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One of these things is not like the other

Court Cam nonsense in the age of the drug war

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

October 22, 2022



The whole trial is out of order!

-Al Pacino in "And Justice for All"


One of my guilty pleasures is watching episodes of Court Cam to see what serial killers are up to these days in the courtrooms of America. The show reminds me that there are plenty of folks out there who could use a healthy dose of MDMA 1 combined with talk therapy to teach them how to love their fellow human beings, not just so that they could behave themselves in court but so that they could refrain from beheading their friends and loved ones in the first place. That's really not too much to ask, after all. And of course there is the occasional bailiff or judge who could benefit from the same no-brainer treatment as well, so that they too could comport themselves like actual Americans rather than as petty unchecked tyrants from South America. That said, I always fast-forward through the scenes in which the criminal protagonist has been charged with so-called "possession." Watching those segments makes me feel like a real voyeur, indeed, because the arrestee is appearing on charges that are more criminal than the "offense" itself. Little wonder then that the accused might "lose it" in the courtroom when the entire legal system has "lost it" with respect to common sense, not to mention the natural law upon which the republic was founded.

But there is always a silver lining. The mere presence of such "criminals" on Court Cam has inspired me with a new sketch for "Sesame Street," which I hope the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will consider running until such time as substance prohibition is consigned to the trash bin of history.




One of these things is not like the other,
One of these things just doesn't belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the other
By the time I finish this song?














Notes:

1: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)




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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




The line drawn between recreational and medical use is wishful thinking on the part of drug warriors. Recreation, according to Webster's, is "refreshment or diversion," and both have positive knock-on effects in the lives of real people.

Billboards reading "Fentanyl kills" encourage the creation of racist legislation that outlaws all godsend uses of opiates. Kids in hospice in India go without morphine because of America's superstitious fear of opiates.

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!!!

Almost every article about suicide is shallow because it takes drug prohibition as a natural baseline, even though drug prohibition outlaws substances that could so clearly elevate mood.

If there is an epidemic of "self-harm," prohibitionists never think of outlawing razor blades. They ask: "Why the self-harm?" But if there is an epidemic of drug use which they CLAIM is self-harm, they never ask "Why the self-harm?" They say: "Let's prohibit and punish!"

The fact that drugs have positive uses for human beings is a psychological corollary of Husserl's phenomenology and Whitehead's philosophy of organism.

There's a run of addiction movies out there, like "Craving!" wherein they actually personify addiction as a screaming skeleton. Funny, drug warriors never call for a Manhattan Project to end addiction. Addiction is their golden goose.

If Fentanyl kills, then alcohol slaughters. Drug prohibition is the real killer.

It's almost impossible not to have a problem with drugs in a world in which the government is spending over $50 billion a year to render drug use problematic.

America won't be grown up until we start blaming drug misuse on people and/or policies rather than on drugs.


Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






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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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Copyright 2026, Brian Ballard Quass Contact: quass@quass.com

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