I was glad to see that TheDea.org is published by someone who seems to understand the great injustice(s) of substance demonization/criminalization aka the Drug War. When I first saw the domain name, I feared that maybe the DEA actually had groupies churning out a support page for the corrupt agency. I was half-interested in seeing what lame justifications they would advance for killing inner-city kids with prohibition-created gunfire and causing civil wars overseas, etc. etc.
I myself have been publishing AbolishTheDEA.com for the last three years, where I write daily blog posts and essays in an attempt to show the world that the Drug War represents a whole wrong way of looking at the world.
I especially liked your reference to the benefits of MDMA use. It's the greatest vexation of my life that substances like nitrous oxide and MDMA are not available for my use, when they show so obviously that they would be a godsend for me. As far as opium and coca, I'd much rather use that on the weekends -- or even be addicted to it -- than be stuck on expensive and mind-dulling Big Pharma anti-depressants, which I have to take every day of my life and upon which 1 in 4 American women are dependent until death do they part, making America a nation full of Stepford Wives (source: Julie Holland).
Just wanted to say hi since we both seem to be on the same page (or at very least the same chapter) when it comes to the pernicious DEA and America's unscientific war on mind medicine.
Incidentally, my alternative for the Drug War is to turn the DEA into the DRUG EDUCATION AGENCY, where all drugs -- from sugar, to anti-depressants, to heroin, to coffee -- would be catalogued with complete honesty (something very hard for Americans when it comes to this topic). No pro-drug hype, no anti-drug hype. Just reports of actual experiences of actual users, both subjective and objective, both physical and mental.
Criminalization of psychoactive substances would end, in recognition of two facts:
1) prohibition causes violence and leads to the promotion of the psychiatric pill mill on which 1 in 4 American women are already dependent for life and 2) it is a violation of natural law to criminalize plant medicine in the first place, the natural law upon which Jefferson founded America -- which is why Jefferson was rolling in his grave when the DEA stomped onto Monticello in 1987 and confiscated his poppy plants.
Meanwhile, we would replace psychiatrists with what I call "pharmacologically savvy empaths," who could use any substance in the world to help the patient (who would henceforth be called a "client") to succeed in life, according to how that person defines "success." One of many, many therapies: weekend sessions of "drug use" -- a variety of mind-stimulating drugs -- to provide transcendence that human beings seek but of which the Drug Warrior is supremely ignorant.
Oh, and we should not just disband the DEA. We should put it on trial for almost a half-century of lying about plant medicine -- and thereby keeping godsend medicines from people around the world -- including the soldiers who have gone without MDMA since the DEA outlawed the drug in 1985 against the advice of its own counsel. We should also put it on trial for poisoning marijuana users with paraquat, a weed killer and known human toxin that has since been found to cause Parkinson's disease.
The Links Police
All right, pull over to the side of the Web page. License and registration, please. Let's see here. Everything seems to be in order... Oh, nothing. We're just launching a manhunt for this Nathan character from thedea.org. He's suspected of failing to answer Brian's email. But then I reckon no one answers Brian's emails on the topic of drugs, they're just a trifle too controversial, ya understand. That's why he publishes all these so-called "open letters," ya see, so that all that fine epistolary prose of his'n don't go to waste.
All right, beat it. You're clean.
Oh, rats. There they go and I forgot to ask them if they had any dirty evil rotten drugs in their car!!!
No Drug War Keychains The key to ending the Drug War is to spread the word about the fact that it is Anti-American, unscientific and anti-minority (for starters)
Monticello Betrayed Thomas Jefferson By demonizing plant medicine, the Drug War overthrew the Natural Law upon which Jefferson founded America -- and brazenly confiscated the Founding Father's poppy plants in 1987, in a symbolic coup against Jeffersonian freedoms.
The Drug War Censors Science Scientists: It's time to wake up to the fact that you are censored by the drug war. Drive the point home with these bumper stickers.
