Open Letter to Vincent Hurley, Lecturer by the Drug War Philospher at AbolishTheDEA.com

Open Letter to Vincent Hurley, Lecturer

at Maquarie University, Department of Security Studies and Criminology

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

June 25, 2023

ear Mr. Hurley:

With regard to your quotation in the news story by Annika Blau... Right Under Our Nose, about cocaine entering Australia, I would suggest to you that cocaine is not the "cancer," as you call it: prohibition is the cancer.

Prohibition has destroyed the rule of law in Latin America and killed over 100,000 Mexicans as part of a needless war against plant medicine that the Peruvian Indians considered to be divine.

HG Wells loved Coca Wine. So did Jules Verne. So did Alexandre Dumas.

Please reconsider your support for prohibition and the Drug War, which has led to the election of fascists like Donald Trump by creating laws that have removed hundreds of thousands of Trump's minority opponents from the voting rolls.

Drugs are not and have never been the problem. The problem has always been ignorance and prohibition -- and the desire of conservatives to dictate which drugs Americans should use: like alcohol, coffee and the antidepressants upon which 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life.

35,000 Americans are killed every year by cars. But we do not need a war against cars, we need driver education.

The drugs that we outlaw have inspired entire religions. We do not need a war against drugs, we need substance education.

Until then, the Drug War is just a makework program for law enforcement and a way to enrich militarists and fascists.

Drug warriors typically want to save a white suburban teenager from making mistakes, but in so doing, they bring about the deaths of a hundred thousand Mexicans and render teenagers in Mexico homeless. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions who desperately need medicines for depression and anxiety are thrown under the bus, not able to access godsend medicines because of racist fretting on the part of scheming suburban politicians.

Please reconsider your assumptions about the Drug War.
Sincerely Yours,

Brian Quass
abolishthedea.com

Author's Follow-up: January 24, 2024

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up

Cocaine can be used safely. Half the politicians in Britain have shamefacedly admitted to using it as young people. Indeed, crack cocaine can be used safely, as Carl Hart reports in "Drug Use for Grownups." But the Drug War is all about terrifying us about drugs in order to justify a Nazi crackdown on minorities -- and a reason to overfund law enforcement and that American Stasi that we call the DEA. It's a war on citizens by conservatives who want to make the world safe for billionaires, box stores and extractive capitalism.

Next essay: Tapering for Jesus

Previous essay: Helping the Elderly with Drugs

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COCA

Corner on Coca!
Drug War Bait and Switch
Smart Uses for Opium and Coca
How Cocaine could have helped me
Coca Wine
I come not to praise coca
Running with the DEA -- er, I mean the Devil
In Defense of Cocaine

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Why the Drug War is Worse than you can Imagine
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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 Vincent Hurley, Lecturer: at Maquarie University, Department of Security Studies and Criminology, published on June 25, 2023 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)