and everyone else who stands up to the drug war at the risk of losing their own freedom
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
October 16, 2024
Here is my response to an article entitled "FREE DULF. NO MORE DYING. NO MORE DRUG WAR 2024," published by the Drug User Solidarity Committee on the Drug War Decoded-Canada website.1
Thanks and best wishes to Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx... and to everyone else who stands up to the hateful Drug War at the risk of their own freedom.
The Drug War is anti-democratic. The proof is extant.
It has destroyed the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution (which used to bar unreasonable search). It outlaws religions that rely on entheogenic ritual. It is a makework program for law enforcement that throws millions of minorities in jail every year, thereby handing elections to tyrants. And Drug Warriors are not done yet with their assault on democratic freedoms. In early 2024, Oregon politicians floated a plan to outlaw free speech when it comes to drugs.
Drug warriors would prefer that drug users die than to provide them with regulated product. They would prefer nuclear Armageddon to a world in which people use entheogens to promote world peace.
America's Food & Drug Administration embraces the same warped priorities.
It disapproves of drugs that could prevent suicide and school shootings. Meanwhile it approves of Big Pharma "meds" whose side effects include death itself. This is the same FDA which approves of brain-damaging shock therapy, the same FDA which endorses the psychiatric pill mill and the same FDA which has no problem with the fact that 1 in 4 American women are chemically dependent on antidepressants for life.
But the media and politicians keep running a full-court press against common sense and simple humanity.
Thank God for folks like Jeremy and Eris who dare to push back!
Author's Follow-up: October 16, 2024
Drug prohibition is a very strange puppy. First America decided to end liquor prohibition once and for all with the 21st amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But then those same Americans began outlawing every even potentially popular psychoactive alternative to liquor, many of them time-honored, some of them long considered panaceas, and none of them as dangerous as alcohol itself.
So Americans love prohibition -- they just want to make one big fat exception for liquor when it comes to prohibition enforcement.
Here's one problem that supporters of the psychiatric pill mill never address: the fact that Big Pharma antidepressants demoralize users by turning them into patients for life.
Psychiatrists never acknowledge the biggest downside to modern antidepressants: the fact that they turn you into a patient for life. That's demoralizing, especially since the best drugs for depression are outlawed by the government.
Countless millions suffer needlessly in silence because of America's fearmongering about drugs.
Just saw a People's magazine article with the headline: "JUSTICE FOR MATTHEW PERRY."
If there was true justice, their editorial staff would be in jail for promoting user ignorance and a contaminated drug supply.
It's the prohibition, stupid!!!
Malcolm X sensed an important truth about drugs: the fact that it was always a self-interested category error for Americans to place medical doctors in charge of mind and mood medicine.
That's how antidepressants came about: the idea that sadness was a simple problem that science could solve. Instead of being caused by a myriad of interrelated issues, we decided it was all brain chemistry that could be treated with precision. Result? Mass chemical dependency.
Ug! Fire bad!
There were 4,731 fire-related deaths in America in 2023.
Learn more at the Partnership for a Death Free America.
LA Police Chief Daryl Gates said drug users should be summarily executed. William Bennett said drug dealers should be beheaded. These are the attitudes that the drug war inculcates. This racist and brutal ideology must be wiped out.
"The Harrison [Narcotics] Act made the drug peddler, and the drug peddler makes drug addicts.” --Robert A. Schless, 1925.
I've been told by many that I should have seen "my doctor" before withdrawing from Effexor. But, A) My doctor got me hooked on the junk in the first place, and, B) That doctor completely ignores the OBVIOUS benefits of indigenous meds and focuses only on theoretical downsides.
Here's one problem that supporters of the psychiatric pill mill never address: the fact that Big Pharma antidepressants demoralize users by turning them into patients for life.