Essay date: April 15, 2022





'Intoxiphobia' by Russell Newcombe

A critique




Note: I created a more in-depth critique of Intoxiphobia in 2023. Click here to read.

Hi, Russell.

Just a few comments on your excellent paper (Intoxiphobia: discrimination toward people who use drugs).



1) The original sin of the Drug Warrior was to criminalize plants, which is a violation of the Natural Law upon which Jefferson founded America. In this connection, you might quote John Locke as well as John Mill in the latter section of your paper, for the former wrote that human beings (under Natural Law) have a right to "the use of the land and all that lies therein." Even without that quote, I believe that Natural Law (if it tells us anything) tells us that human beings cannot justifiably be denied access to the plant medicine that grows at their very feet.

2) You say you want to avoid moralistic language by not using terms like "drug abusers" and "drug misusers." Fair enough. But in my view, the real way to avoid moralistic language is to avoid the term "drug" altogether, which as used today is simply a pejorative term for "psychoactive substances of which politicians disapprove." In fact, to see how wrong the Drug War is, we need only replace the word "drugs" with "psychoactive plant medicine," or better yet "godsend plant medicine." The latter term may be subjective, but it is no more subjective than the term "drugs," with its implication of "dangerous substances used only for hedonistic purposes."

3) In attacking the moral model of drug suppression, it should be pointed out, I think, that the Drug War is nothing less than the enforcement of the Christian Science religion with respect to psychoactive medicine, i. e. it represents the theological idea that the substances that we demonize as 'drugs' are somehow bad in and of themselves, without respect for how, when, why or by whom they are used. I call this idea theological because it is not supported by facts, but rather by strong religious and/or pseudo-religious prejudices on the part of the 'moralizer. '

4) With respect to drug testing, it's worth underscoring the fact that such tests, as a practical matter, are not looking for impairment, but rather for mere use. You could not get, say, a cashier's job in America at Lowe's hardware store if a trace of cocaine was found in your system, even tho' there was no sign of impairment whatsoever. This kind of drug testing is really just the extrajudicial enforcement of Drug War sensibilities, thanks to which one is basically removed from the job market without a trial, indeed without even being legally charged with anything. And one cannot mount a legal defense against something for which one has not even been charged.

5) You say that the use of methadone constitutes drug dependency according to the VISA WAIVER PROGRAM ESTA. I would here simply point out the huge irony of this fact, when you consider that 1 in 4 American women are dependent on Big Pharma meds for a lifetime. That's surely the biggest national chemical dependency in world history, and yet this medical dystopia is so far from being decried, that top medical officials (often under the pay of Big Pharma, I fear) regularly appear on talk shows to remind Americans to "keep taking their meds," many of which SSRIs are harder to kick than heroin according to psychiatrist-author Julie Holland (because the antidepressants muck about with brain chemistry, disrupting one's neurochemical baseline).

Thanks again, and best wishes.

Brian Quass





Russell also casts his argument "on the back foot" by failing to point out that psychoactive substances have been used, time out of mind, for religious and practical reasons by societies across the world (as the Vedic religion worshipped Soma and the psychedelic kykeon inspired Plato's views on the afterlife). He should then also point out the number of well-respected westerners (Marcus Aurelius, Benjamin Franklin, HG Wells, Jules Verne, etc.) who have used demonized substances responsibly.

By failing to mention these, he leaves the impression that "drug use" is merely something that should be tolerated, however reluctantly, based on an appeal to safety and human rights data -- whereas, truth be known, it's something that should be encouraged for mental and religious improvement (and reasons to do with Natural Law and the Natural Rights of human beings to Mother Nature's bounty). But then most opponents of the Drug War are so immersed in the culture of substance demonization that they argue apologetically rather than citing facts that call the whole culture of substance demonization into question.


July 1, 2022

Russell Responds



Russell was kind enough to respond to me on July 1, 2022, with the following comment:



Hi Brian, thanks for the insightful comments, which are very useful. I agree that, like addiction, the term 'drug' is riddled with semantic baggage, but these psychoactive substances include synthetic chemicals as well as plants. 'Intoxicants' is used but not that popular, and 'highs' and other colloquial terms are fine as far as they go, but I'm fairly sure we are stuck with 'psychoactive drug/substance' for the time being. But human and scientific language changes with time and fashions, so I guess we have to wait and see!


