rowid is (per its own description) 'a member-supported organization providing access to reliable, non-judgmental information about psychoactive plants, chemicals, and related issues.' I sent its editors the following email today to alert them to the philosophically shallow reasoning in a 2018 article entitled 'In case you choose not to say no to drugs, kids,' published in The Student Newspaper.
This is not exactly a correction, but I could not find an email address that precisely covered my reason for writing you today.
I'm writing in reference to The Student Newspaper article that you cite, apparently because it contains a favorable mention of Erowid. The article is entitled 'In Case You Choose Not to Say No to Drugs, Kids.'
Although we might praise the author of that post for 'having her heart in the right place,' her article demonstrates clearly that she is under the influence of Drug War propaganda, which she has apparently accepted uncritically.
Why, for instance, should we be telling kids to say no to 'drugs' in the first place, when drugs are essentially mother nature's plant medicines? Why do we not also want them to say no to 'Big Pharma meds' to which 1 in 4 American women are addicted?
These are just two philosophical issues that loom unnoticed in Karolina Zieba's article. I critique the article in more detail in two essays on my site at abolishthedea.com (see links below). I invite you to read them. I've devoted two essays to this one article because I think that the staying power of drug-war prohibition has been due in large part to the philosophical shallowness of many of its would-be opponents, folks who write half-heartedly on the topic, taking the anemic and misinformed line that 'Illegal drug use is unnecessary, but it's going to happen anyway, so we might as well allow it.'
I fear that, like Karolina, many Erowid readers (perhaps editors, too, for all I know) may 'have their heart in the right place' when it comes to these topics and yet fail to comprehend the full evil of the Drug War, because they have been bamboozled by Drug War lies, propaganda, and the drug-war revision of history thanks to which Americans never hear of the positive use of currently illegal substances. Perhaps they've also been bamboozled by well-meaning authors like Karolina herself who fail to grasp the many injustices that are perpetrated daily in the name of the Drug War: from stifled research on drugs to fight Alzheimer's to the use of electroshock therapy that could have been avoided had medical godsend plants been available to treat depression.
I also write because, by prominently listing Karolina's article, Erowid seems to be (at least to some degree) endorsing its content, and I therefore feel compelled to write you to explain why I believe that such an endorsement is misplaced.
July 18, 2022
Brian shot, Brian scored. Yes, writers like Karolina seem to share the Libertarian view of 'drugs' -- they agree with the Drug Warrior that this politically defined category of substances is indeed horrible -- but since such horrible substances exist and people seem to want to use them (sigh...), well, doggone it, we shouldn't go overboard in trying to punish them!
With friends like that in the drug-law-reform business, who needs enemies?
The fact is that there are no such things as 'drugs.' Why not? Because there are no substances that are bad in and of themselves, without regard to how, why, when and where they are used and by whom. Even the highly toxic Botox can be used in safe doses and in safe ways.
Besides, the kinds of substances that we demonize today have inspired entire religions (including the Vedic-Hindu religion and the mushroom and coca cults of Latin America) and been used wisely for good reasons by such western luminaries as Marcus Aurelius, Benjamin Franklin, HG Wells, Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas, Richard Feynman, Edgar Allan Poe and HP Lovecraft -- along with a who's who of philosophical greats including Plato, who got his ideas about the afterlife from his psychedelic-fueled experience at the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Finally, never mind what happened in the past: once we stop demonizing substances, we'll see that (Drug Warrior lies not withstanding) psychoactive drugs can be strategically used for all sorts of mind-building purposes. Morphine could be used intermittently to improve our appreciation of mother nature. Opium could be used intermittently to improve our knack for creative visualization. And coca (as HG Wells and Jules Verne well knew) can be used wisely to increase our mental focus for tasks like writing books.
But America's Office of National Drug Control Policy is committed to ignoring any possible beneficial uses for these 'drugs.' In fact, the organization's ground rules actually require them to ignore any potential benefits of vilified psychoactive substances, meaning, of course, that the organization in question should be referred to as the Office of National Drug Control Propaganda.
