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No drugs are bad in and of themselves

an open letter to Steven Urquhart, founder of the Divine Assembly

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher






October 24, 2024

ear Steve:

I enjoyed your video on psilocybin and TDA (the Divine Assembly1).

You mentioned at one point that the Salt Lake City Police Chief indicated that he had a lot of other things to focus on than arresting mushroom users. This sounds very enlightened, except that he probably means that he is busy cracking heads over OTHER drugs like opiates and cocaine. This is why I like to say that

the Drug War is a make-work program for law enforcement...

and the "mulligan" that is currently being given to psychedelic use does not change that fact, especially since the police are acting (or withholding action) for practical reasons, not constitutional or common sense reasons, not, that is, based on any pro-human principles. This "mulligan" can also be considered racist, as you yourself acknowledge, since such leniency as you receive would surely not be extended to minority communities who had not surrounded their drug use with noble allusions to human freedom and for whom the amassing of a cadre of stand-by lawyers was completely out of the question economically speaking.

So while it's great that the police are not going to go after YOU and your followers for using mushrooms, it should be remembered that this is only because they are going after thousands of other drug users, based on America's warped idea that bureaucrats and scientists can tell us if a psychoactive drug has positive effects. But this is wrong. It is what philosophers call a category error to put a materialist in charge of opining on the utility and importance of drugs that expand consciousness and increase spirituality. As James Fadiman believes, it is human experience ("citizen science") that determines efficacy of such substances, not the reductionist evaluation that a modern teetotaling and skeptical Dr. Spock of Star Trek might make by looking under a microscope2.

So are we really going to sit back calmly as the FDA tells us that MDMA is not worth the risks, a substance that could help us prevent school shootings by helping hotheads experience empathy? In so ruling, the FDA is not making a scientific judgement; they are deciding instead upon what we should value as free citizens of a democracy, namely 100% safety in preference to peace, love and understanding. But that's a bureaucratic conclusion based on the Drug War ideology of substance demonization. It shows how far out of touch the scientific community is when it comes to psychoactive medicines: they are, in fact, dogmatically blind to any and all absolutely obvious benefits of use. And needless to say, this obsession for 100% safety is extremely hypocritical, coming from an agency that believes in the power of brain-damaging shock therapy3 and the psychedelic pill mill upon which 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life -- the same FDA that approves drugs whose side effects as advertised on prime-time TV include DEATH ITSELF!

If the police chief wanted to help, he would stop cracking down on ALL drug use and encourage education and regulated supply. We've tried punishment for 100+ years now, and where has it gotten us? We are no longer a free country thanks to drug law, which has destroyed the 4th amendment and is eating away at the first amendment. Before 1914, Americans used opium peaceably in their own homes; thanks to the Drug War, kids are now using opiates in the street. Where do we want them to go next? To Mars!? Nor are they dying because of opiates. Drug warriors are challenged when it comes to the idea of subtlety, but overdoses are being caused today by uncertain and contaminated drug supply, not by drug use per se. There was no national overdose crisis when one was allowed to use regulated product at home.

Indeed, the downsides of the Drug War are just too huge to be seen. It throws millions of minorities in jail, and it takes no pundit to tell us that this would have a major effect on our national elections where presidents win by a handful of votes.

Moreover, as Heather Ann Thompson wrote in The Atlantic in 2014:

"Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist."


Today, we have no-go zones in every major (and some minor) American cities -- and everyone knows that there are major cities in every Latin American country that are impassable thanks to the Drug War. Why do we continue with the Drug War, then? Easy. By willful blindness to the facts. The mass media no longer even connects the Drug War with inner city violence and Mexican civil wars. Just read most any story about inner-city violence from a media conglomerate and you'll see all sorts of quotes from puzzled people asking: "Why are these places so damn violent?" 4 5 6

But it's important to the powers that be that we never associate this dystopia with the Drug War, even though we know that liquor prohibition created the Mafia as we know it today, and so the hydra-headed downsides of prohibition should be perfectly understandable to everybody. (Of course, the Drug War is the epitome of "denial" -- and so Drug Warriors are always eager to blame all the downsides of prohibition on drugs themselves -- creating a vicious circle that keeps our prisons packed with minorities.)

And what about Mexico's stance on that Drug War? Is it not hateful in the EXTREME? When President Obrador was asked about a woman who was seeking to learn the fate of the 60,000 "disappeared" in Mexico because of the Drug War, he claimed the woman was a necrophiliac7.

