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Open letter to Professor Troy Glover at Waterloo University

in response to his paper at Academia.edu entitled 'Regulating the Rave Scene'

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

April 25, 2021



In response to 'Regulating the Rave Scene' by Troy Glover.

Hello, Professor Glover.

With all due respect, I think you miss the real significance of raves in your paper posted at academia.edu. Prior to the English government's unscientific demonization of ecstasy following the death of raver Leah Betts in the 1990s, the rave scene was the most peaceful and unifying activity in English history. This is the startling and wonderful thing about the rave scene, not the fact that it represents a variety of what we call leisure. (The incredibly rare death in question was caused by the Drug War itself, which criminalized mere research into criminalized substances, thereby rendering it impossible to create "safe use" guidelines for Ecstasy, and making it impossible to warn dancers like Leah about the need to keep properly hydrated while on the dance floor.)

Here are some direct quotes from DJ's about that incredibly peaceful rave scene -- a peace that authorities not only took for granted but actually tried to discourage with their Criminal Justice Bill of 1994:

• "It was the first time that black-and-white people had integrated on a level... and everybody was one." -- DJ Ray Keith.

• "It was black and white, Asian, Chinese, all up in one building," -- MC GQ.

• "Everyone's loving each other, man, they're not hating." - DJ Mampi Swift.

The problem of the rave scene was not Ecstasy. The problem was a Drug Warrior ethos that holds criminalized substances to standards far beyond the safety expectations of any other substances. Aspirin kills thousands a year and yet there is no cry to criminalize it. Alcohol racks up a daily death toll in Britain and yet there are no billboards attempting to hold alcohol responsible for individual deaths. Yet Drug War mythology says that a criminalized substance can be pilloried and completely dismissed the moment that it has even been RELATED, however indirectly, to one single solitary death. This is Drug Warrior propaganda, however, not science.

The best way for authorities to deal with the rave scene is to stop persecuting it and let it thrive as the incredibly peaceful phenomenon that it is -- or rather it WAS before Drug Warriors held Ecstasy to a hypocritical safety standard that no substance in the world could ever live up to, meanwhile doing everything they could to ban research that could have produced safety guidelines for the drug in question.

So, what has government policy actually accomplished so far with respect to the rave scene? It took the most peaceful crowd phenomenon in British history and turned it into a shooting gallery, turning dancers away from Ecstasy and turning them toward anger-facilitating drugs like alcohol instead.

The best thing that government can do about the rave scene, therefore, is to back off and allow peace, love and understanding to actually exist -- rather than demonizing substances that bring such peace about, in deference to America's unprecedented, ahistorical and anti-scientific war on substances of which racist politicians disapprove.

To approach the rave scene from the point of view of leisure is interesting, perhaps, but in my opinion it turns us away from the 6,000-pound gorilla in the room: the fact that the Drug War demonizes substances rather than teaching us how to use them wisely and safely, and the fact that the Drug Warrior judges people, not by the content of their character but by the contents of their digestive system.

Sincerely Yours,
Brian Quass
abolishthedea.com


The Links Police

Do you know why I stopped you? That's right, because you still need to read the essay about how the empathogenic drug Ecstasy brought peace, love and understanding to the British rave scene in the 1990s:












read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




Daily opium use is no more outrageous than daily antidepressant use. In fact, it's less outrageous. It's a time-honored practice and can be stopped with a little effort and ingenuity, whereas it is almost impossible to get off some antidepressants because they alter brain chemistry.

Drug prohibition is a crime against humanity. It is the outlawing of our right to take care of our own health.

"My faith votes and strives to outlaw religions that use substances of which politicians disapprove."

Yeah. That's why it's so pretentious and presumptuous of People magazine to "fight for justice" on behalf of Matthew Perry, as if Perry would have wanted that.

"Like Christians burning mosques and temples to spread the word of Jesus, modem drugabuseologists burn crops to spread the use of alcohol." -- Ceremonial Chemistry, p. 48

The Holy Trinity of the Drug War religion is Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and John Belushi. "They died so that you might fear psychoactive substances with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength."

No wonder the "Justice" Department relies on plea deals; otherwise juries could use nullification to free those charged with mere drug possession.

"Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death." -Jean Cocteau

"All these anti-opium articles... are based upon the same model. They assume certain statements as existing and acknowledged facts which have never been proved to be such, and then proceed to draw deductions from those alleged facts." --William Brereton

The massive use of plea deals lets prosecutors threaten drug suspects into giving up their rights to a fair trial.


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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