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Libertarians as Closet Christian Scientists

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

July 4, 2021



You'd think libertarians would see through all the Drug Warrior censorship and demonization of amoral substances, but even they are unwittingly hobbled by Drug War lies. Take Christian libertarian Jake Offenhartz. He sees the Drug War as a flagrant overreach of government, however, his own argument is weakened by his tacit acknowledgement of the Drug War lie that there is no necessity for using the psychoactive substances of which politicians disapprove. Jake himself professes a kind of scorn for such substances, declaring that he would never personally use them.

But how -- and why -- would he say that? The kind of medicine that he's referring to has scarcely been examined for its therapeutic potential (how could it be with the outlawing of any plant that manifests potential useful psychopharmacological
qualities?) and the hints of their efficacy are overwhelming. There are thousands of plants out there that we are forbidden to even begin investigating for therapeutic purposes. Given this Nazi state of affairs, what sense does it make to forswear those medicines a priori, unless the libertarian who does so is actually a closet Christian Scientist, convinced that drugs are to be avoided on principle -- a standard, however, that they surely do not hold for aspirin and Pepto Bismol, let alone tobacco and alcohol.

By outlawing psychoactive medicine, the Drug War is deciding how and how much people can think. This is the great crime of the Drug War, and yet libertarians like Jake cannot confront it since they essentially agree with the Drug Warrior about the lack of necessity for what is hypocritically called "drug use." Such a limit upon thinking itself is also a violation of religion to those who believe with Plato that the unexamined life is not worth living, since freedom of thought itself is controlled by a government which (like the Christian Science libertarian) has a scorn for mental states of which they disapprove. The libertarian is thus powerless to confront the Drug War for its greatest sins against human freedom -- sins, however, which only follow after we have allowed the original sin of the Drug Warrior, which was outlawing plants in the first place, in clear violation of natural law.











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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




At best, antidepressants make depression bearable. We need not settle for such drugs, especially when they are notorious for causing dependence. There are many drugs that elate and inspire. It is both cruel and criminal to outlaw them.

It is folly to put bureaucrats in charge of second-guessing drug prescriptions: what such bureaucrats are really doing is second-guessing the various philosophies of life which are presupposed by the way we use psychoactive drugs.

There was no opioid crisis when Americans were free to smoke opium nightly in their homes. Now scientists around the country are making money hand over fist by "solving" the problem in a politically correct way, without even mentioning the drug prohibition that caused it.

The so-called opiate crisis is really a drug prohibition crisis.

If daily drug use and dependency are okay, then there's no logical or scientific reason why I can't smoke a nightly opium pipe.

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.

Governor Kotek is "dealing" with the homelessness problem in Oregon by arresting her way out of it, in fealty to fearmongering drug warriors.

And where did politicians get the idea that irresponsible white American young people are the only stakeholders when it comes to the question of re-legalizing drugs??? There are hundreds of millions of other stakeholders: philosophers, pain patients, the depressed.

We might as well fight for justice for Christopher Reeves: he was killed because someone was peddling that junk that we call horses. The question is: who sold Christopher that horse?! Who encouraged him to ride it?!

Ann Lemke's case studies make the usual assumptions: getting free from addiction is a morality tale. No reference to how the drug war promotes addiction and how banned drugs could solve such problems. She does not say why daily SSRI use is acceptable while daily opium use is not. Etc.


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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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