Open Letter to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
August 4, 2020
ith 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. HG Wells and Jules Verne wrote their stories "on" coca wine. Plato himself used psychedelics at the Eleusinian Mysteries. 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 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 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; 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 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 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.
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 used to be surprised at this reticence on the part of modern drug-war pundits, until I realized that most of them are materialists. That is, most of them believe in (or claim to believe in) the psychiatric pill mill. If they happen to praise psychedelic drugs as a godsend for the depressed, they will yet tell us that such substances are only for those whose finicky body chemistries fail to respond appropriately to SSRIs and SNRIs. The fact is, however, there are thousands of medicines out there that can help with psychological issues -- and this is based on simple psychological common sense. But materialist scientists ignore common sense. That's why Dr. Robert Glatter wrote an article in Forbes magazine wondering if laughing gas could help the depressed.
As a lifelong depressive, I am embarrassed for Robert, that he has to even ask such a question. Of course laughing gas could help. Not only is laughter "the best medicine," as Readers Digest has told us for years, but looking forward to laughing is beneficial too. But materialist scientists ignore anecdote and history and tell us that THEY will be the judge of psychoactive medicines, thank you very much. And they will NOT judge such medicines by asking folks like myself if they work but rather by looking under a microscope to see if they work in the biochemical way that materialists expect.
They drive to their drug tests in pickup trucks with license plates that read "Don't tread on me." Yeah, right. "Don't tread on me: Just tell me how and how much I'm allowed to think and feel in this life. And please let me know what plants I can access."
The existence of a handful of bad outcomes of drug use does not justify substance prohibition... any more than the existence of drunkards justifies a call for liquor prohibition. Instead, we need to teach safe use and offer a wide choice of uncontaminated psychoactive drugs.
The DEA has done everything it can to keep Americans clueless about opium and poppies. The agency is a disgrace to a country that claims to value knowledge and freedom of information.
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.
Scientists cannot tell us if psychoactive drugs are worth the risk any more than they can tell us if free climbing is worth the risk, or horseback riding or target practice or parkour.
It's no wonder that folks blame drugs. Carl Hart is the first American scientist to openly say in a published book that even the so-called "hard" drugs can be used wisely. That's info that the drug warriors have always tried to keep from us.
If drug war logic made sense, we would outlaw endless things in addition to drugs. Because the drug war says that it's all worth it if we can save just one life -- which is generally the life of a white suburban young person, btw.
"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.
Timothy Leary's wife wrote: "We went to Puerto Rico and all we did was take cocaine and read Faust to one another." And there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG with that!!! The drug war is all about scaring us and making illegal drug use as dangerous as possible.
Getting off antidepressants can make things worse for only one reason: because we have outlawed all the drugs that could help with the transition. Right now, getting off any drug basically means becoming a drug-free Christian Scientist. No wonder withdrawal is hard.
Listen to the Drug War Philosopher as he tells you how you can support his work to end the hateful drug war -- and, ideally, put the DEA on trial for willfully lying about godsend medicines! (How? By advertising on this page right c'here!)
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 the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime published on August 4, 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)