Open Letter to the Virginia Legislature

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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???

Open Letters

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)

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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

This is why I call the drug war 'fanatical Christian Science.' People would rather have grandpa die than to let him use laughing gas or coca or opium or MDMA, etc. etc.

My approach to withdrawal: incrementally reduce daily doses over 6 months, or even a year, meanwhile using all the legal entheogens and psychedelics that you can find in a way likely to boost your endurance and "sense of purpose" to make withdrawal successful.

Someday the world will realize that Freud's real achievement was his discovery of the depression-busting power of cocaine.

Today's drug laws tell us that we must respect the historical use of sacred medicines, while denying us our personal right to use them unless our ancestors did so. That's a meta-injustice! It negatively affects the way that we are allowed to experience our world!

Drug prohibition is not a victimless crime.

If drug warriors were serious about saving lives, they'd outlaw guns, cars, and all pleasure trips to Mars.

We would never have even heard of Freud except for cocaine. How many geniuses is America stifling even as we speak thanks to the war on mind improving medicines?

There would be little or no profiling of blacks if the Drug War did not exist.

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.

Americans are starting to think that psychedelics may be an exception to the rule that drugs are evil -- but drugs have never been evil. The evil resides in how we think, talk and legislate about drugs.

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Open Letter to the Virginia Legislature

on behalf of my 92-year-old mother

Open Letters

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

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