How the Media Puts Drugs on Show Trials

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How the Media Puts Drugs on Show Trials

an open letter to Bennett Haeberle of NBC 5 Chicago

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

June 3, 2025

The media regularly puts on show trials for psychoactive substances, to suggest that they are a threat to American young people, with the implication being that said substances have no positive uses whatsoever and can only be used for a cheap thrill. Lies, lies, lies. The ultimate goal of such yellow journalism is to egg on the prohibitionists to crack down ever further on the few remaining freedoms that Americans still possess when it comes to drug use.

The poster child for such biased articles is the January 2025 hatchet piece on the NBC 5 website entitled "The loophole that allows an illegal, dangerous drug to be delivered to your door,¹" an article in which the reporters completely ignore all glaringly obvious benefits of N2O, to say nothing of historical use of the drug and the fact that William James urged philosophers to inhale N2O in order to investigate the nature of ultimate reality.

All such hatchet jobs are based on two demonstrably false assumptions: 1) that there are no upsides to drug use, and 2) that there are no downsides to drug prohibition.

--

Dear Bennett Haeberle,

Your article about Laughing Gas ² illustrates all that is wrong with our Drug War mentality. You consider only the worst possible uses of laughing gas ³ , never mentioning its obvious benefits. The gas has been used safely by a wide variety of people, from Humphry Davy to Robert Southey to Oliver Wendell Holmes. Davy saw great therapeutic potential in its ability to elate and inspire. William James told us that philosophers must study the states produced by such substances to learn about the nature of human consciousness and ultimate reality. And yet your article says nothing about common-sense therapy or the philosophy of William James. Nitrous oxide can inspire glimpses of heaven and yet you say nothing about its obvious potential role in preventing suicide. Instead, your article is written to make us fear the substance rather than to understand it.

Drug prohibition is the problem ⁴ , Bennett, not drugs. The problem is our failure to educate about substance use. We already live in a police state thanks to drug law: why is NBC 5 determined to make matters even worse?

Kids were not dying in the streets from opiates when opiates were legal in America. It took prohibition to accomplish that. When are prohibitionists going to start accepting their responsibility for the young people whom they have killed? How? By refusing to teach safe use, refusing to regulate product, and refusing to re-legalize a long list of opiate alternatives?

Laughing gas kits should be available for the severely depressed, just as epi pens are made available to those with severe depression. Instead, America would rather that the depressed commit suicide ⁵ than use drugs. America would prefer that the depressed undergo brain-damaging shock therapy than to use drugs.

Until the media stops putting on show trials for drugs -- and holding them to wildly different safety standards than those for Big Pharma ⁶ ⁷ or alcohol -- then America will be living in the Dark Ages.

You guys are not saving anybody. You are causing suicides by demonizing all the substances that could be wisely used to make people want to live. Your reportage ultimately causes suicides by removing all inspiring drugs from the market and refusing to teach or regulate. The Hindu religion was created thanks to the use of a drug that inspired and elated. You guys are committed to demonizing all drugs that inspire and elate. It is not enough for you to merely outlaw use -- you insist on closing all the loopholes as well -- to make sure that use becomes as dangerous, unregulated and uninformed as possible. But like all Drug Warriors, you never take responsibility for all the suffering that you thereby bring about. You seem to feel that if you do not report on the downsides of prohibition, then those downsides do not exist.

I am a philosopher, and I protest on behalf of William James, whose proposed research you guys are helping to outlaw by your fear mongering about substance use.

Please stop putting substances on show trials for crimes that alcohol commits every day. Drugs can be used safely. Any drug can be rendered dangerous, however, when we place a premium on ignorance and prohibition.

Please stop demonizing substances based on the fact that they can be misused by Americans whom we refuse to educate about drugs.

Your MO is too predictable:

1) Find young people who have misused a drug thanks to our refusal to educate about safe use.
2) Pull at the heartstrings by writing about the poor little white kids who have been thrown into harm's way.
3) Write articles in an attempt to have all "loopholes" closed -- so that drug prohibition thrives and so our young people remain as ignorant as possible about safe drug use.
4) Then refuse to take responsibility for the downsides of the drug prohibition to which you have contributed: the outlawing of free research, the unnecessary suicides, the unnecessary drive-by shootings, the un-necessary electroshock therapy, the destruction of the rule of law in Latin America, and the mass incarceration ⁸ of minorities which has led to the election of tyrants and brought an end to democracy in America.
5) Above all, never mention the potential upsides of drug use or the many obvious downsides of drug prohibition.

Enough! Please, let's have no more show trials for psychoactive substances!

Brian Quass
The Drug War Philosopher

Notes:

1: The loophole that allows an illegal, dangerous drug to be delivered to your door Haeberle, Bennett, NBC 5 Chicago, 2025 (up)
2: The loophole that allows an illegal, dangerous drug to be delivered to your door Haeberle, Bennett, NBC 5 Chicago, 2025 (up)
3: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
4: Drug Prohibition is the Problem, not Drugs: what the movers and shakers get wrong in the drug re-legalization debate DWP (up)
5: Why Americans Prefer Suicide to Drug Use DWP (up)
6: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
7: LaMattina, John. n.d. “Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of the FDA’s Drug Division Budget?” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2022/09/22/why-is-biopharma-paying-75-of-the-fdas-drug-division-budget/. (up)
8: Heather Ann Thompson. 2014. The Atlantic. The Atlantic. October 30, 2014. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/10/inner-city-violence-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/382154/. (up)

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After a long life, I have come to the conclusion that when all the establishment is united, it is always wrong. (Harold MacMillan)

Drug prohibition is superstitious idiocy. It is based on the following crazy idea: that a substance that can be misused by a white young person at one dose for one reason must not be used by anybody at any dose for any reason.

The best harm reduction strategy would be to re-legalize opium and cocaine. We would thereby end depression in America and free Americans from their abject reliance on the healthcare industry, meanwhile ending gang violence and restoring the rule of law in Latin America.

Doc to Franklin: "I'm sorry, Ben, but I see no benefits of opium use under my microscope. The idea that you are living a fulfilled life is clearly a mistake on your part. If you want to be scientific, stop using opium and be scientifically depressed like the rest of us."

How would we even KNOW that outlawed drugs have no positive uses? We first have to incorporate them in a sane, empathic and creative way to find that out, and the drug war makes such a sensible approach absolutely impossible.

Wade Davis writes that cocaine was outlawed because 400 people consumed toxic doses worldwide. What about the 49,000 that commit suicide every year because we have outlawed drugs that could cheer them up!!!

The Drug War has turned America into the world's first "Indignocracy," where our most basic rights can be vetoed by a misinformed public. That's how scheming racist politicians put an end to the 4th amendment to the US Constitution.

The goal of rehab should not be to get people off of all drugs, it should be to teach them to be in control of their drug use and to use drugs wisely for beneficial purposes.

Mayo Clinic is peddling junk. They are still promoting Venlafaxine, a drug that is harder to kick than heroin.

SWAT raids have increased by 15,000 percent from the late 1970s to today, resulting in 50,000 to 80,000 SWAT raids annually in the US alone. --War On Us

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How the Media Puts Drugs on Show Trials

an open letter to Bennett Haeberle of NBC 5 Chicago

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

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