With this backstory in mind, we can see how would-be drug-law reformers (like the Liberal Media and Libertarians) are actually damning drugs with their faint praise of them. I fear that they have all received one too many teddy bears from the State Police in their formative years in return for having 'just said no' to the psychoactive bounty of Mother Nature.
Author's Follow-up: March 8, 2025
Many drug-law reformers are cowed into silence about obvious drug benefits by the mainstream party line that doctors are the experts about drugs -- and so only THEY can talk about drugs advisedly.
But this is the entire problem: our materialist doctors are not -- and cannot -- be the experts when it comes to psychoactive medicine for the simple reason that they are blinded to all obvious drug benefits by their implicit belief in the behaviorist principles of JB Watson, the belief that all that matters is what can be quantified. This is why today's doctors cannot figure out whether laughing gas, or MDMA, or coca, or opium, or psilocybin can help the depressed. All of these have OBVIOUS benefits for the depressed -- at some dose, at some time, for certain people. THIS IS PSYCHOLOGICAL COMMON SENSE. But today's doctors are dogmatically incapable of using common sense. They do not care about positive reports of drug use. They do not care about anecdote, they do not care about history. Opium and coca have inspired entire religious movements and been considered panaceas by various cultures in the past. So when materialist doctors tell us that these drugs have no known uses, they are not being scientific: they are being political. It's just that the inhumane assumptions of behaviorism give their prejudice a veneer of 'science.'
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 don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.
Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the drug war ideology of substance demonization.
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.
"Drugs" is imperialist terminology. In the smug self-righteousness of those who use it, I hear Columbus's disdain for the shroom use of the Taino people and the Spanish disdain for the coca use of the Peruvian Indians.
A pharmacologically savvy drug dealer would have no problem getting someone off one drug because they would use the common sense practice of fighting drugs with drugs. But materialist doctors would rather that the patient suffer than to use such psychologically obvious methods.
These are just simple psychological truths that drug war ideology is designed to hide from sight. Doctors tell us that "drugs" are only useful when created by Big Pharma, chosen by doctors, and authorized by folks who have spent thousands on medical school. (Lies, lies, lies.)
Today's war against drug users is like Elizabeth I's war against Catholics. Both are religious crackdowns. For today's oppressors, the true faith (i.e., the moral way to live) is according to the drug-hating religion of Christian Science.
This is the "Oprah fallacy," which has led to so much suffering. She told women they were fools if they accepted a drink from a man. That's crazy. If we are terrified by such a statistically improbable event, we should be absolutely horrified by horses and skateboards.
Trump is the prototypical drug warrior. He knows that he can destroy American freedoms by fearmongering. He has seen it work with the Drug War, which got rid of the 4th Amendment, religious freedom and is now going after free speech.
To oppose the Drug War philosophically, one has to highlight its connections to both materialism and the psychiatric pill mill. And that's a problem, because almost everyone is either a Drug Warrior, a materialist, and/or has a vested interest in the psychiatric pill mill.
Let's arrest drug warriors, confiscate their houses, and deny them jobs in America -- until such time as they renounce their belief in the demonstrably ruinous policy of substance prohibition.
We should no more arrest drug users than we arrest people for climbing sheer rock faces or for driving a car.
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, Open Letter to Erowid: about a misleading 2018 article by Karolina Zieba, published on August 22, 2020 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)
rowid is (per its own description) 'a member-supported organization providing access to reliable, non-judgmental information about psychoactive plants, chemicals, and related issues.' I sent its editors the following email today to alert them to the philosophically shallow reasoning in a 2018 article entitled 'In case you choose not to say no to drugs, kids,' published in The Student Newspaper. 
You have been reading an article entitled, Open Letter to Erowid: about a misleading 2018 article by Karolina Zieba, published on August 22, 2020 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)
