Open Letter to Claire Brosseau
asking her to join me in fighting drug prohibition
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
February 22, 2026
Dear Claire,
I read about your situation in the New York Times article by Stephanie Nolen1. I hope you will not mind if I share my own thoughts on the subject. I am a 67-year-old chronic depressive myself who has spent a lifetime on Big Pharma drugs that never cured my depression but instead turned me into a patient for life on dependence-causing medicines. This life has given me a unique perspective on assisted suicide for the depressed, and I feel called upon to share it with you.
Above all, I wish I could convince you that your real enemy is the drug prohibition which outlaws the right for you to take care of your own health as you see fit. In the absence of drug prohibition, you would not only have access to medicines that could facilitate easy death, but you would have access to potentially thousands of substances that could make you wish to live!
It is simply not true that drugs cannot cheer you up, whatever experience you may have had with any specific drug. Cocaine is a godsend for the depressed, as Sigmund Freud well knew, before self-interested doctors demonized the drug based on its worst possible uses. It does not work for everybody, but it works for most people. Even if we accept the drug-war lie that cocaine always causes addiction, surely a cocaine addiction is better than death! But cocaine is just one of many drugs that could help the depressed when used symptomatically and in psychologically obvious protocols.
I also refer you to the user accounts of the phenethylamines synthesized by Alexander Shulgin in the early 1990s, when the chemist was granted the rare privilege of performing drug trials without the customary interference of the federal government:
"This is total energy, and I am aware of my every membrane. This has been a marvelous experience, very beautiful, joyous, and sensuous."
"A glimpse of what true heaven is supposed to feel like... In fact, the entire experience was exquisite."
"The euphoria grows in intensity for several hours and remains for the rest of the day making this one of the most enjoyable experiences I have ever had."
These are just a few descriptions of a potentially endless list of phenethylamines with obvious benefits for the depressed when used symptomatically. Then there is laughing gas, or nitrous oxide: this substance brought such inspiring visions to William James that he based his whole philosophy upon those experiences. In 'The Varieties of Religious Experience,' James quotes one N2O user as follows:
"The long dateless ecstasy of vision... the very God, in all purity and tenderness and truth and absolute love."
Surely, substances that produce such results can have enormous (and enormously obvious) benefits for the depressed!
But then it should come as no surprise that drugs can inspire us to live: we need only remember that entire religions have been inspired by their use. The Hindu religion was inspired by the drinking of the psychoactive Soma plant by the Rishis of the Punjab over 4,000 years ago, and the descendants of the Inca consider coca to be a divine plant to this very day.
Given this backstory, I was surprised and disappointed that the subject of drug prohibition was never mentioned in Nolen's story about your case, for it is drug prohibition which is denying you – and I -- the very medicines that could make both of us wish to live!
For this reason, I respectfully end this letter with the following heartfelt suggestion: that you end your fight for assisted suicide and devote your remaining years instead with me in the fight to end drug prohibition.
Drug prohibition was enacted under the assumption that the only stakeholders in the debate were the white young people whom we refuse to educate about safe drug use. But nothing could be further from the truth. Drug prohibition outlaws the right of the depressed to heal. It is as simple as that. And in your case, this deprivation is being taken to the point of logical absurdity: because, if things go according to your current plan, drug prohibition will eventually be responsible for your very death. And it will be the perfect crime, because no one will even mention drug prohibition in regard to it!
Believe me, though, it is better to use drugs than to die – no matter how much we have been educated since childhood to the contrary. And if it is illegal to use drugs, then the next best thing is to protest that criminalization loudly and clearly in the name of the human being's natural right to take care of their own health as they see fit – a right that no one ever thought of denying until prohibitionists began outlawing substances based on their racist and xenophobic opinion of the sorts of people who seemed to be using them.
Allow me, in fact, to make a specific suggestion:
that you and I form a nonprofit organization called "Chronic Depressives against Drug Prohibition." This organization would be dedicated to pointing out the inconvenient truths outlined above, and to put politicians on notice that when they outlaw so-called recreational drug use, they are outlawing therapeutic drug use as well, and that the government should have no role in deciding how we are allowed to feel in life, least of all when their laws leave the depressed with no option but suicide – suicide with the help of the very state that refuses them the medicines that could cheer them up in a trice!
Please, let me know what you think.
Best Wishes,
Brian Quass
PS I invite you to read my essays on the issues raised by your situation. I write frequently on the topic because I believe that your case illustrates everything that is wrong with drug prohibition.
Notes:
1: Nolen, Stephanie, and Chloë Ellingson. 2025. “Claire Brosseau Wants to Die. Will Canada Let Her?” The New York Times, December 29, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/29/health/assisted-death-mental-illness-canada.html. (up)
Ten Tweets
against the hateful war on US
It is a violation of religious liberty to outlaw substances that inspire and elate. The Hindu religion was inspired by just such a drug.
Why does no one talk about empathogens for preventing atrocities? Because they'd rather hate drugs than use them for the benefit of humanity. They don't want to solve problems, they prefer hatred.
The DEA conceives of "drugs" as only justifiable in some time-honored ritual format, but since when are bureaucrats experts on religion? I believe, with the Vedic people and William James, in the importance of altered states. To outlaw such states is to outlaw my religion.
Freud thought cocaine was a great antidepressant. His contemporaries demonized the drug by focusing only on the rare misusers. That's like judging alcohol by focusing on alcoholics.
Laughing gas inspired the philosophy of William James. Outlawing N20 is outlawing academic freedom. Laughing gas should be available for the suicidal. Drug prohibition is not a victimless crime.
The drug war is is a multi-billion-dollar campaign to enforce the attitude of the Francisco Pizarro's of the world when it comes to non-western medicine. It is the apotheosis of the colonialism that most Americans claim to hate.
The Drug War shows us that American democracy is fundamentally flawed. Propaganda and fearmongering has persuaded Americans to give up freedoms that are clearly enunciated in the U.S. Constitution. We need a new democracy in which a Constitution actually matters.
Prohibitionists have blood on their hands. People do not naturally die in the tens of thousands from opioid use, notwithstanding the lies of 19th-century missionaries in China. It takes bad drug policy to accomplish that.
Here is a typical user report about a drug that the DEA tells us has no positive uses whatsoever:
"There is a profoundness of meaning inherent in anything that moves." (reported in "Pikhal" by Alexander Shulgin)
Well, today's Oregon vote scuttles any ideas I might have entertained about retiring in Oregon.
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Copyright 2025, Brian Ballard Quass
Contact: quass@quass.com
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