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Open Letter to the Virginia Legislature

on behalf of my 92-year-old mother

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

February 7, 2020



Today I sent the following e-mail to Republicans in the Virginia state legislature. I was both peeved and in a hurry when I wrote it, but I trust that I've made my basic points plainly enough. Don't laugh, Democrats, you're on my list too. I'm just following a hunch of mine that the right side of the aisle remains most in favor of intolerance and injustice when it comes to the Drug War -- or rather the war on plants -- or rather the war on the elderly. Take your pick: there's plenty of injustice to go around when it comes to the so-called Drug War.

Dear Representative:

Please stop fighting the wretched Drug War.

By doing so, you are preventing my 92-year-old mother from getting relief from the many natural godsends of Mother Nature, so many of which have been stupidly and unscientifically banned by the DEA even for simple research -- the DEA, a corrupt agency that has a HUGE conflict of interest in "scheduling" substances, since their jobs depend on those substances being illegal. The DEA acted against the advice of its own counsel and kept MDMA 1 illegal for the last 35 years, and to hell with the thousands of soldiers that could have gotten relief from the substance.

Stop cracking down -- unless you're like Donald Trump and want to kill and torture folks who dare to use Mother Nature's plants -- or like Leslie Bibb in the movie "Running with the Devil," a DEA agent who murders and tortures drug suspects for using plants -- while SHE SMOKES A CIGARETTE containing tobacco, the worst drug on the planet!!!

If you really want a Drug War, let's arrest everybody that uses cigarettes -- or has so much as a cigarette stub on their person. Let's confiscate their houses. Let's remove them from the voting rolls. Let's confiscate any book profits that they may make by writing about their arrests.

Then let's do the same for alcohol use or possession.

That's a Drug War I could get behind because it exposes the hypocrisy of our approach against natural substances and gives the Drug Warrior a taste of his or her own medicine.

The unscientific Drug War is anti-patient because it forces physicians and psychotherapists to treat patients using a fraction of the therapeutic bounty that actually exists, outlawing almost all of the psychoactive plants of Mother Nature. Then we wonder why depression and PTSD flourish unchecked in America. Why? The American Drug Warrior wouldn't have it any other way. They must demonize Mother Nature's cures at all cost, so that Big Liquor and Law Enforcement may flourish.



Or, if you think this is wrong, then {^stop the anti-patient Drug War, this war on plants, that's depriving my suffering mother of natural and non-addictive godsends, shunting her off onto a handful of addictive drugs from Big Pharma doled out by today's psychiatric pill mill 2 .}{

Please stop the war on Mother Nature's plants -- plants that we all have a right to use by natural law -- which should trump common law in America. Stop making substances a scapegoat for bad actors and bad social conditions.

As John Locke wrote in his Treatise on Government:

"The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being."

This is a right that cannot be usurped by common law, if America is to remain the America about which Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence.


PS Tried to get medical marijuana today for my 92-year-old mother and found out that Virginia does not want my mother to have relief from anxiety -- except through addictive Big Pharma 3 4 meds. What nonsense. Do you think Thomas Jefferson thought that some of the plants he grew should be banned??? Do you think he didn't spin in his grave when the jackbooted DEA barged onto his property in 1985 and stole his poppy plants???






Notes:

1: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
2: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
3: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
4: LaMattina, John. n.d. “Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of the FDA’s Drug Division Budget?” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2022/09/22/why-is-biopharma-paying-75-of-the-fdas-drug-division-budget/. (up)








Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




William James claimed that his constitution prevented him from having mystical experiences. The fact is that no one is prevented from having mystical experiences provided that they are willing to use psychoactive substances wisely to attain that end.

If fearmongering drug warriors were right about the weakness of humankind, there would be no social drinkers, only drunkards.

Imagine if there were drugs for which dependency was a feature, not a bug. People would stop peddling that junk, right? Wrong. Just ask your psychiatrist.

The addiction gene should be called the prohibition gene: it renders one vulnerable to prohibition lies and limitations: like the lack of safe supply, the lack of choices, and the lack of information. We should pathologize the prohibitionists, not their victims.

Now the US is bashing the Honduran president for working with "drug cartels." Why don't we just be honest and say why we're REALLY upset with the guy? Drugs is just the excuse, as always, now what's the real reason? Stop using the drug war to disguise American foreign policy.

The fact that drugs have positive uses for human beings is a psychological corollary of Husserl's phenomenology and Whitehead's philosophy of organism.

I'm going to get on the grade-school circuit, telling kids to say no to horses. "You think you can handle horses, kids? That's what Christopher Reeves thought. The fact is, NOBODY can handle horses!!!"

"The Legislature deliberately determines to distrust the very people who are legally responsible for the physical well-being of the nation, and puts them under the thumb of the police, as if they were potential criminals." -- Aleister Crowley on drug laws

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.

America never ended prohibition. It just redirected prohibition from alcohol to all of alcohol's competitors.


Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






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