censorship, with the White House actually working with TV producers to spread the party line on drugs in TV shows. That is why we have a National Institute on Drug Abuse and not a National Institute on Drug Use.
Meanwhile, the government's FDA refuses to approve MDMA, a drug which has killed no one, properly speaking, and yet they approve Big Pharma drugs whose side effects as announced on prime-time television include death itself, this in a world in which liquor causes 178,000 deaths a year. This is the same FDA that approves brain-damaging shock therapy for the depressed while refusing to sign off on naturally occurring drugs that could make ECT unnecessary. This fact is obvious. Common sense itself screams out loudly and clearly that this is so. But scientists ignore common sense these days for two reasons: first, because of their fealty to the drug war ideology of substance demonization, and second because of their stubborn belief in the inhumane tenets of behaviorism, which tell us that user feelings and opinions do not matter when it comes to studying drug use, that all that counts is quantifiable data about brain chemistry and genetics.
By the way, if you want to be personally censored, just try publishing an article about safe and wise drug use online -- say, about the wise use of opium. Such accounts are simply not allowed by most publishers -- not because they are not true, but because they spread a message that is contrary to the drug-war ideology of substance demonization and so must be suppressed. I myself have been blocked numerous times from posting comments and publishing articles simply because I point out positive real uses of drugs -- safe and productive drug use that has actually taken place despite the fact that the government does everything it can to make drug use risky by refusing to regulate product and refusing to teach safe use. The Mad in America website solicits life stories from victims of the psychedelic pill mill, but they refuse to publish mine, despite the fact that I have used such drugs for 40 years now. The life story that I submitted to them contained neither lies nor proselytization, and yet the organization told me that it might be seen as medical advice. This is how publishers shut down free speech about drugs, by claiming that factually honest accounts about drug use constitute medical advice.
They will then tell us that we should see our doctors about such topics -- failing to realize that it was our doctors themselves who rendered us dependent on Big Pharma to begin with! Their drugs cause greater dependence than anything nature has to offer, and yet we are only allowed to discuss drugs with these folks whose entire careers depend on the psychiatric pill mill itself!
This is why I say that the drug war is a cancer on the body politic and must be eliminated if Americans want to restore democracy and make it last this time.
If we need to censor any speech, it should be the speech of drug warriors. They are the ones who advocate policies that have turned inner cities into shooting galleries around the world and resulted in the disappearance of 60,000 Mexican citizens in the last 20 years, while turning the rule of law into a joke in much of Latin America.
What am I advocating after all? Merely intellectual and spiritual freedom. Merely the end of censorship. Merely the renewed freedom of religion. Merely the return of freedom of speech. Merely the informed use of psychoactive drugs, especially entheogens like MDMA, to help bring people together in this age when hate has put our species on the brink of nuclear annihilation.
And yet I am beyond the pale? Say rather that the Drug War Industrial Complex is beyond the pale -- supported as it is by the same sort of short-sighted idiots who made the criminal decision in the 1950s to develop thermonuclear weapons, the same people who were to denounce the peace-loving 'flower children' of the next decade as Communist subversives.(Drug Warriors hated both "summers of love" -- the U.S. version in the 1960s and the U.K. version in the 1990s, and used drug hysteria to quash both and to turn the world into haters. After they cracked down on Ecstasy in the U.K., the dance floors erupted into such alcohol-fueled violence that event organizers had to hire special forces troops to keep the peace.)
Incidentally, anyone who doubts our society's willingness to suppress free speech need only look at the blacklisting of Americans by HUAC in the 1950s. It must be remembered that this persecution of dissenters was not based on the outing of any supposed criminal activities that they had committed but rather on their mere championing of ideas that were anathema to the powers-that-be. The government loves censorship and always has.
And the Internet Age has not changed anything. To the contrary, it has rendered censorship far more easy and efficient for cowardly publishers thanks to the use of algorithms written anonymously by philosophically challenged techies.
NOTICE OF SCAM
You may have seen messages from a so-called DEA, purporting to tell you that drugs have no positive uses. This is a SCAM. All substances have potential positive uses at some dose, for some reason, in some circumstance.
The problem for alcoholics is that alcohol decreases rationality in proportion as it provides the desired self-transcendence. Outlawed drugs can provide self-transcendence with INCREASED rationality and be far more likely to keep the problem drinker off booze than abstinence.
The drug war bans human progress by deciding that hundreds of drugs are trash without even trying to find positive uses for them. Yet scientists continue to research and write as if prohibition does not exist, that's how cowed they are by drug laws.
There's a run of addiction movies out there, like "Craving!" wherein they actually personify addiction as a screaming skeleton. Funny, drug warriors never call for a Manhattan Project to end addiction. Addiction is their golden goose.
We westerners have "just said no" to pain relief, mood elevation and religious insight.
I could tell my psychiatrist EXACTLY what would "cure" my depression, even without getting addicted, but everything involved is illegal. It has to be. Otherwise I would have no need of the psychiatrist.
In "The Book of the Damned," Charles Fort writes about the data that science has damned, by which he means "excluded." The fact that drugs can inspire and elate is one such fact, although when Fort wrote his anti-materialist broadside, drug prohibition was in its infancy.
Proof that materialism is wrong is "in the pudding." It is why scientists are not calling for the use of laughing gas and MDMA by the suicidal. Because they refuse to recognize anything that's obvious. They want their cures to be demonstrated under a microscope.
The drug war controls the very way that we are allowed to see the world. The Drug War is thus a meta-injustice, not just a handful of bad legal statutes.
Mariani Wine is the real McCoy, with Bolivian coca leaves (tho' not with cocaine, as Wikipedia says). I'll be writing more about my experience with it soon. I was impressed. It's the same drink "on which" HG Wells and Jules Verne wrote their stories.
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 Internet Archive Censors Free Speech about Drugs published on February 28, 2025 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)
ebsites like the Internet Archive take the concept of "Kafkaesque" to a whole new level. They use algorithms written by anonymous techies to flag Drug War protest and remove it from the public discourse. Then they feel no compunction to discuss the issue with the authors of the banished material. 
You have been reading an article entitled, How the Internet Archive Censors Free Speech about Drugs published on February 28, 2025 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)