In other words, I submit the following, Steve:

The Drug War is wrong root and branch. It is guided by hate. It is always wrong to decide in advance that there are no positive uses for a drug -- especially when one reaches that conclusion by ignoring all historical benefits of drug use, as for instance the war on opiates is based on a very biased view of the Opium Wars, based on an American missionary's lie that the drug was killing millions in China8. Lies, lies, lies. Just like the 1980s lie that "drugs" fry the brain (as if that statement even makes sense when one fails to specify the drug in question!) Not only is that false, but opium had positive uses. The Chinese were not beating up their wives, as were the well-heeled drunks who supported the Anti-Opium movement in 19th-century England.

I am not disagreeing with you Steve, however; I am merely suggesting that you might have been even more right than you yourself believed when you stated that you were in a privileged position to advocate for change. I think it's worth remembering that the cops may be cutting the psychedelic movement slack for the wrong reasons: i.e., because they are using drugs that seemingly intelligent white mainstream males are now favoring.

Open Letters







Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.

I used to be surprised at this reticence on the part of modern drug-war pundits, until I realized that most of them are materialists. That is, most of them believe in (or claim to believe in) the psychiatric pill mill. If they happen to praise psychedelic drugs as a godsend for the depressed, they will yet tell us that such substances are only for those whose finicky body chemistries fail to respond appropriately to SSRIs and SNRIs. The fact is, however, there are thousands of medicines out there that can help with psychological issues -- and this is based on simple psychological common sense. But materialist scientists ignore common sense. That's why Dr. Robert Glatter wrote an article in Forbes magazine wondering if laughing gas could help the depressed.

As a lifelong depressive, I am embarrassed for Robert, that he has to even ask such a question. Of course laughing gas could help. Not only is laughter "the best medicine," as Readers Digest has told us for years, but looking forward to laughing is beneficial too. But materialist scientists ignore anecdote and history and tell us that THEY will be the judge of psychoactive medicines, thank you very much. And they will NOT judge such medicines by asking folks like myself if they work but rather by looking under a microscope to see if they work in the biochemical way that materialists expect.

  • America's Blind Spot
  • Another Cry in the Wilderness
  • Canadian Drug Warrior, I said Get Away
  • Common Sense Drug Withdrawal
  • Critique of the Philosophy of Happiness
  • Depressed? Here's why you can't get the medicines that you need
  • Drug War Murderers
  • End the Drug War Now
  • Feedback on my first legal psilocybin session in Oregon
  • Finally, a drug war opponent who checks all my boxes
  • Freedom of Religion and the War on Drugs
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war
  • God and Drugs
  • Hello? MDMA works, already!
  • Heroin versus Alcohol
  • How Addiction Scientists Reckon without the Drug War
  • How National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of coca
  • How Scientific American reckons without the drug war
  • How the Drug War is Threatening Intellectual Freedom in England
  • How the Drug War Outlaws Criticism of Immanuel Kant
  • How the Drug War Screws the Depressed
  • How the Monticello Foundation betrayed Jefferson's Legacy in 1987
  • How the US Preventive Services Task Force Drums Up Business for Big Pharma
  • How to Unite Drug War Opponents of all Ethnicities
  • I'll See Your Antidepressants and Raise You One Huachuma Cactus
  • Ignorance is the enemy, not Fentanyl
  • Illusions with Professor Arthur Shapiro
  • In Defense of Religious Drug Use
  • Keep Laughing Gas Legal
  • Majoring in Drug War Philosophy
  • MDMA for Psychotherapy
  • My Realistic Plan for Getting off of Big Pharma Drugs and why it's so hard to implement
  • No drugs are bad in and of themselves
  • Open Letter to Addiction Specialist Gabor Mate
  • Open Letter to Anthony Gottlieb
  • Open Letter to Congressman Ben Cline, asking him to abolish the criminal DEA
  • Open Letter to Diane O'Leary
  • Open Letter to Dr. Carl L. Hart
  • Open Letter to Erica Zelfand
  • Open Letter to Erowid
  • Open Letter to Francis Fukuyama
  • Open Letter to Gabrielle Glaser
  • Open letter to Kenneth Sewell
  • Open Letter to Lisa Ling
  • Open Letter to Margo Margaritoff
  • Open Letter to Nathan at TheDEA.org
  • Open letter to Professor Troy Glover at Waterloo University
  • Open Letter to Richard Hammersley
  • Open Letter to Rick Doblin and Roland Griffiths
  • Open Letter to Roy Benaroch MD
  • Open Letter to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
  • Open Letter to the Virginia Legislature
  • Open Letter to Variety Critic Owen Glieberman
  • Open Letter to Vincent Hurley, Lecturer
  • Open Letter to Vincent Rado
  • Open letter to Wolfgang Smith
  • Predictive Policing in the Age of the Drug War
  • Prohibition Spectrum Disorder
  • Prohibitionists Never Learn
  • Regulate and Educate
  • Review of When Plants Dream
  • Science is not free in the age of the drug war
  • Science News Continues to Ignore the Drug War
  • Science News magazine continues to pretend that there is no war on drugs
  • Solquinox sounded great, until I found out I wasn't invited
  • Speaking Truth to Big Pharma
  • Teenagers and Cannabis
  • The common sense way to get off of antidepressants
  • The Criminalization of Nitrous Oxide is No Laughing Matter
  • The Depressing Truth About SSRIs
  • The Drug War and Armageddon
  • The Invisible Mass Shootings
  • The Menace of the Drug War
  • The Mother of all Western Biases
  • The problem with Modern Drug Reform Efforts
  • The Pseudoscience of Mental Health Treatment
  • The Right to LIVE FULLY is more important than the Right to DIE
  • There is nothing to debate: the drug war is wrong, root and branch
  • Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war lies
  • Top 10 Problems with the Drug War
  • Unscientific American
  • Using plants and fungi to get off of antidepressants
  • Vancouver Police Seek to Eradicate Safe Use
  • Weed Bashing at WTOP.COM
  • Whitehead and Psychedelics
  • Why CBS 19 should stop supporting the Drug War
  • Why DARE should stop telling kids to say no
  • Why Philosophers Need to Stop Dogmatically Ignoring Drugs
  • Why Rick Doblin is Ghosting Me
  • Why Science is the Handmaiden of the Drug War
  • Why the Drug War is Worse than you can Imagine
  • Why the FDA is not qualified to judge psychoactive medicine
  • Why the Holocaust Museum must denounce the Drug War
  • William James rolls over in his grave as England bans Laughing Gas




