evin Sabet reminds me of those cops in "Naked Gun" who inadvertently force bystanders off the edge of a cliff in an effort to protect them from potential danger. He sees problems with marijuana with wide-opened eyes and yet he's blind to the gargantuan damage being done by the Drug War ideology that he himself represents. He wants us to "follow the science," not realizing that American science has been censored for over a century now by the Drug War ideology of substance demonization. That's why all the academic articles about the government-defined category called "drugs" concern only abuse and misuse, without any reference to the fact that psychoactive medicines have inspired entire religions, given Plato his view of the afterlife, and formed the very basis of the long-lasting Inca society. That's why magazines like the Atlantic publish articles about depression and Alzheimer's without even mentioning the fact that the Drug War has outlawed all the substances that might help us end those scourges. Indeed, depression could end overnight in America if we re-legalized the coca leaf -- and school shootings would be reduced drastically by legalizing the empathogen called MDMA, something that the mendacious DEA was on the verge of doing in 1985 until they vetoed the advice of their own counsel and criminalized the substance in order to protect their jobs, thanks to which they have denied godsend medicine for PTSD to America's "wounded warriors" for the last 37 years.
If you want to "follow the science," then the first step is to free science from drug-war censorship. But of course in reality, even "following the science" is not enough. Folks use psychoactive substances to help them achieve self-actualization in life, and for many of us, self-actualization trumps safety. The "good life" for a real human being is one in which they achieve their most heartfelt goals, whereas the "good life" for the scientist is one that maximizes safety in the abstract. If we merely "followed the science" about the statistically super-dangerous sport of free-climbing, we would criminalize the activity at once. But we do not do so. Why not? Because we recognize that the personal fulfillment of the climber trumps safety considerations. But when it comes to psychoactive medicines, Kevin wants safety to trump all else, in which case it follows that we must consider users criminal if they dare to follow their dreams.
But my real beef with Kevin is that the omnipresence of marijuana today is a direct result of the Drug War itself, the Drug War that he wants to salvage by making the scheduling system more honest (something that's never going to happen in a country that sells Big Pharma meds like lemonade on prime-time television). But like all Drug Warriors, the only stakeholder he sees when it comes to substance legalization are uneducated white American youths (who are uneducated precisely because the Drug War spends money on arresting rather than teaching, on demonizing rather than creating safe use practices, which is clear from the fact that we have a drug ENFORCEMENT agency instead of a drug EDUCATION agency in America). Kevin has no interest in the other stakeholders: the Mexican children who have been orphaned by the civil war that the Drug War has created in Mexico, the scientists who are censored by the Drug War ideology of substance demonization, the 1 in 4 American women who are hooked on the Big Pharma pill mill, the opioid crisis caused by a Drug War which incentivizes dealers to sell whatever's ready to hand without regard for safety, and above all the millions who suffer in silence around the globe today because America has decided that we should fear psychoactive substances rather than learn how to use them as safely as possible.
The answer is too obvious for Washington insiders like Kevin to see: we need to get government out of the business of criminalizing Mother Nature in the first place. We need to teach, not arrest. For the Drug War causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some. The billions that we give to the army and law enforcement for cracking black heads in America and shooting Latinos south of our border should be channeled instead into education: real education, I mean, that teaches us the ups and downs of all drugs, including those of the anti-depressants upon which 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life. Most importantly, however, we need to recognize the original sin of the Drug War in outlawing Mother Nature's medicines in the first place, for as citizens of Planet Earth, we all have a natural right to the plants and fungi that grow at our very feet. Just ask Thomas Jefferson, whose ghost was spinning in his grave when the mendacious DEA stomped onto Monticello in 1987 and confiscated the Founding Father's poppy plants in violation of the natural law upon which he had founded America.
