Pissed Off About Drug Testing

Homepage of the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass

Pissed Off About Drug Testing

an exhibition of protest art from the Drug War Museum

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

January 24, 2026

Digital montage depicts an art gallery exhibition about the Drug War. The blood-colored words 'Drug War' are splattered on the white walls, on which are hung op-ed pictures highlighting the tyrannous idiocy of drug prohibition. — Imagine a museum exhibition that demonstrated the anti-democratic idiocy of drug prohibition.

(see also Visualize the Injustice of Drug Prohibition at the Drug War Museum)

GUIDE: Welcome to the Drug War Museum, folks. This is the line for the guided tour of the Drug Testing Gallery! Everyone please line up with your urine samples ready so that we can determine if you are morally fit to see this exhibition. Just kidding. That's just a little Drug War humor there, folks.

MAN: Yes, VERY little.

GUIDE: Okay, well, THAT'S hurtful. Right this way, folks. Extra, extra, read all about it: presenting indiscriminate drug testing: the most outrageous violation of the Fourth Amendment conceivable by the diabolical brains of the logically challenged Drug Warriors!

WOMAN to child: Shh, honey, the man is speaking!

GUIDE: That's right, junior. The man is speaking about this masterpiece by artist Coglin Hoth entitled "Do Your Part." Don't you feel patriotic just looking at this picture? Makes you want to go right out and find an entry-level job violating the most basic rights of your fellow human beings, doesn't it?!

Picture hanging on blood-stained museum wall. Young woman in white lab coat holding glass bottle of yellow urine. Superimposed words on picture: Urine testers needed! Do your part to enforce Drug War Sharia. — The artist here asks us to contemplate the shocking amorality of the lab techs who help destroy the Bill of Rights by prying like a perverted bluestocking into the urine of their fellows, like modern-day witch hunters.

O Say does that Star-Spangled Banner still wave? Answer: Not for drug scumbags like Benjamin Franklin it doesn't, not anymore, friends. We now extend our zero tolerance in BOTH directions of the spacio-temporal timeline, thank you very much.

And right around this next corner we have... don't tell me... wait, I've got this...

Ad for Schedule 1 Laundry Detergent 'for those special moments', bottle on top left. In center, young proud father fixing tie on his preteen son, with the caption 'It's his very first drug test!' — Schedule 1 Laundry Detergent -- because it's not enough to pass your drug test anymore, you need to pass it with flying colors!

GROUP: Awww!

GUIDE: I know, right. Just look at that, will you? Artist Freskin Pith has captured the spirit of 'The Big Day' here, as he calls it, that day when your parents took you for your very first drug test.

And now if you'll slide your no-doubt delighted orbs one picture to the right... we take you from the present to the future.

Man in public bathroom urinating in urinal, with a sign overhead reading: PLANT MED DETECTED... URINAL 2... Police officer approaches on left — America: where you are judged, not by the color of your skin, but by the content of your digestive system.

Artist Peth Runkin calls this one 'Smart Urinal,' for obvious reasons. Peth estimates that all public urinals and toilets -- and many home models as well -- will be fully online by 2050 and be able to automatically check urine for literally any substance that might improve your mind or mood (that is to say the mind or mood of the 'evacuee,' if you will) -- finding which, of course, the appliance in question will automatically notify the appropriate authorities in real-time so that they can take immediate action. What are you moaning about, folks? You gave away your birthright ownership of your bodily fluids decades ago when you blithely submitted to causeless drug testing in the naive belief that there were no basic principles involved in that surrender.

What, I'm just sayin'...

Some say that this particular innovation might even trigger the Second Coming of Mary Baker Eddy herself!

Never heard of the old bluestocking, eh? No worries. Hit up the museum bookstore on your way out for a $50 biography entitled: "You think YOU hate drugs!!!"

To be fair, Eddy's anti-drug attitude was, in part, a response to the scientific triumphalism of the 19th century, the age of the Crystal Palace against whose deadening efficiency Dostoevsky raged in his "Notes from Underground": a time when materialist science felt itself able to cure everything from physical ailments to psycho-spiritual angst without any help from the unquantifiable and therefore supposedly irrelevant forces of will and whimsy. She got it half right, in other words: science is indeed inherently unfit to help us with spiritual and/or psychological concerns insofar as it works by limiting variables rather than judging our lives as we live them, which is to say as a whole, in the context of an endless stream of interacting and overlapping forces. As Dostoevsky warns, real human beings will demand their right to be illogical and inefficient, in mockery of your crazed belief that efficiency is the ultimate good! And yes, junior, this WILL be on the TEST, okay, son? Junior's over there furiously scribbling away in his notebook, going like: "...spiritual... concerns... insofar as..."

