How the US Preventive Services Task Force Drums Up Business for Big Pharma
an open letter to Task Force member David Chelmow MD
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 21, 2023
ood morning, Dr. Chelmow.
I am a VCU philosophy graduate from 1989.
I just noticed your affiliation with the US Preventive Services Task Force and wanted to share my views with you about Task Force recommendations. With all due respect, I think that the Task Force is reckoning without the Drug War. When the Task Force tells Congress that there is a need to fight anxiety, they fail to point out that we have outlawed almost all the substances that could help with that condition. Seen in this light, the report amounts to little more than a sales pitch for Big Pharma's addictive pills.
The use of MDMA fights anxiety. Coca wine and the chewing of the coca leaf fights anxiety. The use of ayahuasca fights anxiety. So does the intermittent use of laughing gas. Even the use of opium fights anxiety -- although fearmongers have been telling us for 100+ years now that humankind cannot use such drugs wisely.
I realize that the Task Force has to work within the limits of existing law, but that does not mean that you need to pretend that the Drug War does not exist, especially when its prohibitions so drastically limit the suggestions that you can pass on to Congress.
You would be doing a great service to the country and the memory of Thomas Jefferson (who rolled in his grave when the DEA confiscated his poppy plants in 1987) by adding at least a footnote to all your recommendations about mental health, pointing out that prohibition has outlawed (not only in America but now worldwide) almost all the substances that are known to combat the conditions against which you are calling for action.
I shared the above thoughts with the Task Force itself. Below you can read the response that I received from an anonymous "USPSTF Coordinator." As you'll notice, he or she completely ignores the point I made, but sticks by the Task Force's implication that the world is fine, that there is no Drug War, and that we have wonderful treatments for anxiety without the hundreds that we have outlawed. [sigh]
Thank you for your email and interest in the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (Task Force). The role of the Task Force is to improve people's health by making evidence-based recommendations about the benefits and harms of specific preventive services.
The Task Force does not make recommendations on how to treat conditions once diagnosed. However, several treatment options were reviewed to help inform whether screening is beneficial. The Task Force found that there are multiple treatment options available that can be effective, including medications, counseling, or desensitization therapies (which combine relaxation techniques with gradual exposure to help someone slowly overcome a phobia). We recommend that adults diagnosed with anxiety disorders decide together with their healthcare professional what treatment is right for them.
Thank you again for your email.
USPSTF Coordinator
Related tweet: June 22, 2023
Here's my response to the Preventive Services Task Force: "You guys are scared of even mentioning the Drug War, aren't you? This is self-censorship at work."
The outlawing of hundreds of substances that could fight anxiety is HUGELY relevant to your work. The fact that you do not even mention this makes your work political and anti-scientific.
Author's Follow-up: November 29, 2024
The mainstream attitude is rabid Christian Science. The UK just passed a bill legalizing assisted dying. This means that it is okay to kill someone with drugs, but it is not okay to use drugs to make that person want to live. My lifelong depression would end right now if I could smoke an opium pipe just once a week, and/or inhale laughing gas on occasion, or use the non-addictive drugs synthesized by Alexander Shulgin: you know, the ones that inspire and elate? The evil of drug prohibition can be clearly seen here. People would actually prefer that their grandparents die than that they should use "drugs." It is cruel lunacy.
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.
Many of my essays are about and/or directed to specific individuals, some well-known, others not so well known, and some flat-out nobodies like myself. Here is a growing list of names of people with links to my essays that in some way concern them.
People magazine should be fighting for justice on behalf of the thousands of American young people who are dying on the streets because of the drug war.
The problem with blaming things on addiction genes is that it whitewashes the role of society and its laws. It's easy to imagine an enlightened country wherein drug availability, education and attitudes make addiction highly unlikely, addiction genes or no addiction genes.
I never said that getting off SSRIs should be done without supervision. If you're on Twitter for medical advice, you're in the wrong place.
Thanks to the Drug War, folks are forced to become amateur chemists to profit from DMT, a drug that occurs naturally in most living things. This is the same Drug War that is killing American young people wholesale by refusing to teach safe use and regulate drug supply.
Researchers insult our intelligence when they tell us that drugs like MDMA and opium and laughing gas have not been proven to work. Everyone knows they work. That's why drug warriors hate them.
The worst form of government is not communism, socialism or even unbridled capitalism. The worst form of government is a Christian Science Theocracy, in which the government controls how much you are allowed to think and feel in life.
This hysterical reaction to rare negative events actually creates more rare negative events. This is why the DEA publicizes "drug problems," because by making them well known, they make the problems more prevalent and can thereby justify their huge budget.
My local community store here in the sticks sells Trump "dollar bills" at the checkout counter. I don't know what's worse: a president encouraging insurrection or an electorate that does not see that as a problem.
There are a potentially vast number of non-addictive drugs that could be used strategically in therapy. They elate and "free the tongue" to help talk therapy really work. Even "addictive" drugs can be used non-addictively, prohibitionist propaganda notwithstanding.
In "Four Good Days" the pompous white-coated doctor ignores the entire formulary of mother nature and instead throws the young heroin user on a cot for 3 days of cold turkey and a shot of Naltrexone: price tag $3,000.
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 US Preventive Services Task Force Drums Up Business for Big Pharma: an open letter to Task Force member David Chelmow MD, published on June 21, 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)
ood morning, Dr. Chelmow.
You have been reading an article entitled, How the US Preventive Services Task Force Drums Up Business for Big Pharma: an open letter to Task Force member David Chelmow MD, published on June 21, 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)