Brian Responds to Russell



Thanks, Russell. My feeling is that very few authors grasp the full degree to which the current talk about drugs and addiction presupposes extremely problematic assumptions. Even Michael Pollan, I think, fails to understand that the term "drugs" is really just a politically created pejorative term for "psychoactive substances of which politicians disapprove." So merely to discuss "drugs" without mentioning this fact is to tacitly support the problematic assumptions which would seem to justify the use of that pejorative term: assumptions like the idea that drugs are "bad" and that "sobriety" equates to "cleanliness" and thus to morality, that "the best use is always no use," and so forth. These are all Christian Science ideas that most people would never adopt if we were talking about medicine for physical disorders.

Although "drugs" can include synthetic nostrums, I think it is still instructive to replace the term "drugs" with "godsend plant medicine," since the Drug War was founded to outlaw the poppy plant and it is the subsequent outlawing of the coca plant that has led to the current violence in South and Central America. Even LSD is derived from Ergot, so the line between synthetic and natural is not always clear. That said, it is always inconvenient from a rhetorical standpoint to include synthetics in one's anti-Drug War arguments. That's why I sometimes ignore the synthetics entirely in order to drive home the point that the Drug War is outlawing plants. Although that can't be a knock-down argument for comprehensive drug legalization, I personally think that the outlawing of plants is such an obvious overstep by government (one that I view to be a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded) that even a diehard drug-hater has to be uncomfortable in countenancing such a power grab. If I can't convince them that it's nonsense to criminalize plants, then my slightly more nuanced arguments on behalf of synthetics would fall on deaf ears in any case.

For now, the word "drugs" is like the word "scabs." Both not only connote something but they do so while conveying a harshly negative attitude toward that something, and that attitude makes sense only on the basis of unstated propositions which are highly problematic and sometimes plain false. That's why I believe that the Drug War is the philosophical problem par excellence, because it is being powered by unspoken presuppositions. For this reason, I believe that an effective pushback can only be mounted when Drug Warriors are confronted with these problematic assumptions - when, in short, Drug War opponents stop using the utterly tainted word "drugs" altogether (or at least only in quotes), and replace it with "potential godsends," perhaps, and thereby include synthetics.

In a research setting, the use of the term "potential godsend" may be inappropriate. But I'm advocating the term here specifically for those laypeople who, like myself, are attempting to change the status quo through essays, comments and other forms of peaceful protest. It may read like a biased term, but if the Drug Warrior can demonize psychoactive substances with the epithet "drugs," surely their opponents can be allowed to praise them as "potential godsends." By so doing, in fact, the opponents of the Drug War can tacitly reveal that the Drug Warrior's arguments presuppose a jaundiced way of looking at the world of psychoactive substances, one that is by no means a view that would occur naturally to any free, unbiased and open mind.

Meanwhile, I'll hope with you for a change in the language that we use to describe "drugs," since, in a way, that is the whole problem with the Drug War: it is a problem created out of whole cloth through the strategic use of provocative and assumption-filled language. There was no "drug" problem in the 1800s. The problem back then in the public mind was liquor (and prostitution). It's ironic that the folks who protected liquor from public fear-mongering with a constitutional amendment soon began a little fearmongering of their own, as they attempted to convince the 20th-century world that the problem hadn't been liquor after all: it was all those dirty evil "drugs" instead (especially those associated with the Chinese!)

My fear is that most of the sane people in America still cannot help but be influenced by the Drug War propaganda of demonization. I consider the fact that psychoactive medicines like soma and coca have inspired entire religions, and then I search American TV and movie scripts for positive references to such medicines - and there are none. Almost all the references to "drugs" are negative, treating them as bad in and of themselves. I then search the academic literature on "drugs" and find almost every single research article devoted to "misuse" and "abuse." No one writes about the ability of morphine to improve one's appreciation of Mother Nature (as in Poe's story "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains"), no one writes about the well-known ability of psychedelics to improve one's appreciation of music, no one writes about the ability of MDMA to foster peace, love and understanding between hitherto antagonistic ethnic and social classes, no one writes about how certain drugs bring peace of mind to the depressed, albeit in a non-reductionist fashion that modern material science can never bring itself to acknowledge, except with scorn, by referring to such drugs as "crutches" (as if the SSRIs upon which 1 in 4 women are dependent for life could not be just as easily demonized in this way).

