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Pity the Time Traveler

aka Fahrenheit 452

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

September 17, 2019



Pity the time traveler who arrives from the 1600s, bristling with a new idea for a science-fiction story:

Time-Traveler: "Hey, I've got this cool idea for a story in which some future despotic government goes out and burns plants to keep the populace from using those substances to improve their minds! I'm gonna call it 'Fahrenheit 452!'"

Me: "Sorry, dude, but that's not science-fiction."

Time-Traveler: "What? Maybe you don't hear so good. I said it's a story about government going out and getting rid of therapeutic plants!"

Me: "Right, and that's exactly what our government does today!"

Time-Traveler: "You're kidding me? I thought I traveled forward in this time machine, not backwards."

Me: "Hey, where are you going?"

Time-Traveler: "Back to my ship -- I'm gonna visit the Earth 200 years from now and see if they've finally got it right."


Cartoon featuring little green man on rocky planet, being greeted by American astronaut who says: 'We come in peace... provided, of course, that you let us burn all of your psychoactive plant medicines.'
Americans are childish about drugs. We blame our problems on inanimate objects and burn other countries' plants so that we can feel safe at home. We need to grow up and learn to use nature's bounty wisely for human benefit.





Discussion Questions for Students



Kindly old professor, like Albert Einstein, pointing at blackboard featuring the word 'Questions' 1) What is the satirical message of this short drama?

2) What does it tell us about the mentality behind drug prohibition and the War on Drugs?

3) Imagine you traveled forward in time to a world in which horses were outlawed because politicians focused only on the downsides of horseback riding -- like the fact that equestrian sports are the number-one cause of traumatic brain injury in the sporting world. How would you go about trying to convince the horse prohibitionists that they were being silly? Could you succeed, given that everybody in that future society had been taught from childhood to say no to horses? Let's assume that their media had kept them from seeing, reading, or hearing any depictions of beneficial "horse use" as well.


Kindly cartoon professor, like Albert Einstein, pointing at chalkboard, with text reading 'Extra Credit'


For Further Study

The Drug War Philosopher occasionally illustrates the incoherence of Drug War ideology with the help of science-fiction. See, for instance, his philosophical send-up of the 2022 movie Moonfall, in which he takes a young alien to task for his naive faith in the ability of his humanoid species to 'get along' without the help of some serious empathogens (given the hate-filled propensities of that species' nearest biological cousins, that is, videlicet Earthlings).

What do you think makes science-fiction such a purebred stalking horse for drug-law reformers when it comes to snapping the suspenders off of the cocky challengers on the Prohibitionist side of the jousting field? Hint: when science-fiction authors are not evoking a Mad Max dystopia, they are generally promoting the idea (as 'twere by implication) that technology brings happiness, than which nothing could be more silly, of course, with the possible exception of the idea of the modern drug researchers that laughing gas could not help the depressed. In other words, the DWP would fain task the science-fiction author with psychological naivete. "I mean, come on!" he would essentially say, "Let's be REAL, people!"








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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.

The Cabinet of Caligari ('62) ends with a shameless display of psychiatric triumphalism. Happy shock therapy patients waltz freely about a mansion in which the "sick" protagonist has just been "cured" by tranquilizers and psychoanalysis. Did Robert Bloch believe his own script?

Healthline posted an article in 2021 about the benefits of getting off of antidepressants. They did not even mention the biggest benefit: NO LONGER BEING AN ETERNAL PATIENT -- no longer being a child in the eyes of an all-knowing healthcare system.

Wanna show drug warriors the error of their ways? Legalize all less dangerous drugs than alcohol and then deny work to those who test positive for liquor and confiscate their property if beer cans are found on-site.

Uruguay wants to re-legalize psilocybin mushrooms -- but only for use in a psychiatrist's office. So let me get this straight: psychiatrists are the new privileged shaman? It's a mushroom, for God's sake. Just re-legalize the damn thing and stop treating us like children.

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!

Had the FDA been around in the Indus Valley 3,500 years ago, there would be no Hindu religion today, because they would have found some potential problem with the use of soma.

If NIDA covered all drugs (not just politically ostracized drugs), they'd produce articles like this: "Aspirin continues to kill hundreds." "Penicillin misuse approaching crisis levels." "More bad news about Tylenol and liver damage." "Study revives cancer fears from caffeine."

Attempts to improve one's mind and mood are not crimes. The attempt to stop people from doing so is the crime.

The proof that psychedelics work has always been extant. We are hoodwinked by scientists who convince us that efficacy has not been "proven." This is materialist denial of the obvious.


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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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