You have been reading essays by the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass, at abolishthedea.com. Brian is the founder of The Drug War Gift Shop, where artists can feature and sell their protest artwork online. He has also written for Sociodelic and is the author of The Drug War Comic Book, which contains 150 political cartoons illustrating some of the seemingly endless problems with the war on drugs -- many of which only Brian seems to have noticed, by the way, judging by the recycled pieties that pass for analysis these days when it comes to "drugs." That's not surprising, considering the fact that the category of "drugs" is a political category, not a medical or scientific one.
A "drug," as the world defines the term today, is "a substance that has no good uses for anyone, ever, at any time, under any circumstances" -- and, of course, there are no substances of that kind: even cyanide and the deadly botox toxin have positive uses: a war on drugs is therefore unscientific at heart, to the point that it truly qualifies as a superstition, one in which we turn inanimate substances into boogie-men and scapegoats for all our social problems.
The Drug War is, in fact, the philosophical problem par excellence of our time, premised as it is on a raft of faulty assumptions (notwithstanding the fact that most philosophers today pretend as if the drug war does not exist). It is a war against the poor, against minorities, against religion, against science, against the elderly, against the depressed, against those in pain, against children in hospice care, and against philosophy itself. It outlaws substances that have inspired entire religions, Nazifies the English language and militarizes police forces nationwide.
It bans the substances that inspired William James' ideas about human consciousness and the nature of ultimate reality. In short, it causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, meanwhile violating the Natural Law upon which Thomas Jefferson founded America. (Surely, Jefferson was rolling over in his grave when Ronald Reagan's DEA stomped onto Monticello in 1987 and confiscated the founding father's poppy plants.)
If you believe in freedom and democracy, in America and around the world, please stay tuned for more philosophically oriented broadsides against the outrageous war on godsend medicines, AKA the war on drugs.
PS The drug war has not failed: to the contrary, it has succeeded, insofar as its ultimate goal was to militarize police forces around the world and help authorities to ruthlessly eliminate those who stand in the way of global capitalism. For more, see Drug War Capitalism by Dawn Paley.
Rather than apologetically decriminalizing selected plants, we should be demanding the immediate restoration of Natural Law, according to which "The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being." (John Locke)
Selected Bibliography
Andrew, Christopher "The Secret World: A History of Intelligence" 2019 Yale University Press
Aurelius, Marcus "Meditations" 2021 East India Publishing Company
Mate, Gabriel "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction" 2009 Vintage Canada
Maupassant, Guy de "Le Horla et autres contes fantastiques - Guy de Maupassant: Les classiques du fantastique " 2019
McKenna, Terence "Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution " 1992 Bantam
Miller, Richard Louis "Psychedelic Medicine: The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, and Ayahuasca Kindle " 2017 Park Street Press
Pinchbeck, Daniel "When Plants Dream" 2019 Watkins Publishing
Poe, Edgar Allan "The Essential Poe" 2020 Warbler Classics
Pollan, Michael "How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence " 2018 Penguin Books
Reynolds, David S. "Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville " 1988 Oxford University Press
Richards, William "Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences Hardcover" 2015 Columbia University Press
Rosenfeld, Harvey "Diary of a Dirty Little War: The Spanish-American War of 1898 " 2000 Praeger
Straussman, Rick "DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences " 2001 Park Street Press
Streatfield, Dominic "Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography" 2003 Picador USA
Swartzwelder, Scott "Buzzed: The Straight Facts About the Most Used and Abused Drugs from Alcohol to Ecstasy" 1998 W.W. Norton
Szasz, Thomas "Ceremonial Chemistry: the ritual persecution of drugs, addicts, and pushers" 1974 Anchor Press/Doubleday
Whitaker, Robert "Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America " 2010 Crown
Zinn, Howard "A People's History of the United States: 1492 - present" 2009
Zuboff , Shoshana "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power" 2019 Public Affairs
Site and its contents copyright 2023, by Brian B. Quass, the drug war philosopher at abolishthedea.com. For more information, contact Brian at quass@quass.com.
i, Nathan!
