Open Letter to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
August 4, 2020
With all due respect, the UNODC is part of the problem. The Drug War creates an absurd focus on 'drugs' as the modern boogeyman. Drugs are not the problem: the Drug War is the problem: The Drug War brings 'drugs' front and center in the public mind, giving kids wild ideas about making the wrong decisions. The Drug War is also Christian Science because it tells us that we cannot use plant medicine to improve our mental outlook. Marcus Aurelius and Benjamin Franklin used opium 1 . HG Wells and Jules Verne wrote their stories "on" coca wine. Plato himself used psychedelics at the Eleusinian Mysteries2. The Vedic religion was founded to worship a psychedelic plant. What gives you the right to jail me if I choose to do likewise? We don't need a War on Drugs. We need to legalize Mother Nature's plant medicines and to educate everyone about the effects (both good and bad) of all psychoactive substances, including wine, tobacco, and modern antidepressants 3 to which 1 in 4 American women are addicted. But we don't care about THAT drug problem, of course, since 'drugs', in the Drug Warrior mind, only refers to those substances that politicians have decided to demonize.
June 1, 2022
Oh, yeah: tell the truth and shame the devil, say I. That's the thing about the Internet: it lets you write directly to agencies that shouldn't even exist. It's all one can do to remain polite. One wants to write: "Dear UNODC, please disappear from the face of the earth. Thanks."
It's interesting that it wasn't enough for America to criminalize plants, it had to have the whole world follow suit. And now we have bureaucrats at the UN working 9 to 5 to make sure that no one on earth has access to the plant medicine that grows at their very feet, medicines that in the past have inspired entire religions. No, we all must be good little consumers and get our drugs (sorry, our "meds") from psychiatrists and Big Pharma . That's the thing about the War on Drugs: it's not designed to stop people from using drugs -- it's designed to get people using the RIGHT drugs, as that term is defined by Wall Street.
So, what has the Drug War accomplished in its 100+ years of life? America is now the most drug-using country in history, with depression rates higher than ever. America is also now home to the greatest mass chemical dependency in human history, as 1 in 4 American women are dependent on Big Pharma antidepressants for life. And America has the most prisoners per capita of any country on earth, thanks to this spectacularly failing Drug War. As for harm reduction, 100,000 still die each year from alcohol, half a million from tobacco. And we have an opioid epidemic caused directly by the fact that the Drug War incentivizes dealers to sell the most readily available and addictive stuff out there. Meanwhile, gun violence 4 is rampant in inner cities, with almost 800 deaths in Chicago alone in 2021, all of which are a direct result of the Drug War and its incentivization of spectacularly lucrative drug dealing.
Earth to UNODC, we need education, not incarceration 5 ; we need facts, not fear.
Author's Follow-up: September 21, 2022
Depression could be cured overnight if we legalized the coca leaf. But Wall Street, Law Enforcement and Big Pharma hate the idea. So they demonize coca based on its alkaloid called cocaine , failing to notice that coca and cocaine are two very different things. Outlawing coca because of cocaine 678 is like outlawing peaches because of prussic acid. The Drug War is all about politics and money, not about public health. In fact, it's anti-health since it outlaws godsends that could end the depression crisis in America -- which is taking place despite the fact that 1 in 4 American women are chemically dependent on Big Pharma 910 meds for life!
Conclusion: The Drug War is not about getting the world off of drugs: it's about getting the world ON the right drugs, as far as business and law enforcement are concerned.
A lot of drug use represents an understandable attempt to fend off performance anxiety. Performers can lose their livelihood if they become too self-conscious. We only call such use "recreational" because we are oblivious to the common-sense psychology.
We deal with "drug" risks differently than any other risk. Aspirin kills thousands every year. The death rate from free climbing is huge. But it's only with "drug use" that we demand zero deaths (a policy which ironically causes far more deaths than necessary).
Drug testing labs are the modern Inquisitors. We are not judged by the content of our character, but by the content of our digestive systems.
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.
New article in Scientific American: "New hope for pain relief," that ignores the fact that we have outlawed the time-honored panacea. Scientists want a drug that won't run the risk of inspiring us.
Drug prohibition fails even on its own terms. Instead of protecting white American young people, it has exiled them to the city streets where they are sacrificed on the altar of the American religion of substance demonization.
Drug prohibition represents the biggest power grab by government in human history. It is the state control of pain relief and mental states.
My impression has been that the use of cocaine over a long time can bring about lasting improvement..." --Sigmund Freud, On Cocaine, 1884
When is the Holocaust Museum going to recognize that the Drug War has Nazified American life? Probably, on the same day that the Jefferson Foundation finally admits to having sold out Jefferson by inviting the DEA onto his estate in 1987 to confiscate his poppy plants.
In "Four Good Days" the pompous white-coated doctor ignores the entire formulary of mother nature and instead throws the young heroin user on a cot for 3 days of cold turkey and a shot of Naltrexone: price tag $3,000.
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