This is the propaganda of omission and I fear it has fried the American brain - with help from the gleefully mendacious "fried egg" ad, which claims that psychoactive substances fry the brain the minute that they are criminalized by pharmacologically clueless politicians. This is almost the opposite of the truth in the case of drugs like opium and coca, and so-called "speed" is so far from frying the brain that the Air Force used to require its use by pilots on crucial missions.

This disconnect between the historical use of drugs and America's attitude toward them makes me think of the remarks by William L. Shirer in his book about Nazi Germany:

"No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime's calculated and incessant propaganda."

I think the same can be said for those who live in a Drug War society in which all good (or even potentially good) news about "drugs" is suppressed. Such propaganda is no doubt especially persuasive in the eyes of the many Americans who received teddy bears from the state police in grade school in return for saying no to the plants and fungi that grow at their very feet.

Thanks again for your kindness in reading my presumptuously long comments. This is one topic upon which I find it difficult to be concise. So thanks for your patience.

And have a great weekend!
Brian

PS Caught myself just in time: I was about to wish you a Happy Fourth of July!


Buy the Drug War Comic Book by Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans


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You have been reading essays by the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass, at abolishthedea.com. Brian is the founder of The Drug War Gift Shop, where artists can feature and sell their protest artwork online. He has also written for Sociodelic and is the author of The Drug War Comic Book, which contains 150 political cartoons illustrating some of the seemingly endless problems with the war on drugs -- many of which only Brian seems to have noticed, by the way, judging by the recycled pieties that pass for analysis these days when it comes to "drugs." That's not surprising, considering the fact that the category of "drugs" is a political category, not a medical or scientific one.

A "drug," as the world defines the term today, is "a substance that has no good uses for anyone, ever, at any time, under any circumstances" -- and, of course, there are no substances of that kind: even cyanide and the deadly botox toxin have positive uses: a war on drugs is therefore unscientific at heart, to the point that it truly qualifies as a superstition, one in which we turn inanimate substances into boogie-men and scapegoats for all our social problems.

The Drug War is, in fact, the philosophical problem par excellence of our time, premised as it is on a raft of faulty assumptions (notwithstanding the fact that most philosophers today pretend as if the drug war does not exist). It is a war against the poor, against minorities, against religion, against science, against the elderly, against the depressed, against those in pain, against children in hospice care, and against philosophy itself. (For proof of that latter charge, check out how the US and UK have criminalized the substances that William James himself told us to study in order to understand reality.) It outlaws substances that have inspired entire religions (like the Vedic), Nazifies the English language (referring to folks who emulate drug-loving Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin as "scumbags") and militarizes police forces nationwide (resulting in gestapo SWAT teams breaking into houses of peaceable Americans and shouting "GO GO GO!").

(Speaking of Nazification, L.A. Police Chief Daryl Gates thought that drug users should be shot. What a softie! The real hardliners are the William Bennetts of the world who want drug users to be beheaded instead. That will teach them to use time-honored plant medicine of which politicians disapprove! Mary Baker Eddy must be ecstatic in her drug-free heaven, as she looks down and sees this modern inquisition on behalf of the drug-hating principles that she herself maintained. I bet she never dared hope that her religion would become the viciously enforced religion of America, let alone of the entire freakin' world!)

In short, the drug war causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, meanwhile violating the Natural Law upon which Thomas Jefferson founded America. (Surely, Jefferson was rolling over in his grave when Ronald Reagan's DEA stomped onto Monticello in 1987 and confiscated the founding father's poppy plants.)

If you believe in freedom and democracy, in America and around the world, please stay tuned for more philosophically oriented broadsides against the outrageous war on godsend medicines, AKA the war on drugs.

Brian Quass
The Drug War Philosopher
abolishthedea.com

PS The drug war has not failed: to the contrary, it has succeeded, insofar as its ultimate goal was to militarize police forces around the world and help authorities to ruthlessly eliminate those who stand in the way of global capitalism. For more, see Drug War Capitalism by Dawn Paley. Oh, and did I mention that most Drug Warriors these days would never get elected were it not for the Drug War itself, which threw hundreds of thousands of their political opposition in jail? Trump was right for the wrong reasons: elections are being stolen in America, but the number-one example of that fact is his own narrow victory in 2016, which could never have happened without the existence of laws that were specifically written to keep Blacks and minorities from voting. The Drug War, in short, is a cancer on the body politic.

