by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
September 10, 2021
George Mohler is the computer geek behind event prediction software that is currently 'helping' Santa Clara police (but minorities not so much). I sent the following email to George today in an attempt to persuade him to find a more worthy client for his software than police forces in the age of the Drug War.
Hi, George.
I just watched the documentary 'Eye on You' and I wanted to share with you my concern about your 'event prediction' program. Such an algorithm-based police tactic might make sense in a world where laws were fair, but we live in the age of a Christian Science Drug War, in which it is illegal to even study certain medicines of which politicians disapprove. Sigmund Freud considered cocaine to be a godsend for his depression, but your program helps police track down cocaine users like dogs and treat them like scumbags before tossing them in overcrowded prisons. Opium enthusiasts have included Marco Polo, Marcus Aurelius and Benjamin Franklin, and yet your program helps police track down such people like dogs as well -- especially those who dare SELL plant medicine. Do you realize that Founding Father Thomas Jefferson grew the opium poppy at Monticello? But now those who deal in opium are treated like Adolf Hitler -- this despite the fact that entire religions have been inspired by psychoactive plant medicine. The entire Vedic religion was founded to worship the cosmic insights of the Soma plant. The psychedelic-fueled Eleusinian Mysteries gave cosmic insights for 2,000 consecutive years to a who's who of western luminaries, including Plato, Plutarch and Cicero. The Mesoamericans had plant-based religious rituals until Columbus and the Conquistadores showed up and demanded that they become Christians and drink liquor instead -- those that they did not kill, that is.
Your algorithms may stop the occasional old lady from being mugged, but if shows like 'Cops' mean anything, you can bet that what you're really doing is helping police to harass and crack down on minorities, throwing them into overcrowded prisons and removing them from the voting rolls by charging them with felonies -- thereby stealing American elections for racist conservatives.
If you study the Drug War, you will find that it causes all of the problems that it claims to be solving and then some. My mother suffers from dementia because the Drug War has outlawed all the drugs that show such great promise in treating it -- like ayahuasca that grows new neural pathways in the brain. Meanwhile, 1 in 4 American women are addicted to Big Pharma meds because the Drug War outlaws all the less addictive plant medicine that could help the depressed immeasurably. Cocaine, opium, and even heroin are less addictive than Big Pharma meds, because the latter change brain chemistry, which takes a long time (if ever) to revert to the normal baseline once Big Pharma 'meds' are withdrawn.
In short, the Drug War is hypocritical, anti-science, anti-nature, anti-minority, anti-patient, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, and a violation of Natural Law. Just ask the ghost of Thomas Jefferson that was spinning in its grave when the DEA stomped onto Monticello in 1987 and confiscated the Founding Father's poppy plants.
In light of these facts, I urge you to consider withdrawing your product from use by police forces, at least until such time as America decides to start learning about plant medicine rather than demonizing it.
The Drug War represents a wrong way of thinking about the world, one that causes a civil war in Mexico and impowers a self-proclaimed Drug War Hitler in the Philippines.
Please don't be a party to this ongoing injustice. Find a more worthy client for your algorithms than law enforcement in the Age of the Drug War.
Abolishthedea.com
PS The 'Eye on You' documentary showed the Santa Clara Police following up on one of your algorithm 'leads.' Of course, the evildoer they encountered wasn't robbing a store or mugging an orphan or getting ready to take hostages -- No, they were, AS PER USUAL, merely possessing substances of which beer-swilling Christian Drug Warrior politicians disapprove. But then the Drug War is just a make-work program for law enforcement. Imagine what police would do without a Drug War: they would just have to sit back and wait for people to actually do something wrong. Hmm. Then there would be no Cops and Detective shows for folks to watch after they got home from a nice day of being drug tested, no movies about the US marching into Latin American countries to shoot Latinos because they use or sell plant medicine that has been used responsibly for millennia by non-western countries, no movies about the DEA running roughshod over the US Constitution, torturing suspects and then shooting them at point-blank range in the age of our unprecedented war on substances.