The Links Police
Pull over to the side of the Web page. You just scrolled by an important link without stopping, viz:
Rishi says he never takes drugs. No aspirin then? No coffee? Or does he just means "drugs" that politicians have concluded have no good uses -- like, say, the coca plant which Peruvian Indians used safely for millennia?
Related tweet: June 10, 2023
Check out these prohibitionists who whine about the popularity of weed. It's like they outlawed steak and pork and then they complained about the popularity of chicken. I'd be more than happy to diversify my medicine cabinet once these clowns stop outlawing mother nature.
Over 45% of traumatic brain injuries are caused by horseback riding (ABC News). Tell your representatives to outlaw horseback riding and make it a federal offence to teach a child how to ride! Brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.
5% of proceeds from the sale of the above product will go toward getting Brian a decent haircut for once. Honestly. 9% will go toward shoes. 50% will go toward miscellaneous. 9% of the remainder will go toward relaxation, which could encompass anything from a spin around town to an outdoor barbecue at Brian's brother's house in Stanardsville (both gas and the ice-cream cake that Brian usually supplies).
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. It outlaws substances that have inspired entire religions, Nazifies the English language and militarizes police forces nationwide.
It bans the substances that inspired William James' ideas about human consciousness and the nature of ultimate reality. In short, it 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.
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.
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
Andrew, Christopher "The Secret World: A History of Intelligence" 2019 Yale University Press
Aurelius, Marcus "Meditations" 2021 East India Publishing Company
Mate, Gabriel "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction" 2009 Vintage Canada
Maupassant, Guy de "Le Horla et autres contes fantastiques - Guy de Maupassant: Les classiques du fantastique " 2019
McKenna, Terence "Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution " 1992 Bantam
Pinchbeck, Daniel "When Plants Dream" 2019 Watkins Publishing
Poe, Edgar Allan "The Essential Poe" 2020 Warbler Classics
Pollan, Michael "How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence " 2018 Penguin Books
Reynolds, David S. "Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville " 1988 Oxford University Press
Richards, William "Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences Hardcover" 2015 Columbia University Press
Rosenfeld, Harvey "Diary of a Dirty Little War: The Spanish-American War of 1898 " 2000 Praeger
Straussman, Rick "DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences " 2001 Park Street Press
Streatfield, Dominic "Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography" 2003 Picador USA
Swartzwelder, Scott "Buzzed: The Straight Facts About the Most Used and Abused Drugs from Alcohol to Ecstasy" 1998 W.W. Norton
Szasz, Thomas "Ceremonial Chemistry: the ritual persecution of drugs, addicts, and pushers" 1974 Anchor Press/Doubleday
Whitaker, Robert "Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America " 2010 Crown
Zinn, Howard "A People's History of the United States: 1492 - present" 2009
Zuboff , Shoshana "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power" 2019 Public Affairs
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.
evin Sabet reminds me of those cops in "Naked Gun" who inadvertently force bystanders off the edge of a cliff in an effort to protect them from potential danger. He sees problems with marijuana with wide-opened eyes and yet he's blind to the gargantuan damage being done by the Drug War ideology that he himself represents. He wants us to "follow the science," not realizing that American science has been censored for over a century now by the Drug War ideology of substance demonization. That's why all the academic articles about the government-defined category called "drugs" concern only abuse and misuse, without any reference to the fact that psychoactive medicines have inspired entire religions, given Plato his view of the afterlife, and formed the very basis of the long-lasting Inca society. That's why magazines like the Atlantic publish articles about depression and Alzheimer's without even mentioning the fact that the Drug War has outlawed all the substances that might help us end those scourges. Indeed, depression could end overnight in America if we re-legalized the coca leaf -- and school shootings would be reduced drastically by legalizing the empathogen called MDMA, something that the mendacious DEA was on the verge of doing in 1985 until they vetoed the advice of their own counsel and criminalized the substance in order to protect their jobs, thanks to which they have denied godsend medicine for PTSD to America's "wounded warriors" for the last 37 years.