  • Notes:

    1 Urquhart, Steven, The Divine Assembly, 2024 (up)
    2 Fadiman, James, Microdosing 101, Microdosing Institute, (up)
    3 Charles, Kellner MD, The FDA on ECT: Supporting a Vital Treatment, 2019 (up)
    4 Twenty-four hours of terror as cartel violence engulfs Mexican city, The Guardian, 2023 (up)
    5 Carpenter, Ted Galen, The Fire Next Door: Mexico's Drug Violence and the Danger to America, Cato Institute, Washington, DC, 2012 (up)
    6 Alexander, Inigo, No ‘clear way out’: How Ecuador descended into gang violence, Al Jazeera, 2024 (up)
    7 Mexico’s president accuses press and volunteer searchers for missing people of ‘necrophilia’, AP News, 2024 (up)
    8 Quass, Brian, The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton, 2023 (up)



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    Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs

    It's disgusting that folks like Paul Stamets need a DEA license to work with mushrooms.
    Drug use is judged by different standards than any other risky activity in the western world. One death can lead to outrage, even though that death might be statistically insignificant.
    We need a few brave folk to "act up" by shouting "It's the drug war!" whenever folks are discussing Mexican violence or inner city shootings. The media treat both topics as if the violence is inexplicable! We can't learn from mistakes if we're in denial.
    Drug War censorship is supported by our "science" magazines, which pretend that outlawed drugs do not exist, and so write what amount to lies about the supposed intransigence of things like depression and anxiety.
    It's no wonder that folks blame drugs. Carl Hart is the first American scientist to openly say in a published book that even the so-called "hard" drugs can be used wisely. That's info that the drug warriors have always tried to keep from us.
    Health is not a quality, it's a balance. To decide legality based on 'health' grounds thus opens a Pandora's box of different points of view.
    What is the end game of the drug warrior? A world in which no one wants drugs? That's not science. It's the drug-hating religion of Christian Science. You know, the American religion that outsources its Inquisition to drug-testing labs.
    I know. I'm on SNRIs. But SSRIs and SNRIs are both made with materialist presumptions in mind: that the best way to change people is with a surgical strike at one-size-fits-all chemistry. That's the opposite of the shamanic holism that I favor.
    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.
    I personally hate beets and I could make a health argument against their legality. Beets can kill for those allergic to them. Sure, it's a rare condition, but since when has that stopped a prohibitionist from screaming bloody murder?
    More Tweets

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    You have been reading an article entitled, No drugs are bad in and of themselves: an open letter to Steven Urquhart, founder of the Divine Assembly, published on October 24, 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)