Author's Follow-up: August 19, 2022
Looking back almost a year later, I ask myself if I wasn't a bit rough on George. After all, you catch more flies with honey, right? Of course, the irony is that I would be a much more patient fellow were I free to occasionally avail myself of opium, coca, psilocybin and especially the empathogenic Ecstasy -- the very drugs that George's algorithms will help get me arrested for using. So if I'm the monster here, then George is the Dr. Frankenstein who made me.
Author's Follow-up: March 6, 2025
I wish we had some computer code that would predict when racist politicians are going to create new laws designed to target minorities.
if ($suspect=='black' AND $location=='inner_city' AND $time_of_day=='night')
{
run $harassment_routine;
}
elseif ($suspect=='rich' AND $location=='suburbs' AND $average_salary>$100,000)
{
run $public_service_routine;
}
Open Letters
Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.
I don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.
Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the drug war ideology of substance demonization.
America's Blind SpotCanadian Drug Warrior, I said Get AwayCommon Sense Drug WithdrawalCritique of the Philosophy of HappinessDrug Dealers as Modern WitchesDrug War MurderersDrugs are not the problemEnd the Drug War NowFeedback on my first legal psilocybin session in OregonFinally, a drug war opponent who checks all my boxesFreedom of Religion and the War on DrugsGetting off antidepressants in the age of the drug warGod and DrugsHello? MDMA works, already!How Addiction Scientists Reckon without the Drug WarHow National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of cocaHow Scientific American reckons without the drug warHow the Drug War is Threatening Intellectual Freedom in EnglandHow the Drug War Outlaws Criticism of Immanuel KantHow the Monticello Foundation betrayed Jefferson's Legacy in 1987How the US Preventive Services Task Force Drums Up Business for Big PharmaHow to Unite Drug War Opponents of all EthnicitiesI'll See Your Antidepressants and Raise You One Huachuma CactusIgnorance is the enemy, not FentanylIllusions with Professor Arthur ShapiroIn Defense of OpiumIn Defense of Religious Drug UseIntroduction to the Drug War Philosopher Website at AbolishTheDEA.comKeep Laughing Gas LegalMajoring in Drug War PhilosophyMDMA for PsychotherapyMy Realistic Plan for Getting off of Big Pharma Drugs and why it's so hard to implementNo drugs are bad in and of themselvesOpen Letter to Addiction Specialist Gabor MateOpen Letter to Anthony GottliebOpen Letter to Congressman Ben Cline, asking him to abolish the criminal DEAOpen Letter to Diane O'LearyOpen Letter to Dr. Carl L. HartOpen Letter to Erica ZelfandOpen Letter to ErowidOpen Letter to Francis FukuyamaOpen letter to Kenneth SewellOpen Letter to Lisa LingOpen Letter to Nathan at TheDEA.orgOpen letter to Professor Troy Glover at Waterloo UniversityOpen Letter to Richard HammersleyOpen Letter to Rick Doblin and Roland GriffithsOpen Letter to Roy Benaroch MDOpen Letter to the United Nations Office on Drugs and CrimeOpen Letter to the Virginia LegislatureOpen Letter to Variety Critic Owen GliebermanOpen Letter to Vincent Hurley, LecturerOpen Letter to Vincent RadoOpen letter to Wolfgang SmithPredictive Policing in the Age of the Drug WarProhibitionists Never LearnRegulate and EducateReplacing antidepressants with entheogensReview of When Plants DreamScience is not free in the age of the drug warScience News Continues to Ignore the Drug WarScience News magazine continues to pretend that there is no war on drugsSolquinox sounded great, until I found out I wasn't invitedSpeaking Truth to Big PharmaTeenagers and CannabisThe common sense way to get off of antidepressantsThe Criminalization of Nitrous Oxide is No Laughing MatterThe Depressing Truth About SSRIsThe Invisible Mass ShootingsThe Menace of the Drug WarThe Mother of all Western BiasesThe problem with Modern Drug Reform EffortsThe Pseudoscience of Mental Health TreatmentThe Right to LIVE FULLY is more important than the Right to DIEThere is nothing to debate: the drug war is wrong, root and branchTime for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war liesTop 10 Problems with the Drug WarUnscientific AmericanUsing plants and fungi to get off of antidepressantsVancouver Police Seek to Eradicate Safe UseWeed Bashing at WTOP.COMWhitehead and PsychedelicsWhy DARE should stop telling kids to say noWhy Philosophers Need to Stop Dogmatically Ignoring DrugsWhy Rick Doblin is Ghosting MeWhy Science is the Handmaiden of the Drug WarWhy the Drug War is Worse than you can ImagineWhy the FDA is not qualified to judge psychoactive medicineWhy the Holocaust Museum must denounce the Drug WarWilliam James rolls over in his grave as England bans Laughing Gas
People
about whom and to whom I've written over the years...
