fight back against the extrajudicial enforcement of Christian Science Sharia
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
September 18, 2020
Attention Job Applicants!
Mad about having to submit to drug tests in order to make a living?
Fight back!
Submit the following protest letter to your current or prospective employer along with that urine sample that you provide them.
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING LETTER SHOULD BE USED ONLY BY THOSE WHO ARE READY TO TAKE A STAND AGAINST THE DEVASTATINGLY MISGUIDED DRUG WAR, IN THE FULL KNOWLEDGE THAT DOING SO IS RISKY IN TODAY'S DRUG WARRIOR CLIMATE. NO ONE, LEAST OF ALL MYSELF, CAN GUARANTEE YOU THAT THE COMPANY YOU ARE DEALING WITH WILL RESPECT YOU FOR PROTESTING IN THIS WAY. ONLY SUBMIT THE FOLLOWING LETTER TO YOUR DRUG-TESTING EMPLOYER IF YOU FEEL STRONGLY ENOUGH ABOUT THE INJUSTICES IN QUESTION HERE THAT YOU ARE WILLING TO LOSE A JOB OPPORTUNITY IF NECESSARY TO MAKE YOUR VIEWPOINT KNOWN.
DRUG TESTING PROTEST LETTER
Dear Employer:
Although I have complied with your company's drug test, I feel a moral duty to inform you that I have done so under duress. I believe that such drug-testing without cause is a fundamental violation of my rights as an American citizen, and that such testing represents the enforcement of a Christian Science viewpoint about drugs, which is one that I do not share. Christian Scientists, as I'm sure you know, believe that human beings have a moral duty to go without using drugs for healing purposes, whether physical or psychological. I do not practice that religion, and I therefore do not believe that I should be subject to its requirements when it comes to the plant medicines around me. For I believe that Mother Nature is a healing goddess, not a drug kingpin, and that no plants are bad in and of themselves, despite the Drug Warrior's constant attempts to demonize them, largely by failing to acknowledge the positive role that today's demonized plant substances have played in various cultures for literally thousands of years.
I am taking this stand in support of Thomas Jefferson, who I believe was rolling over in his grave when the DEA stomped onto Monticello 1 in 1987 and confiscated his poppy plants, in clear and ungrateful violation of the natural law upon which Jefferson had founded this country. Jefferson believed that there were basic rights that the government could not take from us, and few could be more basic, especially to a garden-lover like Jefferson, than our right to the plants and fungi that grow at our very feet. For as Natural Law proponent John Locke wrote in his Second Treatise on Government, human beings have a right to the use of the land "and all that lies therein." To arrest me for accessing and using mere plant medicine is therefore, in my view, a violation of my basic rights as an American citizen, for it represents the unconstitutional triumph of common law over Jefferson's natural law, which was the one thing that was unique and special about America, until the Drug War took it away, beginning in 1914, when racist politicians first outlawed a plant in order to marginalize the minorities that they feared and despised.
I do not seek to convince you of my viewpoint in this short letter. I merely wish to state for the record that I have taken your drug test under duress for a variety of philosophical reasons, including the ones that I've mentioned above. I trust that you will accept this statement of conscience for the earnest political protest that it represents and that it will not bias you against me in considering my suitability for employment, for, putting this one issue aside, I believe I would make a valuable addition to your workforce.
Sincerely Yours,
Name, Date, on behalf of the wronged Thomas Jefferson and the Natural Law upon which he founded this country
WATCH THIS PAGE FOR MORE IDEAS ABOUT PROTESTING CHRISTIAN SCIENCE DRUG TESTING AND ITS VIOLATION OF NATURAL LAW UPON WHICH AMERICA WAS FOUNDED
#DrugTestingSucks
Author's Follow-up: August 17, 2022
There's nothing wrong with checking folks like pilots to see if they're impaired by a substance -- but let's be clear here: drug testing in the vast majority of cases is not about finding impairment: it's rather an extrajudicial fishing expedition in the human body to find signs of previous use of banned substances. Worse yet, the punishment for infraction is cruel and unusual, insofar as it involves barring the 'user' from obtaining gainful employment in the United States of America (or Britain, or Australia, etc.). That is a kind of punishment that is not even meted out to axe murderers.
Moreover, Congress is thus essentially subcontracting drug testing 2 to businesses to enforce Christian Science Sharia, for the kinds of substances that the drug test searches for are those which have inspired entire religions in the past. Coca was an Incan God. The Vedic religion was inspired by a psychoactive plant. Plato's view of the afterlife was inspired by the psychedelic kykeon at Eleusis. And the "Meditations" of Marcus Aurelius were inspired by his free use of opium 3 . Yet the use of these substances in America today will bar you from feeding your family. Drug testing is therefore an attack on religious freedom, an attack upon the wellspring and fountainhead of the religious impulse itself: namely, psychoactive plants and fungi.
Author's Follow-up: April 12, 2023
If I follow up on the philosophical investigations of William James and use nitrous oxide, I will no longer be allowed to have a job in America. Ah, the land of the home and the free!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's no wonder that folks blame drugs. Carl Hart is the first American scientist to openly say in a published book that even the so-called "hard" drugs can be used wisely. That's info that the drug warriors have always tried to keep from us.
Daily opium use is no more outrageous than daily antidepressant use. In fact, it's less outrageous. It's a time-honored practice and can be stopped with a little effort and ingenuity, whereas it is almost impossible to get off some antidepressants because they alter brain chemistry.
What bothers me about AI is that everyone's so excited to see what computers can do, while no one's excited to see what the human mind can do, since we refuse to improve it with mind-enhancing drugs.
Had we really wanted to "help" users, we would have used the endless godsends of Mother Nature and related synthetics to provide spirit-lifting alternatives to problem use. But no one wanted to treat users as normal humans. They wanted to pathologize and moralize their use.
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.
The U.S. Congress considered the following to be a scientific fact back in 1924:
"A person taking narcotics regularly impedes evolutionary progress and tends to degenerate backwards toward the brute." -- Richmond Hobson
@HKSExecEd The use of Ecstasy brought UNPRECEDENTED peace and love to the British dance floors in the 1990s. When are political scientists going to acknowledge the potential for such substances to pull our species back from the brink of nuclear annihilation?
Typical materialist protocol. Take all the "wonder" out of the drug and sell it as a one-size-fits all "reductionist" cure for anxiety. Notice that they refer to hallucinations and euphoria as "adverse effects." What next? Communion wine with the religion taken out of it?
There is an absurd safety standard for "drugs." The cost/benefit analysis of the FDA & co. never takes into account the costs of NOT prescribing nor the benefits of a productive life well lived. The "users" are not considered stakeholders.
Someday those books about weird state laws will be full of factoids like: "In Alabama, you could be jailed for 20 years for conspiring to eat a mushroom."
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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