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Ignorance is the enemy, not Fentanyl

open letter to Lynn Walker of the Wichita Falls Times Record News

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

August 27, 2022



Dear Lynn:

Quite frankly, your article demonstrates everything that is wrong with America's Drug War. First, the headline: "Police, DA declare a war on killer drug Fentanyl."

There are no killer drugs. Even the highly toxic Botox can be used safely and for the benefit of humanity in the proper doses. The "killer" here is ignorance, not Fentanyl: ignorance combined with substance prohibition that incentivizes dealers to find and sell the most addictive substances that happen to be "ready to hand," without regard for drug safety or substance purity. A Fentanyl crisis would be unimaginable in a country where psychoactive plant medicine (all of it being far less addictive than Fentanyl) was legal and people were taught how to use it as safely as possible.

Author's follow-up for September 13, 2025


Two cavemen in cave. Caveman on right, holding burning stick toward second caveman on left. Caveman on left says: 'Fire bad. Fire kill.'
Saying things like 'Fentanyl kills' is philosophically equivalent to saying 'Fire bad'. Both statements would have us fear dangerous substances rather than to learn how to use them wisely for the benefit of human beings.




Second, in a sane world, a story about Fentanyl deaths would feature photographs of health and education experts, not law enforcement. But then the Drug War has never been about health: it's been about repressing minorities. It's no coincidence that the first drug law in 1914 banned the use of opium , for that was a time of anti-Chinese sentiment stoked by demagogue politicians. Just so, the outlawing of the coca plant was originally a response to anti-Black sentiment, the outlawing of marijuana was anti-Mexican, and the outlawing of psychedelics was anti-Hippies.

Drug war ideology combined with substance prohibition has caused civil wars overseas, forced children in hospice to suffer rather than giving them morphine 1 , and forced us to let our elderly parents die by "taking them off life support" rather than letting them drift off to a peaceful death, again with morphine 2 . It has censored scientists who can not legally investigate potential cures for Alhzeimer's and autism, and it has forced billions around the globe to go without godsend medicine for depression (like the Peruvian's 'divine coca leaf' and MDMA 3 ) instead shunting them off onto Big Pharma 'meds' that cause a chemical dependency, thanks to which 1 in 4 American women must take Big Pharma 4 5 pills every morning of their life.

Meanwhile, it has turned our inner cities into shooting galleries. Why? Because prohibition creates armed gangs out of whole cloth in poor neighborhoods (a fact that even Drug Warriors know full well from America's disastrous experiment with liquor prohibition, which created the American Mafia as we know it today). That's why there were 800 black deaths in Chicago alone in 2021: because substance prohibition encouraged inner-city gangs to arm themselves to the teeth. So, thank you very much, law enforcement: for nothing, that is.

It's an outrage that law enforcement is now using the problems that they themselves have created to call for yet another "crackdown" on minority drug dealers. We should rather be cracking down on racist politicians who want us to fear substances rather than to understand them. We should crack down on politicians who want to demonize Mother Nature's psychoactive pharmacy while yet giving a big fat Mulligan to the two deadliest drugs of all, tobacco and alcohol, which together cause half a million deaths per year in America.

Again, Fentanyl is not the problem: neither is coca nor opium 6 .

The problem is prohibition combined with ignorance -- the ignorance that the Drug War knowingly promotes. In fact, Joe Biden 7 8's Office of National Drug Control Policy has a charter that bars them from even considering safe use of demonized substances, since their goal is spreading drug-war propaganda, not keeping Americans healthy and safe. In other words it is government policy to keep Americans ignorant about psychoactive substances so that we can continue superstitiously making "drugs" the scapegoat for all of America's social problems. Conservatives love this, of course, because it allows them to spend government money on law enforcement and the military, rather than on education for the poor. What both liberals and conservatives fail to notice, however -- or at least fail to admit -- is that the Drug War causes all of the problems that it purports to solve -- and then some.


August 27, 2022

Of course, the Wichita Falls News is another one of the "faux local" newspapers. It's actually owned by Gannett Corporation, who bought it from Scripps, who bought it from Harte-Hanks. We should note also that Brian attempted to post this as a comment, but the Gannett corporation will only accept comments from those who have a Facebook account. So I guess that if Brian wants to diss the idea of Facebook membership in a comment, he has to join Facebook in order to do so.

Author's Follow-up: September 7, 2022



After causing the drug problem in the first place, folks like Joe Biden are now claiming credit for fighting it by confiscating huge quantities of Fentanyl . This is, of course, a fool's way to solve a problem. You could get rid of Fentanyl overnight and there would be another "devil drug" around the corner to take its place. This is precisely why the DEA and the entire DRUG WAR ESTABLISHMENT love this approach to "fighting drugs," because they have jobs for life when it comes to fighting this boogieman that the government itself has created.

