How to end the war in Mexico, stop inner-city killings and cure depression in one easy step
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
October 5, 2022
merica could end inner-city killings and the war in Mexico overnight, meanwhile solving the so-called epidemic of depression in America, merely by re-legalizing the coca leaf. But instead, Drug Warriors demonize coca based on rare but well-documented cases of cocaine addiction, failing to realize that the coca leaf is not cocaine, any more than peach juice is prussic acid. This is the typical Drug Warrior MO. , as when Drug Warriors demonize opium based on cases of heroin addiction, failing to mention that they are two different drugs. This is just guilt by association. But even if the coca leaf was the same as cocaine and opium was the same as heroin, it's not clear why the Drug Warriors want to trash such substances based on their addictive qualities in a world in which 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life on Big Pharma meds, nor why the supposedly health-conscious American Drug Warrior is silent about the half a million Stateside deaths attributed each year to tobacco and liquor combined.
This is especially odd for those of us who deny that government ever had the right to criminalize plant medicine in the first place, at least in America, a country founded on Natural Law. Indeed, a few of us wept for our country when the DEA stomped onto Monticello in broad daylight in 1987 and confiscated Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants, thereby giving the finger to Jeffersonian principles and our Lockean heritage. If you don't remember this outrage, that's probably because the media did not exactly treat it as earth-shattering news. But this was the mid-'80s, a time when the Drug War ideology of substance demonization was starting to be taught in grade schools and Ronald Reagan was exhorting god-fearing Americans to turn in their parents for using plant medicines of which botanically clueless politicians disapproved.
But then there's a lot of money on the line here. In the 1800s, some counties in England did pretty much without doctors because every household had laudanum on hand for sleepless nights, colds and bouts of depression (see Paul Johnson's 'The Birth of the Modern'). But that's a status quo that capitalism could never live with. Imagine, all those folks who could be insured and doctored and "billed up the wazoo" for conditions that they were currently treating with Mother Nature's medicine! Capitalism made a Drug War inevitable, because there was no way that the well-to-do were going to pass up their chance to earn billions, even at the cost of disempowering and indeed infantilizing Americans when it came to the subject of "drugs." From these considerations we can conclude two things: That capitalism requires a Drug War to exist, and that the Drug War naturally entails the creation of the modern healthcare state.
October 7, 2022
The coca leaf guided Peruvian Indian society like coffee guides ours. It gave them endurance and a cogenial spirit. At first, the Spanish saw the use of this substance as a threat to Christian social values, but they soon discovered that their slaves worked two or three times harder when free to chew the coca leaf and so stopped their own zealous efforts to wipe the plant from the surface of the Earth. To learn more:
The best step we could take in harm reduction is re-legalizing everything and starting to teach safe use. Spend the DEA's billions on "go" teams that would descend on locations where drugs are being used stupidly -- not to arrest, but to educate.
We won't know how hard it is to get off drugs until we legalize all drugs that could help with the change. With knowledge and safety, there will be less unwanted use. And unwanted use can be combatted creatively with a wide variety of drugs.
Ketamine is like any other drug. It has good uses for certain people in certain situations. Nowadays, people insist that a drug be okay in every situation for everybody (especially American teens) before they will say that it's okay. That's crazy and anti-scientific.
Opium is a godsend, as folks like Galen, Avicenna and Paracelsus knew. The drug war has facilitated a nightmare by outlawing peaceable use at home and making safe use almost impossible.
The formula is easy: pick a substance that folks are predisposed to hate anyway, then keep hounding the public with stories about tragedies somehow related to that substance. Show it ruining lives in movies and on TV. Don't lie. Just keep showing all the negatives.
Amphetamines are "meds" when they help kids think more clearly but they are "drugs" when they help adults think more clearly. That shows you just how bewildered Americans are when it comes to drugs.
If drug war logic made sense, we would outlaw endless things in addition to drugs. Because the drug war says that it's all worth it if we can save just one life -- which is generally the life of a white suburban young person, btw.
If there is an epidemic of "self-harm," prohibitionists never think of outlawing razor blades. They ask: "Why the self-harm?" But if there is an epidemic of drug use which they CLAIM is self-harm, they never ask "Why the self-harm?" They say: "Let's prohibit and punish!"
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.
When scientists refuse to report positive uses for drugs, they are not motivated by power lust, they are motivated by philosophical (non-empirical) notions about what counts as "the good life." This is why it's wrong to say that the drug war is JUST about power.
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 to end the war in Mexico, stop inner-city killings and cure depression in one easy step published on October 5, 2022 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)
merica could end inner-city killings and the war in Mexico overnight, meanwhile solving the so-called epidemic of depression in America, merely by re-legalizing the coca leaf. But instead, Drug Warriors demonize coca based on rare but well-documented cases of cocaine addiction, failing to realize that the coca leaf is not cocaine, any more than peach juice is prussic acid. This is the typical Drug Warrior MO. , as when Drug Warriors demonize opium based on cases of heroin addiction, failing to mention that they are two different drugs. This is just guilt by association. But even if the coca leaf was the same as cocaine and opium was the same as heroin, it's not clear why the Drug Warriors want to trash such substances based on their addictive qualities in a world in which 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life on Big Pharma meds, nor why the supposedly health-conscious American Drug Warrior is silent about the half a million Stateside deaths attributed each year to tobacco and liquor combined. 
You have been reading an article entitled, How to end the war in Mexico, stop inner-city killings and cure depression in one easy step published on October 5, 2022 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)