PPS Drugs like opium and psychedelics should come with the following warning: "Outlawing of this product may result in inner-city gunfire, civil wars overseas, and rigged elections in which drug warriors win office by throwing minorities in jail."

Rather than apologetically decriminalizing selected plants, we should be demanding the immediate restoration of Natural Law, according to which "The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being." (John Locke)

Selected Bibliography

  • Bandow, Doug "From Fighting The Drug War To Protecting The Right To Use Drugs"2018
  • Barrett, Damon "Children of the Drug War: Perspectives on the Impact of Drug Polices on Young People"2011 IDEBATE Press
  • Bernays, Edward "Propaganda"1928 Public Domain
  • Bilton, Anton "DMT Entity Encounters: Dialogues on the Spirit Molecule"2021 Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
  • Boullosa , Carmen "A Narco History: How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the 'Mexican Drug War'"2016 OR Books
  • Brereton, William "The Truth about Opium / Being a Refutation of the Fallacies of the Anti-Opium Society and a Defence of the Indo-China Opium Trade"2017 Anna Ruggieri
  • Burns, Eric "1920: The year that made the decade roar"2015 Pegasus Books
  • Carpenter, Ted Galen "The Fire Next Door: Mexico's Drug Violence and the Danger to America"2012 Cato Institute
  • Chesterton, GK "Saint Thomas Acquinas"2014 BookBaby
  • Filan, Kenaz "The Power of the Poppy: Harnessing Nature's Most Dangerous Plant Ally"2011 Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
  • Gianluca, Toro "Drugs of the Dreaming: Oneirogens"2007 Simon and Schuster
  • Griffiths, William "Psilocybin: A Trip into the World of Magic Mushrooms"2021 William Griffiths
  • Grof, Stanislav "The transpersonal vision: the healing potential of nonordinary states of consciousness"1998 Sounds True
  • Head, Simon "Mindless: Why Smarter Machines Are Making Dumber Humans"2012 Basic Books
  • Hofmann, Albert "The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and Its Applications"2005 Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
  • Illich, Ivan "Medical nemesis : the expropriation of health"1975 Calder & Boyars
  • Irwin-Rogers, Keir "Illicit Drug Markets, Consumer Capitalism and the Rise of Social Media: A Toxic Trap for Young People"2019
  • James, William "The Varieties of Religious Experience"1902 Philosophical Library
  • Lindstrom, Martin "Brandwashed: tricks companies use to manipulate our minds and persuade us to buy"2011 Crown Business
  • Mariani, Angelo "Coca and its Therapeutic Application, Third Edition"1896 Gutenberg.org
  • Miller, Richard Lawrence "Drug Warriors and Their Prey: From Police Power to Police State"1966 Bloomsbury Academic
  • Mortimer MD, W. Golden "Coca: Divine Plant of the Incas"2017 Ronin Publishing
  • Nagel, Thomas "Mind and Cosmos: why the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false"2012 Oxford University press
  • Newcombe, Russell "Intoxiphobia: discrimination toward people who use drugs"2014 academia.edu
  • Partridge, Chiristopher "Alistair Crowley on Drugs"2021 uploaded by Misael Hernandez
  • Rosenblum, Bruce "Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness"2006 Oxford University Press
  • Rudgley, Richard "The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Substances"2014 Macmillan Publishers
  • Shulgin, Alexander "PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story"1991 Transform Press
  • Shulgin, Alexander "The Nature of Drugs Vol. 1: History, Pharmacology, and Social Impact"2021 Transform Press
  • Smith, Wolfgang "Cosmos and Transcendence: Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief"0
  • Smith, Wolfgang "Physics: A Science in Quest of an Ontology"2022
  • St John, Graham "Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT"2021
  • Szasz, Thomas "Interview With Thomas Szasz: by Randall C. Wyatt"0
  • Wedel, Janine "Unaccountable: How the Establishment Corrupted Our Finances, Freedom and Politics and Created an Outsider Class"2014 Pegasus Books
  • Weil, Andrew "From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs"2004 Open Road Integrated Media
  • Whitaker, Robert "Mad in America"2002 Perseus Publishing
  • Site and its contents copyright 2023, by Brian B. Quass, the drug war philosopher at abolishthedea.com. For more information, contact Brian at quass@quass.com.