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.
Getting off some drugs could actually be fun and instructive, by using a variety of other drugs to keep one's mind off the withdrawal process. But America believes that getting off a drug should be a big moral battle.
If I want to use the kind of drugs that have inspired entire religions, fight depression, or follow up on the research of William James into altered states, I should not have to live in fear of the DEA crashing down my door and shouting: "GO! GO! GO!"
America's "health" system was always screaming at me about the threat of addiction from drugs. Then what did it do? It put me on the most dependence-causing meds of all time: SSRIs and SNRIs.
There are endless ways that psychoactive drugs could be creatively combined to combat addiction and a million other things. But the drug warrior says that we have to study each in isolation, and then only for treating one single board-certified condition.
Alexander Shulgin is a typical westerner when he speaks about cocaine. He moralizes about the drug, telling us that it does not give him "real" power. But so what? Does coffee give him "real" power? Coke helps some, others not. Stop holding it to this weird metaphysical standard.
Drug prohibition represents the biggest power grab by government in human history. It is the state control of pain relief and mental states.
In Mexico, the same substance can be considered a "drug" or a "med," depending on where you are in the country. It's just another absurd result of the absurd policy of drug prohibition.
If Americans want less government, they should get rid of the Drug War Industrial Complex, rather than abandoning democracies around the world and leaving a vacuum for Russia and China to fill.
NIDA is a propaganda arm of the U.S. government -- and will remain so until it recognizes the glaringly obvious benefits of drugs -- as well as the glaringly obvious downsides of prohibition.
All uplifting drugs are potential antidepressants. Science denies that fact by claiming that drug efficacy must be proven quantitatively. And so they ignore anecdote, history and psychological common sense.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Let's hear it for Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx: and everyone else who stands up to the drug war at the risk of losing their own freedom, published on October 16, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
You have been reading an article entitled, Let's hear it for Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx: and everyone else who stands up to the drug war at the risk of losing their own freedom, published on October 16, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