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Is Rick Doblin Running with the Devil?
Why Rick Doblin is Ghosting Me
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The Racist Drug War killed George Floyd
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The Book of the Damned
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Friedman, Milton
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Fukuyama, Francis
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Gibb, Andy
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Glaser, Gabrielle
Open Letter to Gabrielle Glaser
Glieberman, Owen
Open Letter to Variety Critic Owen Glieberman
Glover, Troy
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Goswami, Amit
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Gottlieb, Anthony
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Griffiths, Roland
Depressed? Here's why you can't get the medicines that you need
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Open Letter to Richard Hammersley
Handwerk, Brian
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Why I Support Kamala Harris
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Screw You, Francis Burton Harrison
Hart, Carl
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What Carl Hart Missed
Harvey, Dennis
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James, William
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Open Letter to Vincent Rado
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Sabet, Kevin
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If this be reason, let us make the least of it!
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Segall PhD, Matthew D.
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Smith, Wolfgang
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Stea, Jonathan
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Tune In, Turn On, Opt Out
More Essays Here
Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs
This is why America is creeping toward authoritarianism -- because of the prohibitionists' ability to get away with everything by blaming "drugs." The fact that Americans still fall for this crap represents a kind of collective pathology.
They drive to their drug tests in pickup trucks with license plates that read "Don't tread on me." Yeah, right. "Don't tread on me: Just tell me how and how much I'm allowed to think and feel in this life. And please let me know what plants I can access."
There are hundreds of things that we should outlaw before drugs (like horseback riding) if, as claimed, we are targeting dangerous activities. Besides, drugs are only dangerous BECAUSE of prohibition, which compromises product purity and refuses to teach safe use.
Brits have a right to die, but they do not have the right to use drugs that might make them want to live. Bad policy is indicated by absurd outcomes, and this is but one of the many absurd outcomes that the policy of prohibition foists upon the world.
Most substance withdrawal would be EASY if drugs were re-legalized and we could use any substance we wanted to mitigate negative psychological effects.
Prohibition is wrong root and branch. It seeks to justify the colonial disdain for indigenous healing practices through fearmongering.
Even the worst forms of "abuse" can be combatted with a wise use of a wide range of psychoactive drugs, to combat both physical and psychological cravings. But drug warriors NEED addiction to be a HUGE problem. That's their golden goose.
What is the end game of the drug warrior? A world in which no one wants drugs? That's not science. It's the drug-hating religion of Christian Science. You know, the American religion that outsources its Inquisition to drug-testing labs.
Pundits have been sniffing about the "smell" of Detroit lately. Sounds racist -- especially since such comments tend to come from drug warriors, the guys who ruined Detroit in the first place (you know, with drug laws that incentivized profit-seeking violence as a means of escaping poverty).
It also bothers me that gun fanatics support the drug war. If I have no rights to mother nature, then they have no rights to guns. If the Fourth Amendment can be ignored based on lies and ignorance, then so can the Second.
More Tweets
The latest hits from Drug War Records, featuring Freddie and the Fearmongers!
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, Predictive Policing in the Age of the Drug War: open letter to computer scientist George Mohler, published on September 10, 2021 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)
