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Jim Beam and Drugs

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

November 21, 2024



Perhaps you've seen those Jim Beam commercials on TV and streaming media: a crowd of lively young people are seen responsibly lugging around bottles of Jim Beam bourbon while living a joyous life.

I have two very different reactions to that ad.

I am struck at first by the hypocrisy of selling Jim Beam like it was apple pie while living in an age in which drugs like opium 1 and coca and peyote (etc.) are demonized as the devil incarnate. Nor do I believe that drugs, alcohol included, should be advertised in this way, by appealing to the emotions of young people. But at the same time, this ad depicts the way that I believe we should be taught to feel about ALL mind-affecting drugs that are used for relaxation and for having a good time: they can be used responsibly -- and those who do not do so are the oddballs, the ones who are irresponsible and/or who lack the necessary education -- the education that we should provide rather than arresting them.











Notes for essay entitled Jim Beam and Drugs:

1: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)




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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




Drug Warriors will publicize all sorts of drug use -- but they will never publicize sane and positive drug use. Drug Warrior dogma holds that such use is impossible -- and, indeed, the drug war does all it can to turn that prejudice into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The "scheduling" system is completely anti-scientific and anti-patient. It tells us we can make a one-size-fits-all decision about psychoactive substances without regard for dosage, context of use, reason for use, etc. That's superstitious tyranny.

As great as it is, "Synthetic Panics" by Philip Jenkins was only tolerated by academia because it did not mention drugs in the title and it contains no explicit opinions about drugs. As a result, many drug law reformers still don't know the book exists.

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 controls the very way that we are allowed to see the world. The Drug War is thus a meta-injustice, not just a handful of bad legal statutes.

It's just plain totalitarian nonsense to outlaw mother nature and to outlaw moods and mental states thru drug law. These truths can't be said enough by us "little people" because the people in power are simply not saying them.

Using the billions now spent on caging users, we could end the whole phenomena of both physical and psychological addiction by using "drugs to fight drugs." But drug warriors do not want to end addiction, they want to keep using it as an excuse to ban drugs.

Drug warriors do not want to end "addiction": it's their golden goose. They use the threat of addiction to scare us into giving up our democratic freedoms, like that once supplied by the 4th amendment.

If fearmongering drug warriors were right about the weakness of humankind, there would be no social drinkers, only drunkards.

We should place prohibitionists on trial for destroying inner cities.


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Book Cover

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Book Cover

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Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

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