That said, however, it does not follow that we should forswear the godsend psychoactive medicines that are either created by Mother Nature or inspired thereby. If the shoe fits, wear it, and God or nature clearly designed our brains such that we are indeed designed to profit from such substances. So why deny it? If a friend gives you a rain gauge for Christmas, you put it out in the rain. You do not ignore the obvious and try to think of a second best reason why he or she might have given it to you. You don't go, "Why, bless my heart, whatever am I supposed to do with THIS? You don't suppose that it is a new musical instrument of some kind, do you?"

All right, follow me, folks, to the last provocative masterpiece of the day. Hut, 2, 3, 4, hut, 2, 3, 4... companyyyy... halt!

Man in meeting, standing, pointing to whiteboard: 'And what is the first step in finding a good employee?' Seated audience member: 'Check their piss to make sure that they're not Christian Science heretics.' — Drug testing is the extrajudicial enforcement of the drug-hating religion of Christian Science. Americans must renounce their time-honored rights to healing and to Mother Nature herself or lose their right to earn a living.

Halt right in front of this picture entitled 'The First Step' by Tipkin Padget. (Now, there's a name to conjure with!)

Feast your eyes while I regale you with an instructive anecdote related to this poignant chef d'oeuvre. You know, my cousin is a manager at Costco and I heard him chatting with an employee at my sister's house about how the company hired people based on the content of their character rather than the color their skin. So they're standing right in front of me, and I'm sitting there nursing a bottle of soda and trying not to laugh. I desperately wanted to say: "Yo, dude: you judge them by the contents of their digestive systems -- in fact, your basic attitude toward the American workforce is that Christian Science heretics can starve to death as far as the company is concerned."

I really did come close to "checking them down" with some home truths on the topic of drug prohibition, but it was a family party so I went outside and screamed and then came back in the house and was good to go again. Speaking of which, I pity young Americans who have to give up their time-honored right to due process because gun-loving and beer-loving Americans have decided that drugs that improve their mind and mood pose a threat to national security. Such Drug Warriors are surely the descendants of the Cavemen of yore who considered FIRE to be a threat to Paleolithic Security. But then if I've said it before, I've said it again: Saying things like "Fentanyl kills" is philosophically equivalent to saying "Fire bad!" Both statements would have us fear psychoactive substances rather than to learn how to use them wisely for the benefit of human beings.

Speaking of which, please look to your right on the way out, folks, to see a picture conveying that very message. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you "Fire Bad!" by Chavin Peacock III! (Where do these artists get these NAMES?!)

Two cavemen in cave. Caveman on right, holding burning stick toward second caveman on left. Caveman on left says: 'Fire bad. Fire kill.' — Saying things like 'Fentanyl kills' is philosophically equivalent to saying 'Fire bad'. Both statements would have us fear dangerous substances rather than to learn how to use them wisely for the benefit of human beings.

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against the hateful war on US

"I can take this drug that inspires me and makes me compassionate and teaches me to love nature in its byzantine complexity, or I can take Prozac which makes me unable to cry at my parents' funeral. Hmm. Which shall it be?" Only a mad person in a mad world would choose SSRIs.

The FDA should have no role in approving psychoactive medicine. They evaluate them based on materialist standards rather than holistic ones. In practice, this means the FDA ignores all glaringly obvious benefits.

This is the problem with trusting science to tell us about drugs. Science means reductive materialism, whereas psychoactive drug use is all about mind and the human being as a whole. We need pharmacologically savvy shaman to guide us, not scientists.

We need to stop using the fact that people like opiates as an excuse to launch a crackdown on inner cities. We need to re-legalize popular meds, teach safe use, and come up with common sense ways to combat addictions by using drugs to fight drugs.

Scientists hold holistically working drugs to reductionist standards, thereby practicing a sort of pharmacological colonialsm.

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.

All uplifting drugs are potential antidepressants. Science denies that fact by claiming that drug efficacy must be proven quantitatively. And so they ignore anecdote, history and psychological common sense.

Reagan paid a personal price for his idiocy however. He fell victim to memory loss from Alzheimer's, after making a career out of demonizing substances that can grow new neurons in the brain!

Here are some political terms that are extremely problematic in the age of the drug war: "clean," "junk," "dope," "recreational"... and most of all the word "drugs" itself, which is as biased and loaded as the word "scab."

I have dissed MindMed's new LSD "breakthrough drug" for philosophical reasons. But we can at least hope that the approval of such a "de-fanged" LSD will prove to be a step in the slow, zigzag path toward re-legalization.

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Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

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Pissed Off About Drug Testing

an exhibition of protest art from the Drug War Museum

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

Diary of a Drug Fiend