It's the approach that's wrong. We should be fighting ignorance, not drugs. Instead, we're demonizing substances and teaching kids 9 the lie that nature's psychoactive medicines can be used only for evil. What absolute rot. There are no substances on earth that are evil, none in the world that need to be banned. All substances need to be understood however in order to ensure safe use, and Joe Biden and his Drug Warriors are determined to keep us fearing boogieman substances like Fentanyl rather than understanding them.

Educate, do not incarcerate.

Re-legalize Mother Nature's medicines so folks who are seeking self-transcendence do not have to avail themselves of the handful of more dangerous substances whose sale is incentivized by prohibition.


Extra Credit

September 22, 2022

The next time you see a bunch of self-important police officers in a press conference standing in front of a cache of bad-evil-horrible "drugs," picture them wearing KKK hoods -- because that's what the Drug War is all about, breaking the heads of minorities. That's why Chicago had 797 gun deaths in 2021 and the media simply does not care. Gannett, Sinclair, and the handful of other companies that own local and national papers refuse to point out that the Drug War created the armed gangs in inner cities in the first place, exactly as liquor prohibition created the Mafia.

?374?

That's your second extra-credit assignment: see how many newspaper articles you can find that talk about inner-city violence without even MENTIONING substance prohibition and the War on Drugs. Believe me, you'll be spoiled for choice!

Author's Follow-up: February 3, 2023



It's quite depressing to follow Twitter on this topic and see all the unnecessary suffering going on in the world because the DEA is second-guessing doctors when it comes to their prescribing of pain medication. The DEA and the politicians do not realize that when it comes to pain medication, the experience of the patient is the key issue and how they experience that pain -- not the muddled ideas of politicians as to how much pain relief they "should" be receiving according to some cut-and-paste figure determined by the gut instinct of bureaucrats -- bureaucrats whose main concern is keeping their jobs, not helping people in pain.

Author's Follow-up: May 17, 2023


It can't be said enough -- mainly because it hasn't been said at all -- that Trump became president because of the Drug War. Prohibition killed black voters and threw millions of survivors into prison -- far more than enough retired votes to swing elections for racist republicans and their legion of democrat facilitators and enablers.



Author's Follow-up:

September 13, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




Saying "Fentanyl 10 kills!" is philosophically equivalent to saying "Fire bad!" Both utterances represent attempts to make us fear dangerous substances rather than learning how to use them as wisely as possible for the benefit of humanity.













Notes for essay entitled Ignorance is the enemy, not Fentanyl: open letter to Lynn Walker of the Wichita Falls Times Record News:

1: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)
2: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)
3: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
4: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
5: 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)
6: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
7: Joe Biden (up)
8: Joe Biden’s Drug War Record Is So Much Worse Than You Think Bienenstock, David, Leafly, 2019 (up)
9: Here's an idea: let's start teaching kids the truth about drugs DWP (up)
10: Fentanyl does not steal loved ones: Drug Laws Do DWP (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




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.

I'm told that science is completely unbiased today. I guess I'll have to go back and reassess my doubts about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.

America takes away the citizen's right to manage their own depression by making opium and cocaine illegal. Then psychiatrists treat the resulting epidemic of depression and anxiety by damaging the patient's brain with shock therapy.

If Fentanyl kills, then alcohol slaughters. Drug prohibition is the real killer.

Being less than a month away from an election that, in my view, could end American democracy, I don't like to credit Musk for much. But I absolutely love it every time he does or says something that pushes back against the drug-war narrative.

I don't have a problem with CBD. But I find that many people like it for the wrong reasons: they assume there is something slightly "dirty" about getting high and that all "cures" should be effected via direct materialist causes, not holistically a la time-honored tribal use.

The DEA stomped onto Thomas Jefferson's estate in 1987 and confiscated the founding father's poppy plants in violation of everything he stood for, politically speaking. And the TJ Foundation helped them! They sold out Jefferson.

Health is not a quality, it's a balance. To decide drug legality based on 'health' grounds thus opens a Pandora's box of different points of view.

Now the US is bashing the Honduran president for working with "drug cartels." Why don't we just be honest and say why we're REALLY upset with the guy? Drugs is just the excuse, as always, now what's the real reason? Stop using the drug war to disguise American foreign policy.

This pretend concern for the safety of young drug users is bizarre in a country that does not even criminalize bump stocks for automatic weapons.


Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






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